TBrennan

Madash---The Chorus is more sensitive because it's woofer itself is more sensitive, 15s are generally more sensitive than 12s. Basic efficiency is set by the woofer itself, that woofer's low-end response is determined by the box, the box doesn't effect the efficiency. The larger box allows the woofer to go low. There is a relationship between box size, efficiency and low frequency response; simply put for a given low frequency response a more efficient (sensitive) driver must be in a bigger box than a less efficient one.

Lynnm---A little more off-the-wall history, those HPM Pioneers were pretty good speakers and were designed by Bart Locanthi, a JBL guy hired by Pioneer when they decided to get serious about speakers, ever notice how much they resemble "small" JBLs? While at JBL Locanthi designed many fine drivers and their famous acoustic lenses. While at Pioneer he also designed the TAD compression drivers and woofers. I think HPMs will be collector's items some day; they sound good, the drivers are very high quality and they have a pedigree.

CARs, fella up in Michigan. His first product was a copy of the JBL Hartsfield, he's since moved on to other things too. Old Time Religion speakers, nothing new here; big, high quality woofer in a vented box, compression drivers and horns. Kinda like Altec Valencias or JBL L-300s, that's good. Guy uses top shelf drivers, JBL and TAD. Never heard them but I'd be very surprised if they didn't sound outstanding, the guy knows the recipe and has the right ingredients.

Lynnm--Yeah, the history of this stuff is interesting. What's really interesting is that these early guys: Lansing, Hilliard, PWK, Wente, Stephens, Olson, Thuras, Voight and the other Speaker Gods, got the thing right right at the beginning. There have been almost no improvements to GOOD loudspeakers since the 1940s and the introduction of the KHorn, the Altec 604 and the Tannoy Dual Concentric. All I can think of is the recent rebirth of the tractrix horn (which Voight used in the 1930s, I saw several old Voight-Lowther tractri in the Klipsch museum) and the use by TAD and JBL of berillium diaphragms which have a little more top end extension, useful in a 2-way rig but irrelevent if one likes using a tweeter. But I must admit, bad loudspeakers (direct-radiators) HAVE gotten much better. :-)

I first heard Khorns in a hi-fi store around 1971, at the time my speakers were 15" JBL woofs in a vented box with a Radio Shack horn tweeter, those speakers were pretty good and vastly better than stuff like ARs, Advents and KLHs, the stuff generally considered good at the time. But the Khorns floored me, I'd never heard such reproduction. A couple of years later a friend bought some LaScalas and that did it, I couldn't listen to his LSs and then go home and listen to my speakers. I remember the guitar solo from "Lakeside Park" literally jumping out of his speakers, it sounded like a Marshall was in the room. Soon I found a pair of used LaScalas, painted white with the basshorn wedge painted black, weird. I bought them for $750. A couple of years later my friend needed dough and I bought his LSs and sold the weird ones. Later on I developed a taste for horn speakers by Altec and JBL and left Klipsches behind though only a few years ago I bought some Cornwalls which I modified with the tractrix mid horn from the model 301 from Klipsch Pro, good speakers those CWs. Now meanwhile my buddy, the guy who sold me his LSs, is listening to Altec 605As but he has a Klipsch jones again, he really missed the treble zing and midrange presence of Ks. So I traded him the CWs for the 605s and we're both happy hornies. Horn speakers are, as a group, superior to other types and I've played with and liked lots of them--Klipsch, Altec, JBL, EV, Edgar,---all aces with me. No doubt I'll buy some LSs or CWs again someday, that or a set of the "small" motion picture theater speakers with the double 15s and the tractrix. Once again, I can't believe how little interest there is here in the pro line, with the Heritages gone those are no doubt the best speakers Klipsch is making now. Who cares if they're "ugly"? Form follows function, no?

Lynnm---The Lansing Iconic of 1937 predates the KHorn by several years. This speaker was developed by Lansing and Blackburn as a compact studio monitor and high performence home speaker. It used a 15" woofer in a vented box crossing at 800 cycles to a 1" compression driver, the 801, on a 8 cell horn, sounds familiar doesn't it? The 801 is the grandpappy of modern 1" high performence compression drivers. After Altec bought Lansing Mfg. the 801 was given a permanent magnet and became the famous Altec 802. When Lansing left Altec-Lansing and started JBL the 801 was the basis for the 175 and later the 175 was the basis of the 2420 (a 175 with a larger return structure), the 2420 with a ferrite magnet is today's 2426. When Bart Locanthi left JBL for Pioneer and designed the TAD compression drivers he basically reverse engineered the JBL 2420 and 2440 but with berillium diaphragms. The Iconic was available in either a utility ($246) or a fancy furniture ($296) cabinet. A biult-in 50 watt amplifier was a $50 option. The Iconic was an option on some of the famous E.H. Scott radio sets, argueably the finest radios of the day. The Iconic is the oldest true hi-fidelity home loudspeaker I'm aware of and those who use them today report that they sound as good as or better than most modern speakers, I believe them.

