shank2001

The average life expectancy of a cat is not 12-14 years. For indoor cats is it more like 18-20. When I was a kid my cats were declawed. I vowed never again to do that to a cat. It is the lazy way to cure a cat from scratching. Taking away a cat's claws is horrible! How would you like having the first joint of all your fingers removed?! Regards, Sean

I bet this store where you can get new stuff on vinyl was a trance/techno/dance/hiphop/ type of store, right? The reason people that listen to these types of music prefer vinyl is not because it sounds better, it is because it is easier to mix, DJ style. Records have a huge market in the Trance genre.... HUGE! DJs almost always use records, but it has nothing to do with sound quality. There are some CD mixing stations that are starting to catch on now, but they are harder to use than using your hands directly on a record to mix. In fact mixes that were made using CDs cost more generally because of the higher sound quality. If you don't understand what I have been saying, you probably predate the Cassette Tape . Regards, Sean ---------------- On 10/23/2003 2:58:36 PM AndyKubicki wrote: Hi Dave, You bring up an interesting point. I predate the CD (sometimes I feel like I predate the gramaphone, but I don't ). My son recently showed me a store where you can indeed buy newly released vinyl. I don't think it's anything I would listen to, but if this crowd found the benefits of vinyl, who knows where this will go, unless of course the format war is won and there is a ton of old releases rereleased. Anyway, he got Poison the Well's Tear from Red on Trustkill records. Do a search on the web, there are also places that reissue 180 gram vinyl of older stuff. Here's another one: http://www.simplyvinyl.com/ ----------------

Hey Hurdy, While that may be true that the distortion lowers with higher power on a SS amp, the distortion is still much lower than a tube amp at the same low power output. For example the distortion % at .1 watt for the Aragon 8008ST is .03% and drops to .0025% at 90 watts! Name one tube amp that has .03% distortion at .1 watt. I don't think there is one... I could be wrong though. Here is the Aragon's graph... it is on the bottom: http://www.stereophile.com/fullarchives.cgi?562 Take the Hovland Sapphire tube amp in comparison (first review I could find)... at $8,000 dollars each. At .1 watt it is already at .3% distortion and it goes up quickly from there. That is an order of magnitude higher at .1 watt than the high power Aragon, and it gets worse and worse the higher you go because the SS distortion drops while the tubes rise. How about the Audiopax Model Eighty Eight monoblock power amplifier at $9,970 a pair. At .1 watt there is almost .2% distortion, and goes up very linearly from there. Again... more than the Aragon. At 1 watt it was at .5%, and at 1% THD it was able to put out 5.2 watts. This distortion would definitely be noticable and even with Khorns you could reach 5.2 watts pretty easy at times, and definitely 1 watt especially in the bass range. Is the difference at .1 watt audible? I don't think many could tell the difference actually... but still the whole notion of high power SS amps at low power are not performing well is just simply not true. By the way .1 watt on the Khorns would be about 93db, so that would be a pretty good volume, most people would hit a .1 average quite often. I don't know how much distortion a SS amp puts out at 1/100 of a watt because no reveiws go down that far. But even if it doubled it would still only be .06%, to get to .2% it would have to jump 6.66 times higher! So I doubt it would be higher at 1/100th by much. Regards, Sean

