Tizman

Part of what I like about Klipsch is that their speakers aren’t like everyone else’s. They are singular, and were predominantly the product of one opinionated and willful individual: PWK. I see Klipsch’s involvement in pro sound reinforcement to be a positive things as well. I would be very happy to own any of the newer model Klipsch speakers made of MDF, but I would have preferred if they were all built in a manner that would make them useable in PA work like they used to be. It’s just a better way to build, and I am a Klipsch traditionalist.

Using sub par materials is using sub par materials. Better materials are preferable. Always. Also, these sub par materials necessitate different construction techniques that are not required when using better quality materials. If 1” Baltic birch was an option, that is what I, and I think most people, would buy. OSD123: If you had a choice when you were purchasing your speakers between 1” MDF and 1” Baltic birch, which one would you have picked? Honestly. Your choice of amp and watch appears to hint what the answer is.

I too have found that most average ganged volume controls are not very balanced, especially at lower volumes. I try to use quality controls for my DIY builds, but they can be off a bit too. For serious amps, stepped controls using matched resistors are the way to go, and you should insist on them when purchasing high dollar amps. A couple of my amps have two separate volume pots, but this gets annoying very quickly. Having excellent resolution, resolves poor recordings. That said, I haven’t really found a need for tone controls most of the time. The noteable exception is with speakers that have uneven frequency response when used with poor recordings. I have a pair of single driver speakers that required a notch filter to tame this issue. It fixed the FR problem that was obvious with poor recordings, but made good recordings sound less good. With respect to mono recordings, I have found that the best way to listen to them is through one channel of amplification and one speaker. This is how mono recordings should be listened to. If the mono recordings you listen to have the same information on both channels, simply unplug one of the channels. This has a rightness to it that is far superior to pushing a mono signal through two channels. When I want to sum poor stereo recordings into mono, I use a DIY line level summing box that I put together in order to listen to music through my 1930’s mono radio console. This summing box works pretty well when summing a stereo signal, but doesn’t compare to a mono recording played through one channel only. I was shocked by how good a mono recording sounds when played through one La Scala speaker and one channel of a quality amp. If you haven’t done this, I strongly suggest giving it a try.

Marvel: I have heard good things about the Welborne Labs Moondogs. I'm sure they sound great. I don't have a 2A3 amp, but I may add a heater supply to the Legacy to allow me to use 45s and 2A3s. Seems like a plan considering the incremental cost, and many folks swear by 2A3s. I have been following the Western Electric launch here and there. I don't think there is anyone else manufacturing tubes in the Americas. It's cool that you are so close by, and that it's Western Electric...

Dave A: I wish I had the room for your setup. Actually, I think we do, but my lady thinks we don't. She is almost certainly right. I'm working on a set of Klipsch inspired two ways. FH1 bass bins with Eminence 15Cs, and Altec 511B tops with Renkus Heinz drivers. It will be possible to time align the drivers with this setup. ALK designed ES crossovers at 600HZ complete the set. I'm hoping it will sound even better than the La Scalas. Either way, I would like to supplement the deep base with a couple of subs, for home theatre mostly. Your setup doesn't need subs. I guess I have to compromise and get something smaller. What though? A couple of direct radiator subs made out of MDF? Finally my dream will come true! I love MDF, it's the ultimate cabinet material.

Dave A: I have heard many different Klipsch speakers over the years, and own six different pairs at the moment. There is something about the La Scala bass bin that really does it for me. I am doomed as well. And I'm happy about it. I like the other Klipsch speakers I have as well, but La Scala's all horn setup trumps the others by a wide margin.

Marvel: Ah 300Bs. A very linear tube. I'm working on a 300B amp right now. The Arthur Loesch Legacy amp. It's supposed to be very linear. I hope I like it when it's done because it's going to have around $2500 in parts in it. If I don't, I can always pick up a 1980's Kenwood or JVC receiver. They have very low THD, so they will sound good for sure. Also, convenient tone controls.

MDF, but I still want a pair. They are mighty pretty. My 76 La Scalas are breathtakingly dynamic and real sounding. Especially with nice SET amp. Something that has to be heard to be understood.

PWK never fails to deliver sound opinions and advice. And he preferred tube amps too! One should always carefully consider the opinions on upstream components (and preferred materials) of the original designer. Unless you already know everything of course...

ODS123: Did you use any of those amps with your current Klipsch speakers? Are any of those amps SET amps? Have you heard a SET amp on your current Klipsch speakers? If not, please have a look at the last sentence in my last post.

