Marvel

Edster, Very nice! I have your previously posted pic of the preamp for my wallpaper on one of my PCs. The wife says it is relly pretty. What is the Supratek on the right of the preamp? Here is where I spend most of my time when at home. No Klipsch in sight. The rack on the far right has (from top to bottom) rack lites, ADAT XT20 8 channel digital recorde, Tascam DA-30 MII DAT, Alesis complimiter, Alesis MicroVerb4, and last a patch bay. Would add that a patch bay is a wonderful thing to have, so you don't have to crawl around behind everything to make cable changes. The setup has an Alesis RA-100 amp powering two Monitor One speakers Both computers are dual cpu, the older one only has 466 CPUs, while the one on the right is dual Athlon 1.4Ghz. It also has the M-Audio Audiophile 2496 card in it. Marvel <>

Scott, The problem with most new and old prog rock was that it DID have heavy compression. If it went on vinyl it had to, and if it went over the air on AM it certainly was. Play some old vinyl back through something that has decent metering, and you will see what I mean. Had a Stones album that pointed this out clearly (can't remember which, it was a long time ago), as the playback was within about 6db. All the way through. TV commercials are done the same way. You don't want dynamics over the air, somebody might miss something. Marvel

I know everyone here hasn't done recording/producing/engineering, even though it sounds like it. I also mix on nearfields, or something slightly larger (JBL 4311s). For a CD or vinyl release I would certainly send the two track out to a mastering lab. The cost would be well worth it. Most of the time for me it is a hobby. I have friends who are still trying to make it big after 25 years together. I have helped them with demos, played on some of their tracks, ended up not playing on some of their tracks. Jingles, news themes. From two inch analog to my present day ADAT (or HD based recording). Make it sound good on your own higher end gear, and it will usually sound good on the junk. I remember studios that had a line out of their $80k console feeding a boombox, to hear how the cheap speakers would sound. Marvel

Chris, There have been debates all along about whether or not you should be in the middle of all the instruments/band/voices, or just in front of them with the rear just providing great ambience. personally, I would just rather be just in front of the stage. Watching movies would be different. Of course my 13 inch tv isn't really calling for surround too much. Marvel

I assume you are feeding it from a preamp. Can you feed it with something else that has output gain controls (CD player, tape deck, etc.) to make sure it isn't the preamp? Swap speaker connections to make sure it isn't a speaker. After that, I would say open it up and start checking solder connections inside. The usual caveats apply: I'm not responsible for you electrocuting yourself from the high voltages inside the ST-70. Marvel

LMH, The attached zip file has drwings of the ak-3, al, big type A, AA, and AL-3. Hope this will help out. You can get the ALK design from Al K's web site. Marvel xovers.ZIP

Not quite sure how the cable modems works, but they aren't as secure as a DSL connection. I know that my DSL modem provides a private ip address to my side of the connection. This means someone can't just attach using my ip address, as it isn't legitimate on the net. My router then does the same thing, with the DSL modem ip on the net side and another set of private ip addresses on my side. I leaving file sharing off of the PCs in the house, unless we need to move something big, and then set permissions on the specific folder. A big problem is all the active X controls and VB stuff that MS uses so much of. At our office we use two different AV products. One is be Trend Micro, which scans all incoming and outgoing mail, and Symantec Enterprise for all the servers and individual PCs. Trend Micro has kept us from a couple of viruses that shut down another of our provider's servers for a couple of days. It costs us about $6k a year but for the college it is absolutely worth it. Plus we have a pretty sophisticated proxy server setup. Some schools are pretty open, but we have gone the other way. We don't have the staff or time to be redoing machines when they get messed up. Marvel

This is what I pulled my avatar from. Phew! Hit 54 on the 14th. Marvel

These bad refinishing jobs remind me of things my grandfather did to furniture. I had to love him anyway, in spite of the work he did. He often put very, very thick coats of varnish on furniture, whatever he was working on. It would run, wrinke and look bad. It got worse as he got older and couldn't see as well. He worked on an old, very cheap violin someone in the family had gotten. There was a crack in the top that he put wood filler in. It wasn't worth much to begin with, but after that was only good for hanging on the wall. Marvel

Pathos, Since you posted a better quality pic, I'll rework it with that as well. Give a couple of options. Marvel