Hey Big Busa, People are going to hate me, but there is nothing wrong with driving Khorns or any other Klipsch speaker with a high power amp, as long as it is a good amp, and runs very clean at low power outputs, preferably Class A. The point is, clipping is the enemy, not high power. Clipping will destroy a speaker much faster than high power. The Khorns can easily handle 100 watts continuous, and much higher peaks, so don't worry about it. Your ears would give out way before the Khorns. I mean lets face it, even with a 90db 1watt 1 meter speaker, one rarely uses above a watt except in transient peaks. 90db is pretty loud. As for using Tubes with the Khorn, that is a matter of personal taste. Yes I am sure the Khorns will sound great with a tube amp to some people. But it is not that the Khorns were designed just to sound good with tubes. Yes they were made sensitive so that the low watt amps of the time could drive them, but that does not mean SS is not good with them as well. If you think about it, the whole goal is to reproduce the recorded signal exactly under varying impedences etc. If an amp is good at that then it will sound good with any speaker. In fact SS amps are just like tube amps, in that the higher watts they put out the more distortion, so a high power amp driven at low levels is MUCH more accurate than a low power tube driven at a higher percentage of its total power. The SS high power amp putting out 2 watts continuous would barely stress the amp at all and would never clip and distortion would be very very low, but 2 watts continuous out of a 10 watt tube amp would definitely be clipping at times. Don't tell me that SS amps are designed to sound best at high watt output, that is simply not true. SS amps are most accurate at low volume levels. They are just better at keeping that same level of performance at higher wattages as well. But the lower the volume level, the better ANY amp will perform. So my point is, unless you absolutely love the sound of a tube amp, the Khorns will sound great with a SS amp. If you like SS sound now, then you will love SS sound on a Khorn. One cannot deny that if you want an unaltered and more pure signal and strong bass, nothing beats a SS amp. If you like the harmonic distortion and other things etc. that even the most expensive tubes have problems with, then go for tubes. Some people like that sound, but it is distortion. If a SS manufacturer tried to sell a SS amp with the distortions of a tube amp they would be run out of town on a rail. If a speaker needs a tube amp in order to sound good, that, to me, is a bad speaker. The key is you need a good amp with Klipsch speakers because they are so revealing, regardless if it is tube or SS. Tubes might sound better because they hide the bad sounding distortions with other distortions that are more pleasing, but they are still distortions. But a GOOD SS amp will sound the best in most situations. Regards, Sean

You are absolutely right JM. I bought the Forte IIs for a smaller upstairs room, and when I moved them up there they really seemed to like that room better. They really sound wonderful. For anyone wanting to get the Forte IIs, don't let my opinion stop you. They are incredible speakers and I already know I will never sell them. They have the classic Klipsch sound. Its just that the Chorus IIs sound even better, as they should, in my opinion, as they are the Forte IIs bigger brother. But as I am sure everyone who owns Fortes knows, they sound GREAT! I wish Klipsch would sell the whole Heritage line new again. Regards, Sean

Hey Manuel, Actually I have the Chorus II speakers and they have a 15 inch passive radiator on the back, unlike the original Choruses, and they have deeper bass. Regards, Sean ---------------- On 10/17/2003 10:38:06 PM Manuel Delaflor wrote: Sean, Thanks for the review. Im interested in the Forte's because of their bass specs!, How come they don't give more bass than the Chorus's? If I read well the specs, the Chorus have a 15 inch sealed driver, and the Forte a 12 inch with a 15 inch passive. In my experience, even with the smaller driver, a speaker with a passive driver will reach lower than a sealed box. The specs at Klipsch site apparently confirm this feeling. And now you come to write this review that has confused me... should I get the Chorus instead??? Currently Im very happy with my Heresy's, but want a Heritage speaker with bigger mouth for the horns. In the bass department Im covered with my Tempest sub, but it doesn't hurt to have lower bass than what my Heresy's are able to put... just in case. ----------------

Yep, that is the beauty of MP3. They are a wonderful format. And it is getting better all the time... most of the quality differences are on the encoding side, not the decoding. So as encoders get better the format gets better. I think the best encoder out there, is any of them that use the LAME encoder. At 256kbits/sec it is hard for me to hear any difference. Only with headphones, usually, can I hear any difference. Sometimes there will be some obvious flaw... The only thing that really bothers me consitently is the loss of dynamics many times. I have a server that I am encoding all my CDs onto so I can listen to them anywhere in the house. I have a 200 gig HD and it is almost full hehe!! It might sound from my posts that I do not like MP3... far from it. It is wonderful, and so is JPEG. But it is not as good as CDs. But, I don't think I would buy an album only in MP3. I prefer to buy the CD and rip it myself. That way I am assured highest quality MP3s when I rip them (because the bitrate and encoder that Apple uses on their MP3s I can hear the difference, and it bothers me, but on the ones I rip at a higher bitrate and the LAME encoder I have a harder time hearing things that bother me), and I get the absolute best quality with the CD. Also, I do not want the CD format to die off in favor of MP3. That would be a huge step backwards! Regards, Sean

