WMcD
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Posts posted by WMcD
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There was a review of Forte (I) by J. Hersh (sp?) which was unreserved in praise. I'm not aware of a commercial review of the Forte II, thought they are generally commented upon as an improvement.
I can send you the Hersh review if you e-mail me your snail mail address.
Gil
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I had a wonderful time.
But the warm glowing remarks above are not "scientific." We do not have a control group.
Is there any other loudspeaker manufacturer who would do this for fans? I suspect not.
With that observation, it is more "scientific."
Gil
Gil
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John is correct of course. Then again, I'd be careful about using a battery on a tweeter.
In any event, this was a nice excuse to buy a piece of test equipment and the meter will always be useful in other applications.
I'm pleased to encourage people to get their hands dirty. This gets people involved in the nitty gritty and it is always good to learn new things.
Gil
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I promise never to mention this speaker cable issue again, this month.
Gil
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Dear Denhabr,
You haven't told us about your level of technical experience. Depending on this, the stuff below is gonna be a big adventure, or a piece of cake.
If you're inexperienced, this is good time to learn. There is not much you can hurt.
If you are a bit of a handy man, it should not be too difficult to take the back off the box and look around.
Whether the woofer voice coil is burned out should be easy to determine. Even the low end multi meters from Radio Shack have a continuity tester. There is usually a little speaker on the dial setting. When you connect the red and black probes together, there is a tone.
Disconnect the wires leading to the woofer and see if the meter indicates continuity when you touch them, with moderate firm-ness, to the woofer terminals. If there is no tone, you have an open, burned out voice coil.
You can also use the meter to measure ohms. That is the omega on the dial. A good voice coil will measure about 5 ohms. A bad one will show no change from whatever the meter shows when the probes are connected to nothing.
In essence, the 5 or so ohms should be the same as continuity from the meter's point of view. But the 5 ohms really is a definitive test.
If you do upgrade, it might be best to replace the woofers on both units. Other people on the bbs or the folks at the factory can advise if the upgrade works with the original crossover components.
Again, I'd encourage you to not be worried about doing the work yourself. It is a great learning experience. We'll all be pleased to give further advice.
It is really too bad we don't see stuff like this on the many home improvement channels. The thought is the same. Simple stuff and nothing to be afraid of. Even if you have to be told "Righty Tighty, Lefty Loosey" you should try it.
Others on the bbs will tell you about the use of rope caulking on horns and p-traps. Right? guys and girls!
Gil
Gil
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Ray is giving some very sage advice.
We here obviously favor Klipsch. Still, it is best if after making a purchase you can calmly tell yourself it was based on considered contemplation of other speakers.
Gil
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I agree that some of Radio Shack stuff is so cheap looking, it discourages me from buying it.
On the other hand, it is so cheaply priced, usually, it might be worth experimenting with.
Gil
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Ya know, this is how rumors get started. I can't belive PWK ever made such a statement to begin with.
The LS is fine speaker. It was never presented as a real equivalent of a K-Horn.
Here is an interesting story about rumor.
I was sitting on a bus, specifically 151 CTA. One person said, "What will happen when John Wayne dies?" The other said, "Did you hear?, John Wayne died."
At the time, JW was alive and kicking.
Gil
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I run the "SETI at home" software too. It is nice to think that we're all making a contribution to research.
Sorry I bent everyone's ear about wire. I know there are strong opinions out there. I really would like to see a technical basis for reported improvements. There just don't seem to be any.
Gil
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There is an article in this month's Audio Express. It is the successor to Glass Audio, Audio Amateur, and SpeakerBuilder. RIP. It is about the lack of hard evidence that there is much to be gained over heavy zip cord.
Nelson Pass wrote up a similar article in SpearkerBuilder decades ago.
My read on both articles is that the technically trained authors wanted to find a technical basis for a claim of superiority of super duper wire over heavy zip cord in real world frequency and impedance settings.
They did not. In both cases the author waffled at the end and kinda mumbled about the possibility that if you hear something different, maybe that is okay.
My read is that it is like little green men. There is not a respectable scientist who would not like to find evidence of LGM. SETI works on it, without results. No one can honestly come up with the type of evidence that would hold sway in a peer review article.