There is a wonderful set of fan films for Star Wars. Those with a good connection or a lot of time should seriously look at "Art of the Saber", done by three brothers,who don't consider themselves filmakers. The finished product is over 40 meg, but well worth it if you have the time. Excellent audio, non SW music, great video. http://www.theforce.net/theater/fxprojects/aos2/index.shtml Marvel

Moon, I've cleaned it up a little bit more, and have one at 1024x768 (black bars on each side as original was square). I'll post or email it to you if you want it for wallpaper. Marvel

Moon, This is just for you! Marvel

I have about a pound of Flooby Dust in my shop. I could sell you some, but it is very hard to ship. That's what makes my upgrades sound so good. Marvel

C&S, Could you not download the file or just not open it? With a.pps extension, it sounds like a PowerPoint Show. What is the full link to it? Steve, I only know from reading and talking to a bunch of recording engineer folk that the Pultec is supposed to be a VERY transparent piece of gear, albeit pricey. You can set the width of the boost or cut, as a parametric eq. All very smooth sounding. Marvel

JM, As I have pointed out to a couple of folks who have emailed me, I don't even have a pair of LS yet. I'm working on that. I DO know that djk has come up with all sorts of mods, and I DO know that his stuff sounds very good. I have heard a set of some LS clones he built back in the '80s. I am more than willing to try what he suggests, I just don't have anything to try it on yet. I figured I could at least make the drawings and make them available. He says he has done this mod, and I have no reason to doubt him. Marvel

Read DJK's repsonse to the question here (this started it): http://forums.klipsch.com/idealbb/view.asp?topicID=33509&sessionID={FE508565-2706-466B-A188-7A52D078FD84} His short answer is yes. Marvel

djk, Yup, the 50Hz on the trannies would be about the same as running a motor slower. I iamgine it would heat up a lot. No wonder my JVC poewr tranny is so big, considering it is only a 30 wpc amp. Have you seen the LS mod drawing I posted (updating older speakers)? People would like some feedback on results, if you could post some. They aren't all Luddites. Marvel

My thirty year old JVC integrated (sweet amp, still works) has a jumper block under the cover next to the power transformer to switch from one to the other. But then, this amp has some things mounted on removeable plug in cards, making it far more modular than most stuff even today. The sill thing cost $300 in 1972! Marvel

Below is what djk had posted on the Audio Asylum forum quite some time ago. I was hoping he would post on this. His final "fix" is to open the doghouse on the top side, right under the mid horn if you will. Close in the back and put these ports in it. Don't forget to fill with fiberglass or equivalent material. There are four (4) things he says you can do. 1. just open the space to increase relative size of doghouse. 2. add ports to that 3. 2 plus change to K43 4. 2 plus change to jbl or ev (requires crossover mod as well Here is his text. He has done these mods, and yes it does make it a bass reflex with a horn. It also seems that with the weight of the LS, if you put some gasket material around the opening of the mod, you might be able to just place your cabinets on top. 123 lbs. is pretty heavy and might seal well enough to try out: The taper rate of a LaScala is 100hz,The mouth area is good for 125hz.Below this it is a big woofer in a small sealed box.If we plug the T/S parameters for the K33E into a box program we will see that the Qtc=.85, the Fc=82.5hz, and the F3=70.9hz . If we close in the back of the high frequency cabinet and open the woofer rear chamber up into this volume and fill with fiberglass we now have Qtc=.577, Fc=58.2hz, F3=73.6hz .Bessel=Qtc.577=D2 gives the best transient response and the least group delay of all the sealed boxes.At 30hz the Qtc=.577 has 4.5dB more output than the Qtc=.85 .Compared with sealed enclosures,the transient performance of the best vented enclosure is worse than the best sealed box enclosure.Since we have made great gains in performance some may elect to stop here.But please read on.The next step is to port it.The K33E is not the optimum woofer for this but it works pretty good.With the box size optimized for a D2 we can port the stock woofer to an SC4.The transient response of an SC4 while not as good as an SBB4(more on this later)is better than the more common QB3.Unequalized the F3=49hz and has 3dB more output at 30hz than the D2.The response curves are parallel with the D2 the only difference being the Fc being a half octave lower with the SC4 and the output being 3dB higher from 30~70hz.The output of the SC4 does not drop lower than the D2 until you go below 17hz.Again this may be a stopping point for some.But by adding a simple two pole high pass filter ahead of the power amp we can now have a C6 with a -3dB point of 31hz.Since this is the Fb of the system there is no increase in cone excursion or distortion.The filter consists of a cap an inductor and a pot.The pot allows adjustment at Fb of +/- 3dB.This is similar to being able to change the Qtc of a sealed box from .5~1.0 .If you think about it we have the choice between a D2,SC4,and a C6 in the same box by plugging the port and/or bypassing the eq.If you have a SET amp or simply want to get the most out of the LaScala you will want to upgrade the woofer to something with a lower Qts.The Klipsch K43E does the trick,as do the EV DL15W and the JBL 2205.The EV and JBL drivers require some minor network changes.The lower Qts drivers allow for an SBB4 alignment which has the best transient response of the vented alignments.With no eq they have 3dB more output at 30hz than the stock woofer.With eq we have a maximally flat B6 and the F3 of the system is 27~28hz.If using a solid state amp with the low Qts woofers a small resistor must be added in series with the driver to have the same Rg as the SET does.This mod can be backed out of a stock LaScala with no externally visible changes if you don't like it.No one has ever gone back to stock after hearing this mod.Paul Klipsch was violently opposed to the venting of horn speakers bassed on his experience with venting the K-horn.In retrospect it is easy to see why.The 12" Jensen field coil woofer he was using had an Fs of 60hz and a quick calculation of the vent area vs the Vb based on the photographs of this experiment looks like an Fb of ~80hz.I am sure this sounded horrible.Paul Wilbur Klipsch is a giant in audio.If I appear to see farther than PWK it is only because I am standing on his shoulders.