yes it does have to fill the space of where it threw away information with something... like I said.. it GUESSES the information. But they are just guesses... have you heard the "breathing" of the noise in a low bitrate MP3? Or the weird "warble" in sounds like a piano or flute? This is information ADDED by the algorithms that are extra information, but not accurate. I don't know if you are familiar with animation but keyframing is similar to what MP3 does. It looks for the most noticable things in the music and "keyframes" that info, and throws away everything else.. then when it decompresses it has to guess what is between those keyframes by interpolation. Usually it does pretty good, but it also will make mistakes... and some parts that it THINKS a person could not hear, it just throws away entirely and does not even try to reconstruct it. For example sound waves of other sounds going on during a drum hit will be dropped because most people could not hear them over the impact of the drum sound. Those other sounds are just thrown away. Those sounds are recorded... it is just our brain that cannot process all those sounds. Some people CAN hear those sounds though. The MP3 format is carefully constructed to take advantage that most people can not hear certain characteristics of sound waves. But it makes a lot of assumptions that many people can hear. Just trust us that know... once a file is compressed into MP3, you can NEVER EVER EVER reconstruct it exactly. Regards, Sean

Hello everyone. There have been a few comparisons between different Klipsch speakers on here... the last one that I read was the Cornwall Vs. Chorus II. It was very interesting and I liked it, especially as reviews of Klipsch Heritage speakers are hard to come by on the Web. Some mentioned that they would like to see a Forte II Vs. Chorus II shoot out. Well I decided to buy a pair of Forte IIs recently for another system, and so now I have the opportunity to tell you my impressions compared to my Chorus IIs that I bought 10 years ago. First the size. From the dimensions listed for both speakers they sound pretty close. The Forte II is just a few inches smaller in every dimension. But when I unpacked them there is definitely a difference. The Chorus IIs look huge next to the Forte IIs. The Forte IIs would be a bit more wife friendly I think. Also if you move a lot, the Chorus IIs are much harder to move around. The sound. I hooked up the Forte IIs and set the output level to a specific value of 101db at my listenting position with a SPL meter using test tones and immediately started listening. (I had not listened to my Chorus IIs for a few days). Initially I thought they sounded remarkably like the Chorus IIs. Good highs and midrange, nice bass. Overall I was very impressed. These it turned out were my first impressions, and they changed when I started switching between the two speakers. I then switched to the Chorus IIs, set 101db at my listenting position and started listening to the same songs. Well I had been wrong about the Fortes They did NOT sound like the Choruses. The Choruses had a much bigger sound. more bass, and deeper, more punch, and in general just a richer sound. The Fortes sounded a little watered down in comparison. This is very interesting to me as the specs list the Fortes as having a deeper bass extension. 39hz for the Choruses vs. 32Hz for the Fortes. I tried changing the position in the corners of the Fortes, tried different angles, tried lots of things, but no matter what I did I could not get the Fortes to have more or deeper bass than the Choruses. I then tried test tones and found the Chorus IIs to extend much farther down than the rated 39hz. I started at 100hz at 101 Db (the whole house vibrates at that level on a pure test tone) It did drop to 98 at 32 hz and dropped quickly past that. But it is very usable down to 32hz and a bit below, and at 39Hz it was still at 100db.. only 1db down from 101db at 100Hz! The Forte on the other hand was down to 98db at 45hz (from 101db at 100hz) and just got worse from there. It was at 92db at 32Hz. This is not anywhere near the 32 to 20000 +-3db it is supposed to have (you would think)! Well actually maybe it IS... if there was a +3db peak around 100hz (where I started measuring) then -6db from that would be just about 92db at 32Hz. Almost within the +- rating as long as nothing has a higher peak in the rest of the range. Conversely I think the Chorus II are not peaking where I started my test at 100hz. I think they might have a high (+3db) peak in the midrange instead (it definitely has more punch and clarity in this area) and so the 6db drop from that peak might happen at 39Hz but stay pretty flat from there down to 30Hz. So since I started from 100Hz where the choruses are not peaking but instead might be at 0 or even a bit negative there, the -6db drop from there doesnt happen until lower than 30Hz (maybe around 27 or 28hz! At 25Hz there is pretty much nothing from the Chorus IIs so the drop off is FAST past 30. But it is also non existent for the fortes at 25 HZ and much less at 30 than the Choruses as well. My test tones do not get that close together so I don't know exactly where the huge dropoff begins. Just goes to show, where the peaks are can really change how the standard +-3db measurements look. The Fortes could be +-3db 32-20000Hz but still have less bass and less deep bass than a speaker rated +-3db 39-20000. It all depends on the WHOLE curve. Or maybe the Fortes just do not get along with my room? I made charts showing what I think is happening, if anyone wants to see them e-mail me at sean.keegan@verizon.net. It is much easier to explain using a graph. Any way I try to understand it, the Chorus IIs definitely have deeper usable bass than the Forte IIs. This is indesputable in my listening room. Overall I was very surprised by these results and I guess it just shows that the 6db spread in a +- standard measurement can be misleading over actual speaker performance. As for the upper ranges...The Chorus has more presence, and in general just sounded more effortless at the high listening volume of 101db. They both sounded clear and crisp, very very good soundstage, true Heritage Klipsch sound. They both sound great. Which brings me to my final thoughts... overall the Chorus II was the clear winner to me, no doubts at all for both myself and my wife. BUT this is not to say the Forte II is not an incredible speaker. It stunned me in how good it sounds. Do not read this and think the Fortes have no bass, or bad bass... this is not true, it was shaking the house with bass... it just does not have as much or as deep as the Choruses. Its just that the Chorus II takes what is so excellent in the Forte and builds on it, and takes it to the next level. The biggest difference was in the bass, while there were significant differences in the upper ranges, they really were pretty similar overall. I am very very happy with the Forte IIs and they will perform perfectly for what I bought them for... the upstairs system. Hope this was fun to read. It was fun to compare. Not scientific, of course, in any way. But it was fun. Again e-mail me if you want to see my charts of what I think is going on frequency wise... they explain what I was trying to say with words so much better. Regards, Sean

