DesmoDave

Like one of those Tolkein epics this is the story of a Klispch upgrade that was started by one adventurer, passed through the hands of others, was scattered around the globe and seemed doomed to never bring joy and be condemned to a life gathering dust in the great shelf in the sky labelled - Must Do Projects. I live in NZ which is a Very Long Way from pretty much anywhere. The rise of the inter web thingy has made finding new stuff things easier and it was here in this very forum that I first read about the Volti upgrades. Those that had heard them were almost universally impressed and my interest was piqued. They say that the first step in dealing with any problem is to admit that there is indeed a problem. I have had my KHorns for 19 years and knew them inside and out. I had weathered ups and downs with different locations, different gear and lots of different music over the years. Lots of things changed but my dear KHorns remained the exact same beautiful things I took delivery of so long ago. I knew they weren't perfect but I was more than willing to overlook those shortcomings for what the DID do for me in terms of thrilling,live sounding dynamic music. But these Volti upgrades were intriguing and the idea that the great things I love about my KHorns could be preserved and the niggling shortcomings in the midrange be remedied nagged away at me. Then, I discovered a chap in Queensland Australia had bought an upgrade kit of drivers and VTrac horns but had since sold his KHorns and had no use of the upgrade. The posting was old and by the time I had tracked him down he had sold theVtracs to a guy in Adelaide (US folks think Maine to Texas) and only had the compression drivers. Sold!. He gave me the name of the guy in Adelaide and I went in search of him and was lucky enough to find he too had lost the will to complete the project and was happy to part with the VTrac horns. He sent them to a mate in Melbourne whom I got to bring them to NZ as his check in luaggage (that';s what mates are for right! Hi Fi Mules!) . I used the same cheap *** technique to get my niece to bring over the drivers from Brisbane for her favourite Uncle. I still needed new X-overs and went to Volti to have a pair shipped to me. I know little (and understand less) about X-over design. I can tell you however that it involves a LOT of Copper. Each unit appears to have the equivalent of a days output from Bolivias largest mine. Reassuringly old school heft. Anyway, this already long story really gets exciting when I now have all the right pieces here in Wellington and begin to put them together. Actually you start by taking things apart, specifcally removing the standard drivers and a couple of bits of bracing in the 'top hat'. This was a very easy task even for a dufus like myself and took about 30 mins with the aid of a battery drill. Assembling the new units was equally easy and apart from not taking note of the instruction advising you to attach the leads for the new tweeter before installing them it all went swimmingly. The only labour intensive part was all the stripping and crimping for the new leads. Nothing too complicated just takes a while to do them all. The final step, connecting up the leads to the new X over was a bit confusing as it was not immediately clear which was the woofer connection and which the tweeter (the mid range unit is obvious as it came pre-wired with Greg's 'default' attenuation setting). Anyway, I eventually took a picture of what I had done and sent it to Greg and he replied promptly with a clarification and I was away and ready to do business. It had taken about a year to get to this point and I was excited/worried about what I would hear when I hit play. I needn't have worried. Almost from the get go I could tell there was an improvement in the ability of the speaker to present a more open, effortless and transparent midrange. At all listening volumes. What had previously been a weakness of the KHorn was suddenly a strength. The change was both pronounced and obvious but also subtle and seamless at the same time. I should emphasise that the KHorns have not lost one iota of the things I like so much but they have gained a lot in terms of a new ease and relaxation. Even at high levels they simply do not fatigue in the way that they used to. I feel I have gained a new lease of life on my dear KHorns and it has been by far the best value investment in my stereo I have made for a very long time. One of the articles I read about the Volti's said that this was the KHorn that Klipsch should have built a long time ago. I agree completely. Every KHorn owner has been subjected to a number of well worn criticisms of why horns 'don't work' and the 'shouty' mid range was exhibit A for the prosecution. Well now there is an answer to this hurtful (and partially true) criticism. I believe the Volti upgrades should be firmly on the radar of all KHorn owner and well ahead of that new amp/DAC/Turntable/set of cables on the shopping list for all serious music lovers. I have had them running for the last few weeks and they seem properly 'run in' now and are delivering a wonderfully detailed and airy sound stage. And so the tale ends happily with Volti upgrade #74 doing what they were intended to do here in my living room in Wellington - giving voice to great music and putting a smile on my face. regards David

These are my 1992 Rosewood KHorns. I bought them in Boston from The Music Box and the story behind them (I was told by the dealer) was that they were the last Rosewood ones ever made, in fact they were a special order that Paul Klipsch himself asked for as a planned wedding gift to a niece. Well, the wedding fell through, they ended up in Boston and are now in Wellington New Zealand. Much loved (and about to get the full Volti upgrade treatment)