Madash---The woofer is the lowest efficiency driver in the speaker and will determine overall efficiency, any top-end will need to be padded down to meet it. If bi-amping higher efficiency mids and tweets will allow the use of a lower power amp, that's about it. If I was going to mod the Forte I'd be looking for better sounding drivers and horns, not more efficient ones. And if you like the sound of the Fortes why bother?

The difference is that the Khorn goes lower in the bass, that's the only difference. Now "punch" is an objective feeling but I don't think that deep bass is needed for it, reproducing the frequencies around 80-100 cycles with great power and clarity will give punch, I think it's a mid-upper bass thing. One of the great bassplaying rigs of the past was the Fender Dual Showman with a double JBL-D-140 enclosure, an enclosure that starting rolling off at 100 cycles, yet the sound was very punchy and clear despite the lack of low bass. In fact the presence of low bass could subtract from a feeling of punchiness by making the upper bass stand out less. Mind that this is all totally subjective. This message has been edited by TBrennan on 11-27-2001 at 11:31 AM

Matt--I'd rethink the flat 27" Sony. I bought one the other day and the picture, judging from my Video Essentials LD, is very accurate. On the nuetral setting very little tweaking was needed to get things right and the set also holds black very well and keeps a straight line on the needle pulse. Geometry is also very good, the best I've seen. The 16-9 feature for anomorphic DVDs is also a good thing to have and increases resolution. I paid $550 for the thing, lots of television for the money.

Holt has listened to horns: many years ago was keen on the Altec A7 and recently he has owned Tannoy co-axials. He wouldn't be the first person who liked other maker's horns but not Khorns. Holt no doubt heard Khorns (he was in the business many years, going back to the late 50s at least) and didn't care for them and didn't expect newer ones to sound any better, not unreasonable on his part, especially given the time that some of the fellas here spend agonizing about horn damping and crossover mods. In any case I don't think Holt has been involved with Stereophile, a magazine he founded and was at one time the sole writer for, for quite some time.

Keith---So the new Klipsch company panders to the new breed of audiophile, big surprise. Hey Yellow Hammer, don't play your Klipsches so loud they rock the trailer off the jacks. I heard you moved to Alabama from Illinois and raised the average IQ in both states. This is a Parthian shot, won't see a computor for several days.

Easy--Why reinvent the wheel. Fact is many people in this hobby are delusional. John Dunlavey, a true scientist, tells stories of audiophiles who gushed over new wires in the rig when he'd left the old wires in place, evidently just thinking the wires are different makes the sound better. It's telling that this wire thing started in the 70s, a time when "high-end" audio consisted of steeley big-hog SS amps and crummy direct-radiators. It also coincided with the rise in disposable income and conspicuous consumption of the Baby Boomers, a generation unmatched in gullibility, hubris and self-indulgence. The first wire guy was Bob Fulton, a mystic who made good recordings and bad loudspeakers, that he was aware of principles beyond the knowledge of Harry Olson is beyond my ken. The guys who started this hobby after The War didn't putz around with wire and they had better rigs than most today and some very good sources. The Giants of Hi-Fi, the guys who developed it's basic principles in the 30s and made gear that is still unbettered and lusted after today, seemed uninterested in wire beyond that it pass the signal. Don't you think Wente, Thuras and Fletcher at Bell Labs would have noticed such a simple thing? Well it's only Bell Labs. Don't you think John Hilliard, the Zeus of hi-fi, the man who hurled thousands of thunderbolts of good sound into theaters and studios around the world from his Olympus in Hollywood would have noticed such a simple thing? PWK wired his speakers with bell wire, don't you think that after all the years he spent trying to get better sound he would have used better wire if it mattered? Or do you think he was too stupid? But then some jamoke changes his wire and says he gets better bass?!? I guess ole PWK was wasting his time experimenting with rubber throats and different folds and drivers, he just needed different wire, all those years of diligent research wasted. In what universe is this true? You know, I still have a yellow "bullshit" button PWK gave me 30 years ago, it was good advice then and good advice now. I've fallen prey to several embarassing incidents of audio self-delusion myself, I'm wary now. I can't even be sure I believe what I hear, I sure don't put any faith in what you think you hear. The human capacity for self-delusion and folly is limitless.