I just wanted to add, when you compress to a JPEG or a MP3 you can get, 1 to 4, 1 to 8, or even 1 to 16 compression ratios in filesize!!!!! (depending on quality setting) But with .zip you rarely even get 1 to 2 compression ratios!!!!! Why do you think that is?? Becuse .zip compression does not throw anything away. MP3 and JPEG DO! Throwing away information is BAD. Regards, Sean

NO! NO! NO! Sorry for yelling, but this is a common misconception. MP3 is LOSSY!! Think of a MP3 as a JPEG (in fact they are the exact same concept). When you compress a TIFF into a JPEG you are throwing out information. It is lost.... FOREVER! IT IS NOT A FIXED ALGORITHM!!! JPEGS and MP3s ARE NOT just equations that are reverseable. They THROW INFORMATION AWAY that the engineers who made JPEG and MP3 thought you could not see or hear. The JPEG does a pretty good job when you uncompress for viewing, or when you convert a JPEG back into a TIFF (like burning a MP3 back to redbook standard format). BUT BUT BUT, if you look close you will see the TIFF that was coverted to JPEG and back to TIFF is NOT as high quality as the original TIFF because the information that was THROWN away was lost and cannot be recovered. HOWEVER you will notice that the file size of the original TIFF and the converted TIFF are the same! How can this be? The JPEG when you uncompress it GUESSES the missing information it threw away, and yes it DOES guess wrong. And if you recompress a JPEG over again, the quality drops even more, and if you were to recompress a MP3 it would lose even more quality, even if you use a higher bitrate! MP3s work the EXACT same way. A MP3 will NEVER be as good as a CD because infomration is ALWAYS thrown away, never to be recovered. I think people get confused because .ZIP files are compressed but when they are uncompressed they are EXACT copies of the original. They do not throw away any information at all... which if you think about it makes sense because if it threw ANYTHING away, the zipped file would no longer work at all! Photos and Music can be "fudged" and still look reasonable, and sound reasonable. But a txt document cannot be fudged or it will have spelling errors etc. that cannot be overlooked... or if it is a compressed program file it will not run any more... See what I am saying. MP3 and JPEG use the idea that MOST people will not be able to notice the difference. But in reality MOST people can if they try. That said, for the amount of compressing mp3s and JPEGs to, they are amazing, and worth having. But the actual never been compressed TIFF or CD (AIFF or WAV) files are better!!!!! So again, convienince is nice, but you are not getting CD quality music. Close, but it is not no matter what you do with the files. I hope this is starting to make sense to people. No one in their right mind really thinks JPEG is as good as a TIFF or TGA!!! Why people think MP3s are as good as a CD is just beyond me! I can hear the difference from a mile away. The perfect place for MP3s is in the car because the road noise cancels all the quality anyway and no one can hear the difference. Or cheap stereos work fine with MP3s. Regards, Sean

