Roadhawg

I've got a Suburban-no way Khorns are going in a Pathfinder. If you could squeeze them in there you'd trash them in the process. Trust me, they are very unwieldy. Your best bet is go with the trailer or rent a truck w/ air suspension from Ryder or Uhaul. Use sleeping bags or 4" hospital bed foam from a medical supply store to protect the fronts and corners. If these are in good shape you want to go to extraordinary lengths to keep them that way during transportation. If you gash the veneer or crush a corner you will be suicidal.

Yes, I bought two pairs of these last year for my church. They have a heavy duty woofer able to handle 200 watts, fuse protection for top end. They were available in either one piece or split versions with either metal trim or plastic trim and corner protectors. You can still buy the plastic trim and corner protectors from Klipsch in Hope. Inputs included banana plug and 1/4" plug. They don't reach quite as low as the home version, but it's a barely noticeable difference to my ears. They play unbelievably loud and tight. A pair will easily cover a room that seats 1,000 people.

1. One pair Khorns, 1 pair LaScalas 2. Bought LaScalas for PA system @ age 20. 3. 43. 4. Fell in love with the tight, accurate bass and the crisp, clear mids and highs. Khorns took my breath away. Still own KG4s and KLF30s, but nothing compares to the Heritage line. 5. I'd love for Klipsch to create a Heritage Center speaker that would match other Heritage mains and still fit in a standard RPTV Home Theater setup. I'd also like to get another pair of LaScalas or Belles for back surrounds and some Cornwalls for no good reason at all other than they are Cornwalls. 6. Absolutely-They have the Heritage sound through and through to my ears.

I want to add my agreement to Mdeneen's comments. Use of EQ is given an undeservedly bad rap because many feel it is somehow cheating to use EQ. If your goal is accurate reproduction of sound, EQ is simply one more tool to help you achieve your goal, as are speaker placement, good front end gear and room treatments. In my opinion it is good to remember that recording engineers also have goals and priorities set for them by record companies: to make a recording that will get airplay and in turn sell units to make a profit! Toward that end, most of the control rooms that I have been in during mixdown have huge, expensive monitors.However, mixdown is inevitably done on relatively inexpensive speakers so the engineer will know what it is going to sound like in the target listening room, which is an automobile, since that is where most radio listening is done. If it sounds good in the car, people will go out and buy the disc so the band can afford to tour where they will use support tracks to fatten up the sound you hear in concert and promote even more sales. Nothing right or wrong in it, just the way it is. In the studio, the engineer uses EQ, mic placement and elaborate digital effects to create a sound pleasing to his or her ears in that room on those speakers. There is no law that the choices made in the control room are right or will be pleasing to your ears. The bottom line is whether or not the music coming out of your speakers sounds like the original source (ie-human voice, guitar,keyboard, percussion) to you. If not, judicious use of EQ can correct the deficiencies. I'd hate to see anyone listen to music and not be able to stand the way it sounds because they think they will somehow be less of a purist by using EQ. Whenever I mix live sound, my goal is to reproduce through the PA what the singers and players actually sound like. Some soloists have unique qualities to their voices which I leave alone during solo work, but which make them stick out like a sore thumb when attempting to blend w/ other singers. So when they sing in groups, I adjust EQ to blend the voices together. The end result is much more pleasing than if I didn't use EQ in those situations. My point is that those kinds of decisions are made hundreds of times at every step in the recording process, so the commitment to remaining a purist by using no EQ at all is in my opinion a viewpoint held only by audiophiles, certainly not by the artists, engineers and producers of the music we listen to. That being said, I believe EQ is a scalpel and not an axe. Small, precise adjustments are much better than wide, sweeping cuts that wipe out or boost many more frequencies than the ones you are shooting for. The best units will be parametric which let you select the center frequencies you wish to adjust as well as the width and depth of the cuts or boosts you make. The more choices and control you have over those frequencies, the better job you can do tailoring your system to be pleasing to your ears. End of sermon.