Looking for support from others for your own experiences, opinions and (sizeable) investments is human nature. ODS123 has his, and I have mine. When I put my opinions online, I do so as a reflection of my own actual real life experiences, and the preferences that have come about as a result of those experiences. I wish I was wrong, and that all amps do in fact sound the same, DR speakers sound the same as horn speakers, etc. That would be so much simpler and cheaper. Picking an amp by choosing the one with the lowest THD figure is a recipe for disaster. I ‘ve heard many amps that have vanishingly small THD figures and that sound like crap (that was pretty much most of the 1980s). This again is my experience. ODS123 is not speaking from experience. He has too much money invested in his Mac, and doesn’t want to try anything new based on hearing from others with different experiences. He has said as much. He wants to find things online and refer to them here to support his sizeable investment. He wants to give advice that supports his choices, not from experience, but from a need to support these choices. Don’t take his word for it, he hasn’t experienced it, and he doesn’t want to. Don’t take my word for it either. I have heard many different systems, and tried different amps with different speakers, but my end choices are my own personal and therefore biased ones. Try different things and make up your mind for yourself. Just make sure one of the things you try is a pair of Klipsch horn speakers on a SET amp. Then make your own choice. If you haven’t heard it, do everyone a favour and shut up about the things you know nothing about.

ODS123: Tone controls add FR distortion and mono switches add distortion as well. Every circuit between the input and output adds distortion and noise, this is sometimes the case even when the circuit in question is not being used. Interesting also that your Mac amp, unlike most modern SS amps, has output transformers like almost all tube amps do. The evil output transformer! How 1967! Your fetish is with the Macintosh brand, not with the particulars of your model. Your comparison between your amp and your watch is not applicable at all. A better analogy would be strapping a grandfather clock on your wrist. Oh well. At least you are listening to some good speakers now. Enjoy!

Doesn't having an MDF motorboard mean that the motorboard is completely enclosed in a plywood shell? If so, any accidental impacts would then make contact with this plywood shell first, thereby protecting the motorboard somewhat. That's much better than an MDF corner covered with veneer. I would still prefer a double layer of plywood or thicker plywood over the MDF though.

Check out the Nelson Pass Amp Camp Amp. https://diyaudiostore.com/products/amp-camp-amp-kit?variant=7072933085218 This is the new 8 Watt per channel version that is an easy to build kit for $327. Mine is an earlier 6 Watt version that sounds very nice with my Heresy II. Eight Watts into 96 DB/W/M will give you 105 DB/8W/M, which is plenty loud. It's dead quiet, and sounds fantastic to my ears. This is especially true at it's price. Reviews are excellent.

ODS123: Using a 200 Watt amp for just the first 4 Watts, and most likely less than the first 2 Watts is a poor use of your Mac. I also love the look and build quality of the Macintosh amps. American classics. But fetishistic obsessions with particular brands does not make your choice of amp an appropriate or sensible one. There is no question that all of the speakers that you have owned previously would not have done a SET amp justice. All of them used DR transducers, and had sub par sensitivity and dynamics. The fact is that you are selling yourself short by not experiencing a SET amp now that you have a set of speakers that will actually sound good with one. "Not interested" is the call of the closed minded. If you like I can build you one in an all MDF chassis. Just don't drop it.

ODS123: All the speakers you have owned in the past have used direct radiators and have had low sensitivity, especially in comparison to the Klipsch Heritage models. The requirement for high sensitivity for the early Klipsch speakers is partially due to the low power amplifiers that were common in home use back then. PA speakers normally require high sensitivity, albeit for different reasons, and the need for this sensitivity hasn't changed much over the past 60 years or so. This common requirement for high sensitivity meant that PWK designed for it, and it was a priority for him. The end result is that many PWK designed speakers are appropriate for both home and PA use. Your Cornwalls would sound great with a low power SET amp. The Mac that you are using now is a great amp, but is extreme overkill for the Cornwalls with their 102 DB/W/M sensitivity. It was, however, appropriate for the low sensitivity DR speakers that you were using in the past. With the Mac, you had a fighting chance of getting the dynamics and volume that a Cornwall will produce with a small fraction of the 200 Watts per channel of the Mac. You are probably using no more than 4 of the 200 Watts that your Mac is capable of with the Cornwalls. 4 Watts into a Cornwall is 108 DB/W/M. Your Mac would have had to put out 256 Watts into your 84 DB/W/M Spica TC-50 to match the Cornwall's 108 DB/W/M with 4 Watts. This is of course not possible because of the Spica's 50 Watt continuous rating. What it means is that when you were using the Spica's you were limited to around 101 DB/W/M. That is the result of designing speakers for low wattage amps and PA use, which are complimentary design goals. Have you ever actually tried a quality SET amp with your Cornwalls? None of the speakers that you have owned in the past, while excellent in their category, were appropriate for low wattage SET amps. Now is the time to try one if you haven't.