There are a lot of tube owners on here, and I do not mean to offend. But, like I said, it is just a matter of personal taste. I prefer the sound of SS over tubes because that "warmth" is not what I like. It is just my opinion that to me tubes sound very colored and not at all like live music. I am a musician and play in jazz bands and know what live music sounds like and TO ME SS comes closer to live music than tubes. Just like I think CDs sound more like live music than records. But again, that is just my opinion and preference and others would disagree. I do not mean to start a flame war. You have to admit though that tubes definitely change the sound that was recorded (more so than SS anyway). If it is a better sound is personal preference. Regards, Sean

This is a very interesting thread... I have really been curious why the Aragon amp sounds so much better than the Sonys when the THD is not that different, neither is the frequency response, in fact the Sony actally has more power (supposedly, but the Aragons with 200 WPC sound way more dynamic and powerful than the Sonys ever did and go way higher than 200 watts on my power meter). One thing that is very different is that the Aragon has a much higher damping factor, and it "doubles down" with lower ohms. 200 @ 8 and 400 at 4 ohms, and the huge power supply makes the amp have better control over the speaker. It forces the speaker to do what it wants, even at low wattage, it doesn't "see" the speaker resonances or impedence changes and just drives the speaker right. I think it is all about the control the amp has over the speaker. One thing I noticed when I had the Sony's hooked up. I have a power meter that tells me how much power is going to the speakers. When I take off the source to the sony amp but leave the amp on and just play the subwoofer the Chorus II speakers actually act like a microphone and power flows back towards the amp and power meter!! If I really turn up the sub I can get almost half a watt going to the power meter! But with the Aragon amp in the same setup the power meter does not budge at all! It is as if the Aragon amp is resisting the power coming back to it and canceling it. If I feel the woofer of the Chorus IIs during this they vibrate with the sony but not with the Aragon! I think this is the damping factor in play. It just shows that the Aragon has control over the speakers while the Sony doesn't. Any movement the speaker has that the amp did not tell it to do does not get canceled out with the Sony, but it does with the Aragon. Like resonances or when the amp tells the woofer to stop and change direction it does so with no overshoot, etc. The result would be tighter more controlled bass. So perhaps in your case the bass is deeper for whatever reason, but the damping factor is not high enough to really control it and that is why it sounds less tight than before? My experience is the opposite, not only do I have deeper and more powerful bass, but it is much tighter too with the Aragon 8008 MK II. And the difference was not just in the bass region, the higher frequencies are even more stunning than the changes in the bass if you can believe it! Regards, Sean.

When I was buying speakers long ago, I bought the Tangent 300s. I listened to the 500s as well, but the 300s sounded better even thought they were not as loud. The 300s actually had deeper bass, even though they were smaller. I was happy with these Tangents until I heard the Chorus IIs for the first time. Wow, no comparison. I immediately bought the Chorus IIs!! It has now been 10 years since I bought the Chorus IIs and I have yet to hear a speaker that I like more, and I have listened to a lot!!! If I were you I would pass on the Tangents. The Tangents are great speakers (after all I thought they sounded better than any other brand speakers the dealer had which is why I bought the 300s). But, for Klipsch speakers the Tangents are pretty low on the totem pole. Regards, Sean

I agree with Chuckears, The Chorus IIs love lots of power. But good power! I had no idea what the chorus IIs were capable of until I got the Aragon 8008 MK II amp. I used to have Sony TA-N330ES amps bridged mono putting out 300 watts and thought it was wonderful, only to find that when I hooked up my Aragon amp there was no comparison... better, deeper, and well controlled bass, more details, more punch, better in every way. HUGE difference! Even though the Aragons are only rated 200 watts. Maybe the huge difference is because 26 watts are in Class A? I don't know what the reason is, but now my Chorus IIs SING! I do not agree that SS amps sound harsh with the old Klipsch horns. Every tube amp I have heard sounds muddy to me. I think it is the lack of nice transients with a tube amp that I do not like. I can imagine some people would find the accuracy of transients of SS as being harsh, but the warm sound of tube amps is DISTORTION no matter what tube lovers might claim. The waveform going out of an amp should be as close as possible as the waveform going in... and in this regard tube amps fail miserably. SS is much more accurate to the original waveform. Of course, if you like the warm sound of a tube amp, then you should get one. It is all about what you LIKE. The same when CDs came out... so many old timers said they sounded harsh, but they were just not used to hearing the hard transients of the music as it is properly recorded. Klipsch speakers are similar, they have such dynamics, and are so "speedy" that the attack of notes and transients are much stronger making SOME people think they sound harsh, but they sound much more like live music, becuase that is how live music is as well. All personal taste really. Regards, Sean Regards, Sean