I am replying to myself here (which is a bit weird) but I just wanted to post a link to a review of the NAD C390DD as I think it makes some of the same points I make just better. http://www.digitalaudioreview.net/2012/07/nad-c-390dd-powered-dac-amplifier-review-part-1/ I do believe we are seeing a sea change in amplification technology and based on what I have heard thus far I say we should welcome this as real progress (as opposed to a gimmick). Regards All, David

Mike B - whew! this is what you read for fun!? Seriously, I have heard a lot of hype around the Hypex amplifier design but I have no idea what it is that makes them different. Are you able to shed some light on what makes the Hypex design special? Has anyone on the forum built one of these amps around an nCore module? Thanks in advance. David

You are of course correct. Re-reading my post I am clearly taking myself too seriously. I will up the medication and endeavour to lighten up.[8-)]

quote user="Jeff Matthews" Honestly, I have to laugh at all this debate about SET, AB, D, etc. I bet I get more out of $1.00 earbuds than the disatisfaction some must have after pumping $thousands into equipment. I like good sound, too, but seriously, how carried away does a person need to get? I take it that the 'how carried away does a person need to get?" is purely rhetorical but I will respond anyway. The answer is 'as much as they want to'. The mere fact that people like to come to this site to learn stuff about audio would strike most of the population as a waste of time (at best) and possibly bizarre. The fact people are passionate about audio reproduction and willing to spend a large chunk of their disposable income in pursuit of better sound it is probably incomprehensible to even more people. Personally, I am thrilled that plenty of very smart people are unsatisfied with what they have today and strive to apply new designs, new technologies and countless hours of thankless toil to squeezing out the exact sound they seek for that kick drum/violin/singer. Mad but marvellous. I think you misinterpret this relentless pursuit of better sound reproduction as a pointless and frustrating (and probably self defeating) exercise, with the hapless audiophile living in a constant state of buyers remorse. In my experience the audiophile community is made up of people that first and foremost love music and have typically had a lifelong intoxicating and passionate love affair with music their entire lives. These are people that will tear up when listening to certain songs and regale you for hours if you ask them to name some of their favourite music.These are people that find endless beauty in the most elusive and ephemeral of all the arts. They see poetry all around them and like nothing better than to share their love of music. I therefore think that to claim you get more out of your $1 earbuds than these poor saps is foolish and missing the point. Neither your $1 buds or someone elses $20,000 system are the point. They are not the end. It is the music emanating from these things and the emotions they stir in us that is the point. You comments are also incredibly patronising because they suggest that you 'get it' that the point is the music and no one else does. We get it OK.

Quiet_Hollow you are sooooo right. I am on that slippery slope and gather speed fast. I have never heard the M2 and it was always going to be way too spendy for me. The C390DD is what I can afford and I really hope that this is a product that brings this technology to the attention of music lovers everywhere. I have it for one more day and although the sun is shining and I have things I need to do I am already pushing the kids out the door so I can get a hit of digital music - just a few more tracks you understand, maybe an hour, definitely no more than two. Before five. And maybe some more later tonight.... BTW, one more thing I like about it is the NAD has a sub out. I hope to add a decent and musical sub to the mix later this year and it makes that task easy for me. I think they even offer an electronic crossover and automatic EQ analysis capability to help properly blend the unit into the overall sound.

Good question!, I know I have struggled with some manual volume controls that are far too sensitive for human control without the use of beta blockers to steady the hands. The NAD remote was actually fantastic. I didn't really want to make that point for fear of appearing either lazy or frivolous (there are probably people on this forum who have never owned a remote controlled amp and it would be bad manners to flaunt such features). I personally haven't had one for my stereo for more than twenty years!. But enough of this hair shirt stuff - I love having a remote! - there, I said it!. And the NAD remote is extremely good. It is a pretty generic plastic thing easily lost among all the other remotes on the table but the volume control is very very good. Apparently even the voume control is a 35 bit digital creation to avoid introducing anything other than a 1 or a 0 into the signal path. The amp displays the gain as -75dB>-10dB in 0.5dB increments etc as you go towards full volume in a seamless linear (logarithmic?) fashion. I was able to control the volume perfectly well. Actually, the only problem I had was that the volume tended to creep up to anti social levels as I was positively giddy about this new fangled digital amp thingamy. It is probably my inner adolescent speaking but I love it when my teenage kids tell me to turn down the music! As any responsible father will understand that they really ought to know what London Calling sounds like at 110dB SPL before THEY get old too.