This has been an enjoyable thread, if somewhat testy at times. Thought I'd weigh in with my 2 cents. Audio is certainly one of the most subjective hobbies around in my opinion. Perceived audio quality is affected by everything from choice of equipment, source material, room acoustics, even temperature and humidity. Add to this each of our own personal preferences and the differences in each unique set of ears and it's no wonder different people passionate about the same subject disagree. I have set up systems for friends using RS7s for surrounds because of what their preferences and priorities were. My personal preference is 7 monopole speakers, Heritage based. I listen more critically than almost all of my friends do. Most do not notice audio problems that make me nuts. Most people probably enjoy listening more than I do because I am constantly listening for problems and thinking of what I can improve. When I have friends over their collective jaws drop and I'm still thinking something is not quite right. My wife just shakes her head. It seems to me that many are attempting to recreate the movie theater experience. I am in movie theaters every week, most THX approved and in my opinion the sound stinks in almost all of them. I am not trying to recreate that sound at home-I am trying to greatly improve it! I agree that theaters make compromises in sound because of the many less than ideal seats available. I have installed sound systems in churches and grudgingly had to make the same compromises. I used to be in a band using LaScalas for PA cabinets and everytime we set up, we had to make compromises. I believe that dipoles and Klipsch's wide dispersion technology are compromises. Not necessarily bad, but compromises in the sense that they are less than ideal. I further believe that when Home Theater was in its infancy the audible differences between dipoles and monopoles was not even noticeable to most people due to the source material available. In 1998 I attended AES in San Francisco with some friends to help select a recording console that would cost in excess of $100,000. Most of the recording engineers I spoke to back then said privately that they had absolutely no idea of what to do with 5.1 channels. At that time, the perceived use of the rear channels by the people who were mixxing the audio was strictly for ambience and the occasional gee whiz sound effect. Obviously, more and more audio engineers have now figured out what they can do with 5, 6 and even 7 channels. Recording is an art, and it is maturing. It is dramatically better now than 4 years ago. It will be dramatically better in 4 years than it is now. This is the best reason in my opinion to go with full range monopoles... more and more information is being fed into the rear channels and even more information will be put there in the future. There are still quite a few horrible soundtracks out there, but they are getting better and better all the time. I believe the better the source material, the greater the disparity between dipoles or wide dispersion speakers and monopoles, at least to my ears. Others may disagree-doesn't make either of us right or wrong, just different!

JM Were you using Home Heresy or Industrial? The Industrial Heresy is ported and seems to have more low end punch, but I haven't heard them matched up w/ the larger Heritage, just by themselves. Was your main problem w/ the Heresy sensitivity or timbre? My problem is a RPTV that won't allow for a Belle or LaScala center without a radical wall unit makeover. I tried HornEd's phantom center suggestion over the weekend and am more dissatisfied w/ the C7 as a match for the Khorns than ever. The absence of the C7 greatly improved the sound coming out of the Khorns. I may try one of my KG4s as a center-male voices are where the C7's shortcomings are most noticeable to me. The KG4s reach 38 hz and sound pretty good in stereo, I'm not sure how it would perform on top of the TV.

Ed, how have you handled placement of your SVS and Khorns? Are you using false corners for your horns in order to corner load your sub? Do you find that the SVS has enough bottom end that it doesn't need to go in the corner? I haven't talked with anyone running subs w/ khorns to know how they are handling the placement problems-ie.-putting sub in back of room, etc. I know many people say that low bass is omnidirectional, but every system I have heard where the sub was physically located away from the front array, my ears keep trying to put the two sources together and it is very distracting to me. Where are you crossing your subs over and are you doing any other tweaks to them with a parametric or running flat? Thanks in advance!

HornEd, thanks for the good suggestion. I will give that a try this evening. I will frequently switch to plain stereo so I can hear the Khorns w/o the C7 getting in the way, but I hadn't considered switching off the center to keep the other channels operational. By the way, I get a real kick out of your horizontal KLF30-I admire people who think "outside the box" and come up with innovative solutions. I started off with the KLF30s left and right w/ C7 in the center. Even then, the C7 was not up to the task in my opinion. Situation only got worse as I added the Heritages. The C7 is no doubt a good speaker in its own right...just points out even more dramatically how good the Heritage line is by comparison. I have been reading your SVS posts with great interest-my main concern in adding a sub is keeping character with the Khorns and LaScalas. I'm looking for tight, fast musical bass that can keep up with the horns-difficult job description.

Boa, you are correct. I have been shot down by a Sony 53" Hi-Scan RPTV-seemed like a good idea at the time. I'd love to put another LaScala in the center, but the only workaround I have seen is Q-Man's system. I don't know how he got away with that with his wife. He must be a better salesman than I am. My wife thinks I've lost my mind as it is. I've always loved the sound of Cornwalls but never owned a pair. My first set of Klipsch were KG4s which are now in the bedroom.

I am currently using Khorns for L/R w/ LaScalas for side surrounds and KLF30's for back surrounds powered by Denon 3801. Only weakness is my center C7. It is severely overmatched by the rest of the speakers. I am considering an industrial Heresy for the center. Apart from center channel weakness the system sounds phenomenal-I highly recommend it. Haven't added a sub yet, not sure which way I want to go there. I don't think you can miss with the big Heritage system.