Pro sound Cornwalls? Cool. I liked the sets of Cornwalls I have heard over the years, but always missed the bass horn of La Scalas. It's so hard to go back to direct radiators once you have lived with an all horn speaker system.

The issue is always what isn’t intended. Here are a few examples; a small flooding of your listening area; crappy movers; a lamp falling over; kids and pets; high humidity. Get the picture? Perhaps you live in a perfect world, so your advice is only applicable to other people who live in a perfect world. In the real world, s**t happens.

I am pretty careful with my speakers, but I have bought probably two dozen pairs of used speakers over the years. Pretty much all of the ones made of MDF have been damaged somehow, usually on the corners, or suffered from high moisture environments with some degree of swelling. The plywood ones have stood up much better. MDF is always a small incident away from looking like crap. Also, should damage occur, repair becomes much more difficult than with plywood. Try fixing a damaged corner on an MDF cabinet. Cabinet repairs are no fun in general. MDF cabinet repairs are a nightmare. Pro gear uses plywood because it is much more durable than MDF. Much, much more. It is also lighter so that when accidents happen, the speaker cabinet’s own weight doesn’t contribute as much to the damage. For DIY, where you are cutting panels yourself at home, MDF is a toxic dust nightmare. The La Scala II is made of 1” MDF. Even though I would love a pair, for me the MDF, and their cost, are the only two reasons not to buy them. My 1976 La Scalas are in excellent condition. What would they look like now had they been made of MDF back in ‘76? I am the third owner of my pair of La Scalas. Another interesting “what if” is what would they look like now if they were made of MDF and then were used as PA speakers by a bunch of different bands since 1976? I can reasonably expect my future grandchildren to still be using my pair of La Scalas in 2076. Part of the reason so many vintage Klipsch speakers are still in use today and will be in the future is their solid plywood construction. If a manufacturer wants their speakers more solid/rigid, they should make them out of thicker plywood or some other durable material. MDF is disposable garbage.

robert_kc: I am referring to pinpoint placement with some classical music recordings. That said, and from memory, it seems to happen much more often with smaller ensembles, and very often with chamber music, and less often with full orchestra recordings in large halls. The “hall” was a very large glass greenhouse, with a peaked roof. All internal surfaces are glass and metal. It was definitely not designed to be a concert hall. That said, I have also attended many performances in a properly designed and built concert hall and opera house, and noticed the same lack of localization of musicians. This is not to say that this lack of localization in any way minimized my enjoyment of the concerts. It is just an observation that I don’t recall anyone making before. On the other hand, the web is full of observations about listeners of audio systems being able to precisely place musicians on a stage. In some respects, this all underlines the artificiality of our priorities/expectations when we discuss music reproduction in the home. It would appear that PWKs priorities as a designer were more inline with what a person actually experiences when they attend a concert than what most other speaker designers today prioritize. Direct radiator speakers and dome tweeters do an excellent job of localizing musicians, while dynamics and other types of “realism” often fall to the wayside. Klipsch’s horn based speakers do a great job of presenting the sound of an actual real-life concert experience, and they also provide localization cues when they are present in the music.

Obviously, I’m joking about the triple blind test. I am not joking about the difficulty in localizing musicians in the classical concert series though. It was surprisingly difficult to precisely place the musicians in space with my eyes closed. This may be because the venue, a large glass greenhouse, was not ideal. Some instruments were easier than others to place, but for the most part, the “imaging” was not great. There was an obvious sense of general direction, but not the pinpoint placement I get from some recordings at home. It was shocking to me that it was so difficult. The venue’s ambiance was there in large quantities though, which is something that I find harder to achieve at home. Sorry about the OT posts, I will cease and desist now.

Exactly.

We should do a double blind test! We can get an actual live orchestra behind a curtain (terrible imaging in my experience), a tube amp and Klipsch speakers with a few hundred pipe cleaners twisted together for speaker wires, and a $34 T-amp with $3500 speaker cables and Klipsch speakers, and do a double blind test (triple blind?).

...or maybe a $34 T-amp and Klipsch speakers.

Speaking of concerts, I subscribed to a concert series this past summer and attended 15 classical music concerts, performed by a full orchestra, all sitting in different seats in the first three rows. The imaging was terrible. It is much better at home on the hifi. They should have used a tube amp and Klipsch speakers...