Khornukopia

I went to the Britney Spears concert. The show was spectacular, her band was excellent and the 100,000 watt audio system was truly amazing.

Do you select the crossover point because of this phase, or do you adjust the phase based on the x-o frequency. Whatever the answer, is it an automatic process or do I need to study this subject carefully and make adjustments? I have REW and an ECM8000 microphone, but don't have much time right now to experiment with my already great sounding system. Thanks

Chris A, On the specs for your Belle, there is a 1.9 ms delay applied to the input. What is the purpose of an input delay? Also on the Belle specs, the output delay time is in microseconds (Unit: us), I hope it is okay that I use milliseconds (Unit: ms) across the board, just to keep it simple. On the graphs in your latest post, the phase display has a sawtooth shape. How do I read that line?

jimjimbo, Glad to hear that your seller agreed to work with you. I think many reputable e-bay sellers will. I once had a seller agree to split the cost of a small repair on a valuable twenty five year old item, so I was happy to leave a favorable feedback.

I believe that most people will not notice a 1 / 200th of a second delay in itself, but when the sound of the squawker (or tweeter) constantly arrives a few frequency cycles later than the other parts of the music, there are varying phase shifts and a loss of accuracy. Room boundary reflections affect the perceived arrival of sounds, so time delay correction might be more beneficial with certain room/speaker combinations than others, but it is fun for me to pursue the theoretical ideals in the quest to build a system that works really good. The only thing wrong with this is the sound from the tweeter/squawker arrivers first...Thank you for pointing this out, I will edit my original posting. I wouldn't want to be the one to create confusion on the topic because of the time delay in my thought process!

I am hoping you use one of your soon to arrive JTR Captivator S2, dual 18" subwoofers with your new La Scalas!

I believe that most people will not notice a 1 / 200th of a second delay in itself, but when the sound of the squawker (or tweeter) constantly arrives a few frequency cycles EARLIER than the other parts of the music, there are varying phase shifts and a loss of accuracy. Room boundary reflections affect the perceived arrival of sounds, so time delay correction might be more beneficial with certain room/speaker combinations than others, but it is fun for me to pursue the theoretical ideals in the quest to build a system that works really good. Edited to change word LATER to EARLIER.

Hi CushXR, Before buying a replacement, I would like to suggest that you operate your speakers in NON-bi-wire configuration and with the K-horns tight in the corners. Turn OFF the YPAO room correction circuit and listen for a while. Then recalibrate with YPAO and listen some more. If you are still un-impressed, please specify why, as you might have an equipment problem or maybe a room acoustics situation.

I have a pair of KW-120 THX subs matched up with a pair of Heresy III. A very nice sounding combo. This thread inspired me to try the two KW-120's and KA-1000 amp in a room with Klipschorns. The KW-120's sound good with the K-horns up to a decent volume, but if you want live concert loudness, I agree with the recommendations to go with horn loaded, or bigger subwoofers. It depends on how loud you listen, how it will fit your room and what you want to spend.

Klipschorns play loud, but also sound really good at normal levels because of their low distortion. Because of your room size and angles, I suggest trying to get 1983 or newer models with the tweeters mounted on Z-brackets, as seen on the left edge of my picture. These brackets put the tweeters flush with the motorboard face, allowing better dispersion.

I'll never go that fast either, mine will only do 169.

When reading comments about how an amp or speakers sound, I often wonder "compared to what"? Here is a picture of some speakers I listened to the other night. The small private audience was allowed to stand right in front of the stage during the music video taping of a famous country music band, and the music quality sounded fantastic. Listening to my speakers the next day is not an A-B comparison, but when I play my tri-amp K-horns they sound good and "live" to me.

All the good folks of the forum with great speaker systems live far away, so my only audio quality comparisons are sound stages like this view from my front row seat the other night. Listening to a variety of music at home now, I am very pleased with the sound of my tri-amped, time aligned speakers.

Happy Birthday to You!

Walt Disney had the gift, and the great thing was his talent to display it.

Steven1963, I am glad that you are enjoying your Klipschorns with the new crossovers. I imagine they sound really good in your home.

I just made some quick adjustments using the numbers from Rudy81 and it sounds better already. I am heading out for the weekend, so will have to wait until next week to fine tune, but I am impressed with the immediate improvement. Moving the crossover frequencies apart was something I wanted to do while looking at the RTAs of my individual drivers, but I did not know if that was acceptable until reading Rudy's description and it makes good sense. Thanks to Rudy81. Thanks to Fjd.

Here are new pictures of my outputs running 24 db/octave Linkwitz-Riley filters, compared to the 48 db/oct. pictured in my above post. The midrange to treble blends well this way, but the K-horn woofer to midrange at 48 db/oct. seems cleaner, more precise at 95+ db SPL, so I will continue to try both ways on the bass crossover. Left to right pictures show, #1 full spectrum, #2 sub + woofer, #3 sub + squawker, #4 sub + woofer + tweeter, #5 sub + tweeter

Thanks for the suggestion, I will try the different crossover slopes, and adjust the PEQ. My preferences are influenced by listening to live music a couple nights each week, usually hearing 102db SPL peaks through fixed installation, in-house calibrated, curved line-array speakers like at the right side of this dark picture. There is a consistency from venue to venue that leads me to believe this is good sound, since hundreds and/or thousands of paying audience members seem happy with the sound and I usually think it sounds "real". I am not a sound pro, just another music fan, and I appreciate the wisdom of the Klipsch community helping to improve my home audio system.

Good clean sound is the main reason to tri-amp a three-way (or bi-amp a two-way system), but another benefit is the ability to easily switch off individual drivers when analyzing the sound system. These pictures show the pink noise response of my K-horns at the main listening position, using 48 db/octave Linkwitz-Riley filter slopes. Looks like I need to adjust the PEQ to make the speakers sound even better! Left to right pictures show, #1 sub only, #2 sub + woofer, #3 sub + squawker, #4 sub + woofer + tweeter, #5 sub + tweeter.

I meant to ask, is it true that horn loaded drivers respond to oscillating electrical signal impulses more quickly than direct radiator cones when compared at equivalent acoustic outputs?

Is it true that horn loaded drivers have better transient response than direct radiator cones when compared at equivalent acoustic outputs?

Good to see that you are back on track, after you posted a comment about bose a couple months ago and then becoming very quiet. The Captivator S2's specs are very impressive.

Installing and setting up the digital electronic crossover with adjustable X-O frequencies, selectable filter slopes, driver time alignment and a built in PEQ was an enjoyable exercise for me. Granted there was time and effort involved, plus tri-amps and several pairs of wires, but I already had some of the hardware, and it was fun work. I am using minimal PEQ trim around 200Hz and 4kHz. Yes I have the Behringer DCX-2496, and I know there are better units like the EV-DC-1 on my new wish list, but for now this trial unit was easy to program and it performs very well in my system.

Someone else said it first, but PWK made it respectable. "Bullshit"