Mobile--I've taken part in DBTs in which no differentiation could be made between wires, as you probably know in such a test you testing for difference and not for which is better. The assumption is that if a difference cannot be told then there is no difference, it would seem to follow. That said I can conceive of wires that would change the sound but it's not something I'm interested in. To be frank my rig sounds so good that wires aren't on the agenda. When I do play it is with various drivers and horns, like the new JBL 2427s I just got from the JBL tent sale, things that can make an immediate and uncontested difference, that and I'm just more interested in them than in wires, I like the mechanical things, improving the motor itself. When we had the first Chicago Horn Club meeting at my house Alan Hendler brought his gorgeous Kornoff 45 SET amp which was played with my Altec 605As. Now the 605s are wired with mismatched wire I had handy at the time and some may have looked a little askance at that. But a few minutes later everyone was just digging on the fantastic sound of 605s and 45s. Could wires have made a difference? Maybe. Did it matter? Not really. If you want to make your CW rig sound better the best thing you can do is replace that mid horn with an Edgar saladbowl, you'll hear that in spades. :-)

Prana--Oh, I feel comfortable about wire not even thinking about it.

dnd--My best friend has CWs, come on in to Chicago and you can hear them, you can hear some Choruses, Altec VOTs, Edgars and JBLs too. Email me. This message has been edited by TBrennan on 11-18-2001 at 03:29 PM

I gotta think that if the company was serious about bringing the Heritages back they'd have done so by now. All we're talking about here is a new vendor for the mid and treble drivers and a crossover. Gallante, a small company that made a speaker using the Altec 604 driver was caught short when the 604 went out of production. It didn't take very long before they were back with a PAS driver, this is a company that has nowhere near the resources of Klipsch. In 1934 Hilliard at MGM started work on the Shearer Horn which involved designing and producing a new woofer and compression driver, several multi-cell horns and a basshorn, crossovers too, it was in theaters and won a technical Oscar by 1936, granted Hilliard had the resources of MGM. If I recall correctly Hilliard developed the VOT at Altec, again a new compression driver and woofer and a totally new basshorn, in about a year. But I think the Heritages just don't fit into The Hoosier's massmarket plans, just like the 901 no longer fits into Dr. Bose's plans. Maybe I'm wrong, I hope (pun intended) so. Well there are always the Pro Klipsches for the uncompromising horny, if I was in the market for new horns I'd be looking very closely at them. One of those double 15 rigs with the 2" driver on the BIG tractrix should sound so fine.

Keith--Oh, I believe that Easy heard a difference between the sound coming from his left and right speakers.

Skaloumbakas---I'll have the Cheeseburger DeLuxe and a cup of coffee.

Athens, Athens, Athens! What about the Audio Club of Sparta? Athens hogs all the glory. Is this what Leonidas and the 300 Spartiates died for, high-end audio in Athens? What about Brasidas, Lysander, Pausanias and Agisilaus? I think such Spartans would have been no-nonsense JBL guys, especially Agisilaus, JBLs travel well. Brasidas would have used cheap speakers and made them sound good. Go stranger and tell that Lacedemonians that high-end is alive in Greece. :-)

Ear--Why not build the speakers yourself? The Dynaudios are still available at Madisound and Morels are easy to find. And if you build them yourself they'll sound better than Egglestons, Berenek's Law.

Prana---You seek to divert my arguement by making ridiculous statements and implying that I hold such views, that is a fallacy and fails to deal with my arguement that 2 identical speakers on opposite sides of the room can sound very different, you ridicule the notion but offer no counter. Play a mono source through your rig and switch back and forth, you'll probably hear a difference. Don't you think the room effects the sound?

Doesn't signify much, left and right speakers can sound very different just because of the room. Switching between left and right tells little, better you should test with one speaker or both.

My God, I misspelled hear. Arghhh

Steve--So did you here the JBs when you were there? When I was there in June the JBs were torn apart and Khorns were flanking the Belle. I wonder if the JB will ever see daylight, they've been developing the thing far longer than Hilliard took with the Shearer and the VOT.

Looks weird, out of synch. The smoothed corners around the horns look good but the 1960ish routing on the top looks out of place with the smoothed corners. Should have stopped with the work around the horns.