My hat is off to folk who weave CAT-5. At least they have blood sweat tears and toil in the project. The hucksters selling high end wires for big bucks, I think they have an obligation to come forward with double blind tests.
I don't get upset by the wiring inside of speaker cabinets. It is a real eye opener to take apart a driver and find the voice coils are make up of really, really, really, small wire =8^o.
Gil
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I don't think there is any question that grills effect the sound. In tests of speakers, there are annomalies in the respose curve shown in the graphs. Grills off show a smoother response.
The bumps show up in the high end.
Whether one can hear these differences is another matter and may vary depending on the cirumstances.
If you're a technophile and like looking at the hardware, no grill is a good way to go. Looks good, sounds good.
Naturally, if you have pets, grills do protect the exposed bass driver.
Gil
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You might try the free tone generator software. It can be found in the download section of www.nch.com.au.
It does not sweep. However, you can move it up and down in semi-tones from the keyboard.
The price is right.
RS sells the mini plug to RCA wire you might not have on hand to connect the computer output to the receiver input.
Note, do use responsible levels. Continuous tones can easily over drive your speakers.
Also you may find that these pure tones will cause items in the room to resonate. This could be your problem to begin with.
Gil
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Ya know, things are not all that bad.
You can still buy the classics.
PWK hit the lower end price points with the Shorthorn and Rebel. They were pretty unsophisticated compaired to the K-Horns. The Heresy was and is at the lower price point. So there is little point to gripeing about the new low end.
If you want, you can assemble an HT system using Heritage components.
On the other hand, the new lines give opportunities to enter the Klipsch technology at great economy.
Phil H is actually incorrect. The company is providing everything to everybody, with few exceptions. One exception is the Cornwall as far as the Heritage line is concerned. But the Heritage line, Chorus, Forte, can be found on e-Bay. Further, these lines get factory support for spare parts.
Hey, we can't complain. The factory is keeping a lot of feet in a lot of boats. It is a wonder they've done so well.
Gil
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I am not a believer in this whole break in theory. It is nice to contemplate that a few cycles, or 10 or 100, or 1000, of movement will loosen up a suspension. But consider, a 10 kHz signal will put the suspension through 10,000 cycles every second. I can't believe that 10,000 cycles isn't plenty to loose up things properly. So one second of play should be plenty.
You should also realize that a tweeter just can't absorb much electrical power without burning out. PWK once wrote he hasn't found a tweeter worth its name that could take more than 5 watts continuous. Naturally, the Master is correct. The thin wires in the voice coil just can't take it.
The question should be, so how come speakers are rated at 100 watts or more.
The answer is that most music has most of the power distribution in the midrange. there is usually very little continuous power in the treble.
That may be changing. I've seen a real time analyzer running on pop music. At some times, the frequency distribution is full out across all ranges right up to the tweeter range, and for long periods. That is rare in orchestral music.
It is probably the case that you're hitting these speakers with too much power.
You have a good question along the lines of, why not cut down everything except the treble. My thought is that you just wind up running up the overall gain, and then you're pushing the tweeter again.
Like you said, take it easy. These are great speakers, but they can be driven to distruction.
Gil
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I agree that whatever sounds best to you should be the final determining factor.
On the other hand, there are two reasons why toe in might be the first choice.
First, most speakers are designed so that the response is most flat on axis. Even constant directivity horns have some frequency response problems off axis.
Second, the radiation off axis, particulary at the very side, is attenuated. This is good to keep the sound from being reflected off the side walls of the room. Toe in will probably help direct the sound away from the side walls.
Gil
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My guess is that the set up will have to be custom made. It is not difficult and you might hunt for a local electronics tech to do it.
One sourse for such a tech is the local auto audio installer.
BTW, this is the home audio portion of the bbs. You may well get more responses on the pro media (not pro audio) section.
Good luck,
Gil
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Happy Birthday from Chicago.
I'm the wag who sent cards for 50th, 40th, and 7th birthdays, taped together. Kinda like resistors in series.
Too bad they don't combine in parallel.
Gil
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I've never read of any significant amount of mass being moved at 110 kHz. Certainly not loudspeaker components.
Let us in on the question. Does someone think you're interfering with VLF radio?
Gil
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My guess is that the amp is dropping out because the low impedance of the speakers is drawing too much current at high voltages. As Albright says.