I had the opportunity to borrow one of the new NAD C390DD integrated DAC/amps for the long weekend and I have to say that I 'm mightily impressed with pairing of the two unlikely bedfellows. I mean every Klipshorn owner is at some time expected to aspire to a 2 watt SET of impeccably obscure origins fed by the latest DAC du Jour and an eye watering price tag attached. A (relatively) cheap integrated can't seriously foot it in this space, can it? I have had my Klipschorns since 1994 and owned a few amps over that period (Brystons, Quicksilver, Sonic Frontiers and Plinius) and heard other amps drive them as well. My experience has been that the KHorns are hard to pair well as they tend to be so revealing that you need to get the match right or they will expose anything and everything (both good and bad) the amp has to offer. I was therefore not terribly optimistic that this experiment would end well despite the extremely positive feedback this new NAD amp as been generating on the interwebs. All the blurb about the end to end digital signal processing (well at least until the output stage) brought back memories of how CD sound was supposed to be 'perfect' and we all know how that went. Anyway, I plugged it into my PC running JRiver connected to a NAS brimming with FLAC files (using a very un Hi Fi USB cable I had in a draw), NAD drivers installed themselves and away I went. It really could not have been any simpler. The sound is wonderfully transparent and neutral and frankly I think the NAD sounds better than anything I have ever used before (note that I am saying it is the best I have heard not the best thing in the entie known universe). The treble was not in the slightest bit harsh or gritty and indeed it seemed far more effortlessly detailed than my Quicksilver. It was the neutrality of the sound, the simple balance and 'rightness' of the tone that struck me most. It seemed to be able to do a great job on far more recordings than I normally find. Whereas the KHorns can sound fantastic on one track and awful on another the NAD made a great fist of almost everything I tried. When I did get around to trying my favourite test tracks today not only did the NAD sound fantastic but I noticed I was able to play them to silly reference levels without the sound falling apart. I just want to play everything louder now! I played it from around 11am until 11pm just using the JRiver '100 Random Songs" option on Saturday and never found it in the least bit fatiguing. I know from bitter experience that this is often not the case and the KHorns will certainly let you know if this is not a happy match. Instead, I was fallingin love with my speakers and my music all over again. In addition to the neutrality and openness of the tone I loved the sheer quietness of the NAD. This is a 150 watt amp that makes not a peep or hiss on my KHorns. Blackness. Silence. This is possibly part of why the NAD sounded so good, it presents the music against a very quiet backdrop which seems to add to the vividness of the presentation. The unit itself is well made, discreet and (frankly) non descript. It exudes none of the hand-made-by-a-Zen-master-on-top-of-a-mountain cachet of more 'niche' offerings. This is not a piece of trophy gear with which to impress (or baffle) your friends. What it does offer is an extremely strong value proposition for anyone looking for a first rate digital solution to provide everything you need to fill the gap betwen PC and speakers. Job done-tick. I have been exploring all sorts of options myself to make the leap to computer based music and although there are always better (and more expensive) options there is nothing that comes close to the value of this NAD. I am confronting all of my 'audiophile' prejudices and snobbery as I sit here in front of the NAD amp. I mean, it just doesn't seem possible that a mainstream manufacturer can prodice a genuinely innovative piece of kit that is superbly functional, easy to use and sounds awesome for so little cash. Every self respecting audiphile loves to mix and match and explore and tweak in search of system synergy. It just doesn't seem right that you can grab something off the shelf of your local dealer and leap to the top of the (mid price) class. I am seriously close to buying it. At US$2600 it is frankly a bargain. (I can still indulge myself by trying out how an Audiophilleo 2 works on the front end and of course try a few USB cables that have a better pedigree than the one off my printer!)

I came across this article from 2004 (i.e. a very long time ago) and wondered if anyone could comment on or update the authors predictions about the future of Class D, specifcally the analgog controlled vs digitally controlled amps. http://www.audioholics.com/education/amplifier-technology/the-truth-about-digital-class-d-amplifiers I feel like a dog watching TV in this thread. I see things moving and hear the noises but don't always understand what is being said.

Wadia is a bonafide triple A class audio company and the very fact they are cleary experimenting in this domain suggests Class D amplification is ready for serious audiohile consideration. I am interested in learning if anyone has some experience of their Class D amp/DAC http://www.avguide.com/blog/first-listen-wadia-151-powerdac-mini The Wadia 151PowerDAC effectively combines a D/A converter and a pre/power amplifier in a single very small chassis (8” x 8” x 2”). That language may be misleading though, since the Wadia 151PowerDAC doesn’t work like traditional gear. In most audio equipment, the D/A conversion is one circuit and the power amplification is another (analog) circuit. In the Wadia PowerDAC, D/A conversion is, in effect, done by the power amp. Signals are digital right up to the output stage (where they must be analog so that speakers can use them).

I have read a number of reviews about this device but most seem to position it as a 'desktop' audio solution (presumably)because of its modest power output of 25W per channel. Those on this foruk will be aware that Klipschorns are one of the few speakers out there that are more than comfortable with 'just' 25W so I am interested in knowing how these two pieces match up. I am hoping that someone out there has had the chance to put them together and can give me some comments as to whether they are a synergistic pairing (or if they play to each others respective weaknesses). Kind regards David Proud Owner of 1995 Rosewood Horns