CushXR

BTW, nobody talks about the Heresy's much but they sound very nice actually. Im just using them as rears but you could really have a nice 2-channel setup with just those.

Ha, I guess I'm not married to the TV if somebody wants it. The subs and amp could fit in any system too really. But I'm just really trying to keep the speakers and rack together. I'd hate to split up a family.

Thanks, it's really come together now. I think I'll just move move into a 2-Channel setup. I really haven't decided what specifically. Maybe a couple of hot-rodded Khorns, or maybe a pair of Revels that I listened to a while back.

Anybody interested in a "modern" 5 channel, bi-amped, Heritage Home Theater setup with matching walnut rack and MiniDSP? I have mine up on Audiogon: https://www.audiogon.com/listings/full-range-klipsch-heritage-home-theater-2016-10-16-speakers-48114-brighton-mi It's a great system but it's time to downsize.

Thanks everyone. Some good insights. I think,the room acoustics are decent except for the major weakness of not having good corners. I had always run the speakers tight against the common wall they were on but found the imaging greatly improved by pointing them back out towards my seating position. I didn't notice any timbre change from this but I suppose I should get serious about some false corners. Similarly, bi-amping seemed to sharpen the LF performance to my ear. I had the amp channels to spare so it was a simple matter to try. I'll try to feedback results from any future work. Just to add confusion, the speaker polarity thing appears to be a miscalculation by YPAO. One common enough that Yammie counsels users to ignore it after verifying their connections visually. I have to say that I've yet to be impressed by YPAO and typically run pure direct mode unless I feel the need for the subs to be active. And don't get me started on all the peculiar "Hall in Munich", "Cellar Club" and such modes. I struggle to imagine anyone finding value in that functionality.

Thanks everyone for the feedback and apologies for the ambiguity in listening habits. I'm essentially a rock & roll/blues/jazz type listener, occasionally at high levels. Has anyone tried biamping with an active crossover or DSP?

Some think the high end Yamaha's are great and that along with their stats and professional reviews motivated me to buy it. But I have never been satisfied with the sound, whether it's the fault of the receiver I can't know until I replace it. I suspect a good preamp will be more important than any particular amp separate but I'd like to prove that to myself by moving into a new amp before replacing my receiver (which pre-outs) with a new separate preamp. Either way I'll have to buy an amp anyway. So I was wondering if there were any experiences with particularly cold or warm amps when paired with Klipschorns. I guess I'm leaning toward a solid state Mcintosh but obviously still very undecided.

I would prefer a separate space for heritage stuff since it's so different. Any of the folded horn speakers are pretty unique to their own and require special approaches. Users can make their own decisions as to what qualifies as heritage though. The mods section already presumably covers everything including subs. And we probably don't need sections unique to Palladium, etc as they are all modern speakers of fairly similar architecture. Just sayin...

Anybody had good/ bad experiences with amplifiers and Khorns? I'm looking for a good amplifier but really don't know where to start. I have a modern high level Yamaha receiver currently that I'm not too impressed with.

"With the bass bin polarity now reversed, how is the imaging without bi-amping? I expect that would make a big difference, no?" Ha, good question. I haven't yet found the time to undo the biamping for reevaluation with the new bass bin polarity. However, the only bi amping improvement that I noticed was actually in tone/timbre, not in imaging. But those improvements might now magically appear without bi amping, assuming that the polarity error could have been affecting bass delivery. Right now I'm actually considering pursuit of active crossover opportunities that are possible with biamped architecture. Oddly, I'm still noticing substantial improvements to imaging and tone/timbre in Pure Direct vs regular stereo mode, at least with some material. That's confusing to me and makes me wonder if my receiver has some inherent flaws in the processing.

Good to know, ZAKO. Do you use an active crossover then?