The meters are probably only measuring voltage. The "calculation" is that "IF there is an 8 ohm load, then I'm putting out so many watts." This is why they are reporting so many watts when there is no speaker connected at all.
This must be very loud when the speakers are connected. No?
You may well be exceeding the power, and specifically current, output of the amp.
Gil
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I can't give you specifics on this. However, generally, direct driver woofers have efficiencies of about 80 to 95 dB measured at one meter with 2.82 volts input. This is one watt into 8 ohms.
The really story is that direct drivers have poor bass because they are bad radiators, and so their motors are made to be weak, and thus are made to have poor, but equally bad, mid and upper bass. They are not powerful enough to move the mass of the diaphram at mid and upper bass frequencies. This is called "mass control."
You can't improve the deep bass, you equalize down the mid and upper bass. As you can see, smaller bass drivers do produce poor deep bass, and the upper bass must be equalized down, by mass control, even more.
Horn loaded drivers are typically about 103 dB in sensitivity. If there is a direct radiator bass unit, you have to used an electrical pad to cut down the output to be equal to the bass.
Gil
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There has never been a question about it. The drivers in the K-Horn are located very much distant from each other. As a result, the sound from the mid arrives later than that from the tweeter. The sound from the woofer arrives later than the mid.
The Heyser / Audio review shows this without question.
Within the limits of the K-Horn design, humans just can't detect the differences in arrival times. Or at least the studies show.
You should consider the structure of the inner ear. The little hairs respond to different frequencies. Somewhat like the display on a real time analyzer. So the brain would have to interpret the timing of the firing of the say, treble hairs, and compare them to the time of the firing of the midrange hairs, and the bass hairs.
Evidently, our brains don't do that very well unless there are large delays.
Phase is a term used very loosely. Sometime, but not always, it is used to measure a time difference.
PWK is very careful about this when he writes. E.g. you can wire one of two drivers in reverse polarity, and all reproduced sound is 180 degrees "out of phase" but not delayed. On the other hand, a delay can put sound at a single frequency 180 degrees out of phase because of the delay. However, at twice the frequency, the delay causes a 360 degree shift. But the resulting combination is "in phase" at that frequency despite the delay.
It takes a lot of diagrams to show this.
There are examples where "phase" is actually used to indicate a dirivitive, or slope. Like in calculus.
The current and voltage in a pure inductor or a pure capacitor are said to be 90 degrees out of phase. This is really to say that when one is a sine wave, the other is a cosine wave, one being the "slope" or dirivitive of the other. The slope of a sine wave is the cosine wave.
Some smart cookie realized that the sine and cosine waves are 90 degrees apart. Therefore they talk about current and voltage being 90 degrees out of phase. However that does not mean there is a delay in time of 1/4 wavelength.
Gil
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I've observed different subjective responses by speakers and electronics, and concluded I'm fooling myself.
This is seized upon by those selling "break in" CD's etc.
I've never seen any industry or mil spec on the component parts which would imply there is any change in their performance over time.
BTW, are the margins on this section different?
Gil
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I'm part of the "zip cord is just fine" club.
Also, your local home improvement center is definitely a good source. Zip cord, or lamp cord, with white or black insulation is often offered on spools. A good buy. I do laugh at some of the "specialized" zip cord they sell which have labels like "high definition". There is no merit to the claim.
IMHO, 16 gauge is plenty. Please note that as the numbers in the "American Wire Gauge" system go down, the diameter goes up. I do think that 14 or 12 is not necessary.
Before you decide on a given gauge, please consider the interconnects, e.g., banana plugs or spade lugs, you may be using. Or, your speakers or amps may have some sort of spring clips. Using large wire like 14 gauge, may make it difficult to hook it up to the spring clips or interconnects.
One reason to go to Radio Shack for wire is if you need assistance with the interconnects and hooking up the wire to them. A salesman there may be more helpful than the home improvement center. Maybe.
Gil
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This was my experience with HT receivers generally. The noise is coming from the digital processing, IMHO. It is not an interconnect or cable problem.
Gil
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horn damping
in Technical/Restorations
Posted
Squawker is PWK's subroquet for the midrange.
Dogs woof. Birds tweet. I don't really know what kinda critters squawk. A study in onamotapoetics too.
Gil