Gil, You are absolutely correct on the panic this must cause the marketing department. Some things I buy I know are throwaways, so it doesn't bother me to go to a cheap retail store. Some things you know won't break, so the same thing. It all gets down to service. You can't have really nice listening rooms and be pushing the $100 speakers. You wouldn't make money. I would hate to take something back to a mass market retail store that was broken and needed work. Not much different than buying off Ebay. Marvel

Since I don't even have a set of LS yet, it doesn't matter to me, but as djk has pointed out: The flare rate on a LaScala only carries it to 100 Hz. Below that it is a woofer in a sealed box. People have asked, so he gave details. If you already have the LS and like them, why not try it. This is 100% reversible. No wonder he said that PWK would call some of you Luddites. Is it heresy to do all the other mods on PWK designs? Apparently not. I especially like John Warren's removal of the mid horn for his Khorns, and replacing them with the two JBL direct radiators. Very cool. djk says you can get more bass at 30Hz from these cabinets than frm a KHorn. If I had a pair right now, I would be willing to try it and see if he is correct. Terry, I used trueSpace for the drawing. My youngest son bought it a few years ago. Last year he switched to Lightwave, so I appropriated it as LW is far better for what he is doing (3D animations and rendering). The version we still have is TS 4.3, but it is now up to 6.0. For what I'm doing, the 4.3 is just fine. Four Cornwalls would cost a lot more than making these bottoms for a pair of LS. You could make them very cheap to try it out. I have other sketches to mount the ports, so they could easily be removed or modified. Marvel

Here is the drawing for lowering the bass frequencies output of the LS. This is ten inches tall, making the inside 8.25 inches. The two tubes/ports are PVC pipe, with a 4 inch inside diameter, 10 inches long. The bottom of this needs to be removeable. If you remove the bottom from your LS (use the cover to mark the holes for attaching the new extension) and attach to LS. Stuff with fiberglass or acoustic fiberfill. Attach bottom. Hopefully enjoy lower bass. I hope djk will post with expected results. I won't try to pull the details out of his posts on Audio Asylum. I think that with the K33 and this, it will go low and solid. Switching to the K43 does even better. Any other speaker (EV DL15W) requires crossover changes as well. If you like this, you can remove this design and cut a hole in the top of the doghouse of the LS and close in the back with ports added. Will do the same thing but drop the height back to normal. Marvel

I'm just glad that I still have my 4311s to mix on. They were expensive enough when I bought them in 1972 ($329 ea). But I have been able to do mixes that have moved well from one playback system to another over the years. Even a pair of 4412s would still be nice to have. Marvel