Well, I tried bi amping my KHorns since my rx-a3000 receiver has the capability to support this in a 5.1 system. In this case, the rear surround amplifiers are repurposed to run the mid/tweeter section of the front speakers. The speaker crossover connections are designed to support this too. I had to obviously make some menu selection setup changes and also re-ran the YPAO room correction software. It immediately decided that one of the bass bins was wired backwards. I reversed the polarity and the error went away. It's odd that the problem was not picked originally but perhaps it's a misbuild inside that bass bin and was covered up by a correctly wired mid/tweeter section. Also, YPAO decided that the fronts were now "small" speakers (laughable). Not surprisingly it didn't sound right, like no bass was being sent to the fronts. Then I manually set the speaker size to large and the sound improved dramatically. Ultimately they sound much warmer now then ever but it's hard to say whether the biamping is really the direct cause for this. Biamping could allow YPAO to phase correct the bass bins separately from the mid/tweeter section. But again it's unclear whether YPAO is actually taking advantage of that opportunity. It's a peculiar situation to have the tweeter distance be substantially different from the woofer after all. Imaging seems similar in 2 channel stereo vs Pure Direct and so does tone/timber so I guess no real help from YPAO. Overall though, a clear improvement in tone/timber vs previous setup (for whatever reason) so I think I'll stick with the biamp setup. But with that said, perhaps the biggest improvement I have made recently was by simply canting the speakers out directly towards my seating position. Obviously a no-no for Khorns but I didn't actually noticed a change in bass response. What I did notice was a big improvement in imaging which was my biggest source of dissatisfaction from the beginning with this setup. Now I have to decide if I should move into pre/pro eqpt with better room/speaker correction capability...

Hi all. I'm thinking of bi-amping my modern Khorns with my Yamaha RX-A3000. Has anybody done this? Any known pitfalls? My hope is that YPAO can improve the phase control of the bass bins and hi/mid horn set for improved imaging. Possibly some other tonal improvements from the active crossover like EQ functionality of the receiver?

Thanks for the info everyone. Cornfed,Does your Onkyo allow changing the phase of one of the subs vs the other? With stacked subs for instance this seems like it might really help bust up LF standing waves in the room. I went to a Neil Young concert a few weeks ago in the old Fox theater in Detroit. Our seats were on the floor under the first mezzanine with maybe a 7' ceiling. During the first acoustic guitar session it was fine but during the subsequent electric guitar session I was floored by the bass reinforcement in that location. You could really tell when the music crossed a certain freq. threshold. It was like your ears were going to pop. I've noticed similar but milder effects at home while using a test disc and steppign through the frequencies while placing my subs. There were LF "hot spots" all over the room if you walked around. I also understand the common think that subs are non-directional. This has been my experience too, by & large. But, I'm not sure I buy that entirely. Especially since it depends on how far up in frequency the subs reach. I also wonder if a front to rear or left to right sequence of LFE "thuds" could be perceived as directional if the distance was susbtantial and the time separation was small? For music I wouldn't give it a second thought but for HT special effects I guess I'd have to try it. Has anyone tried any kind of x.2 demo disc? I'm hesitant to buy nice new equipment without x.2 (or even x.3?) capability if it's really coming across the board in a year or two. But so far, I think I've only seen one pair of separates that actually support it (from Emotiva). Like, even that top dog Denon separates package only appears to be an 11.1 based system (w/o THX certification btw). Although that onemight be configurable be an "x.x" type system in reality (up to 12 discrete channels).

Does anybody have a 7.2, 9.2, 10.2, 11.2, etc., home theater system out there? I have a 7.1 receiver and a single (Klipsch) KA-1000-THX amp that drives my dual matching THX subs. But I don't think this actually qualifies as a "true" x.2 system, right? Sorry for the open ended question but I am replacing my receiver so I'm trying to understand if I should purchase one of the few x.2 capable receiver/pre/pro/amp setups. If these x.2 systems have two discrete sub channels, then I think I'll also need another KA-1000-THX amp, right? Although the need might be immediate since I'm not sure there is even any x.2 content out there yet. There seems to be very little good information on the web regarding this. Is there even an x.2 industry standard format yet. Of the sparse x.2 info I've seen, some indicates that the two subs are intended to be left & right while others indicate they are front & rear. Also, does anybody even make an x.2 capable preamp/processor component yet?

I don't doubt that there have been some big improvements in magnetic materials recently. That could explain the weight difference. And ultimately, the expanded frequency range is hard to argue with. It sounds like you're still searching for a receiver/decoder. You might consider looking for something that has a good speaker frequency balancing/sensitivity matching feature. It seems like this sort of system should help with any minor timbre matching issues. Please don't take my word for that though. I'm speaking a little out of turn because I have never actually one of these systems yet. But I do know that Yamaha & I think Pioneer also have some mid range and upper end stuff with these features. I think Yamaha's system is called YPAO. Maybe somebody else in the forum has some experience with this?

I don't have either of these speakers. But...I assume you also realize the old RC-64 has half of the big drivers operating all the way up to 1800Hz while the newer RC-64 II crosses all four over at 1400Hz. I'm guessing the new, bigger tweeter can reach down to 1400Hz easier than the old one. Depending on your receiver setup tools, it might actually be easier to blend the new RC-64 II with your old speakers, given that the RF-82 also uses a single crossover point (2000Hz). Plus the wider frequency response technically appears closer to your RF-82. Obviously these are all just superficial evaluations but it seems reasonable that they would work well. Maybe even better than the old ones. That said, I'm not crazy aboutthe fact that it lost 10 lbs from the old design. It seems trivial but it seems like one of the best ways to measure the quality of certain things (speakers, car batteries, etc) is to pick them up. All else being equal, heavier is typically better. They claim the same power handling but I doubt if that's a real issue for a center speaker anyway.

Right PSG, auditioning is a bit of a challenge since I have yet to find a dealer that stocks Heritage speakers, except maybe a coupe of Heresys. Everybody wants to sell me whatever else they have on hand. At this point, I'm really relying on my own previous experience and input from this forum. Hence the subwoofer discussion. That said, I AM leaning towards using dual subs. I have some savings opportunities if I buy JBL, Jamo, Infinity, or Klipsch. But none of these appear to really have any particularly good subs. The Klipsch THX package looks nice but is clearly optimized for movies. So, I'm not sure how well it would keep up with LSII's for loud rock & roll. Anybody out there used these with LaScalas for music?

Thanks for the feedback Bill. I noticed you have a couple of JL Audio subs listed. How do they blend with the La Scalas? Did the optimizer on your Yamaha receiver help? (YPAO right?) I was assuming I might need a sub with the La Scalas, based on their not so low freq reach but hadn't really considered two. How did you set them up?

Hi Folks, I hope everybody's holiday season is going well. I'm a new member to the forum but have been a casual/occasional reader for probably a couple of years now. I just haven't been able to get serious about my home audio stuff until recently. So...I'm about to start a major tear-up of my currently awful HT setup & could use some feedback from the forum. Specifically, I'm close to pulling the trigger on new front speakers. My goal is for a system that provides great home theater performance but also great 2-channel rock-n-roll performance, including high volume. And it needs to be flexible relative to room size because I'm renting my house but intend to buy if/when the market settles down a little. That said, I'm leaning toward 2 scenarios: A. (3) La Scala II's LCR + (2) KG 5.2 Rears or B. (3) Cornwall III's LCR + 2 KG5.2 Rears I'm using a Yamaha HTR-6090, (120W/ch, 0.04% THD) which I also plan on updating later this year if necessary. The current room size is ~15x18, plus a few feet on the length for fireplace and bookshelf/window seat on opposite short ends. It has roughly 20' of full length curtains in the room that should help deaden it a little too. Seating & presentation are on the long walls. Anybody have a similar setup today? If so, do you find that you still need a sub? Also, has anybody had succes with mixing the CWIII & LSII speakers in their LCR package, like (2) CwIII Fronts + 1 LSII Center? I'd really like a center with a form factor more like the RC-64 but I really don't think it would match well unless KLipsch would be willing to build something custom.