Al Klappenberger

If the thread has peaked, I suppose it's time to move on the the next item: First off, the 3619 is not "Dean's", it's MINE! The 3619 and 3619-ET are both exclusive only to me. The only transformer Dean has is that oversized wax-dipped budget buster! I forgot Universal Transformer company's designation number for i t. Secondly, If that plot is through my Universal network, somebody must have picked a bad horn too. The B&C DCM50 doesn't look that bad! Al K.

AHHhhhh , what the heck. In for a pennie in for a pound. Here's the computed response of the ES500 and ES5800 along with the actual measured response of group delay, insertion phase and forware attenuation of the ES500 highpass channel. AL K.

It looks like the other plot went up.. Lee forgot to post the plot of complex impedance of the network as seen by the amplifier. Here it is along with the test setup. The woofer is a real K33 in a closed box with a slot to emulate the loading of a horn. It's a nearly flat 6 Ohms, the actual impedance of most vintage K33 drivers. AL K.

I didn't send the plots of insertion loss through the squawker port of the ES500 + ES5800 netwrok set to Lee earlier so I am trying to upload and include it now myself. It is simply one the earlier plots magnified though. I haven't been on here since the forum software was upgrade, so how to do it is a mystery! I hope it works! Anyhow, the plot was taken of voltage across the swamping resistor and transformer input. The marker shows about 0.8 dB in the center of the squawker range (2 KHz). BTW: I am considering writing a step - by - step procedure on how to reverse engineer as crossover network. "Somebody" is going to need it! It sholdn't take long considering the one in question is simply a hacked Klipsch network. While using it as an example, I certainly would not reveal any element values in fear of someone actually trying to build it! Al K.

OH BROTHER!! I have a lot to do today, so my socket puppet will be posting the plots I sent him a couple days ago for me. You are free to reverse engineer my ES5800 squawker / tweeter network if you think you can. As to reverse engineering the ES500, just look around. I already released the design for it and the Universal long ago. No need to reverse engineer that. As to reverse engineering yours, no problem, I did that in a few minutes to make the early computer study of your shelving adjustment without a swamping resistor claim! Lee even drew the schematic from your pictures and a typical crossover schematic I drew for him to use as a guide. AL K.

Ok... The sock-pupet formally requests the fillowing plots on your network: * Complex impedance in R magnitude and polar phase seen my the amplifier using real driver loads. I can accept R +-jX too if you like. * Group delay and insertion Phase through the mid-range port. * Absolute insertion loss of the midrange channel. (no shelving) * Absolute loss through the tweeter filter. (No problem here - yours doen't provide shelving). BTW: I already gave these plots to Lee a day or so ago in case this came up.. Maybe he will post them for me after you post yours. Al K.

BEWARE, this could mark the beginning of a locked thread! Al K.

Dean, I am getting quite sick of your continuous knit picking. The simple fact is that I busted my butt helping you become a competitor. Now that you failed miserably at making a high priced version of a network that had evolved into an entry level network, I'm the bad guy! ENOUGH! Like I told the first competitor I trained, go market anything you like. Let's see where the markets take us. You can no longer claim your products are "restorations" because they are not as PWK made them. They are not "upgrades" because they are his same designs with parts other then he used. So what are they? They are the same old networks that have been used for years with a pretty paint job and overpriced parts like that huge transformer that does nothing by raise the price. The only network you have to offer that is unique is the "super X" that I gave you. Since I can't stop you from build it, it's up to your conscience and the market place. Warren, While on the subject of knit picking; the segment of my plot that you posted is of the ES500 designed for the Belle Klipsch or La Scala. It is intended to be 6 dB down at 500 Hz. It's the ES400 that was designed for the Klipschorn! I used the ES500 for all the Shelving testing simply because it is the last network I built. It was available. Now, that set is boxed up and read to ship to the U.K. Al K.

You asked for this. No proxy.. I am getting mad as hell at what I am hearing on this thread. First off, yes, I was banned from this forum earlier for telling it like it is about a certain vendor who stole my Universal design and is now building knock-off versions saying "change one part and the design is no longer yours". This was the FIRST competitor I foolishly trained. It may be of interest to know that Dean was right there with me even to the point of urging me to PATENT the swamping resistor idea and actually start legal action against him. I knew at that time I had seen the idea used by others. This was long after I had incorporated it into all my networks. I had simply REinvented it. It was Bob Crites (I think) who identified it as a JBL idea. I actually came to the idea independently after talking to my late friend and mentor Max Potter about if shunt resistors do or do not reduce efficiency. They do NOT! It was Max who was the spark for the idea, NOT DJK! AS to the ban: I was NEVER reinstated nor did I ever ask to be. I was "grandfathered" back in when the forum software was upgraded but I swore I would never post again even though I could. I do NOT CARE if I am banned again. I DO care that this thread not be locked. I figured if I limit myself only to posting emoticons and post only through a proxy who will monitor my lack of tact, the chances of this happening again would be eliminated. Amy: if you find my comments out of line, or a person attack, BAND ME AGAIN, but do not lock this thread! Exposing the truth about the poor filter designs that are accepted as gospel throughout the loudspeaker industry is my mission. The crap that passes for crossover networks, include the THING Acoustic Research cooked up for the long dead "LST" speaker would be laughed at by any serious filter designer. It breaks every rule in the book! I have been designing multiplexers (which a crossover is) from audio to 2000 MEGA Hz for nearly 40 years. I know L-C filters! They are my speciality. Letting a loudspeaker designer design a crossover is like allowing the same engineer who designed the engine in your car do the seats and style the body! You won't like the results! NOW: for the SECOND competitor I foolishly trained, Dean Wescott! I spent countless hours on the telephone with him trying to explain the simplest concepts as well as basic filter design and transformer theory. I nearly GAVE HIM a copy of my filter design package (PCFILT) to use for analysis and research. What a mistake that would have been! I also spent time with him unravelling the techno-double-talk often used by a prominent engineer to snow others when he gets pinned down on something, or got something wrong. Then there is my "Universal" network. I gave Dean an opportunity to build my first network design, the Universal, in its high-priced form because I no longer wanted to build it. I did not have to do that and should not have! He bubbled over telling me what an honer it would be to build them! At that time I explained why I no longer wanted to build it. My conscience was bothering me. With the introduction of the "AP" and Extreme-slope" series networks, it had become my "entry level" design. It lacked a tweeter shelving adjustment and no longer warranted the high cost parts. The Universal was initially modelled after the Klipsch "AA" network. It didn't need a tweeter attenuator because its "constant K" tweeter filter was so lossy! How could I justify adding a tweeter attenuator after all this time? Then there was the high cost of fancy parts like Hovland Musicaps. Having evolved into an entry level design it needed to be scaled back, not expand to even higher cost parts as Dean finally did. Not only did I give him the license to build them, I completely revamped the layout and built the first set FOR HIM taking pictures of the procedure, step by step, to show him how it was to be done! I would not accept splicing parts tougher and hanging them in mid-air like he always does. We busted our collective buts to trying to balance his prices with mine. We tried to make this work! The bottom line here is that nobody was at fault. It was a joint venture that SIMPLY FAILED! At that time I was offering the scaled down Universal as the CornScallWall with a 600 Hz crossover. It was not interned for the Klipschorn. That was to be Dean's product. Only when Dean decided to give up and blame me for the failure did I start making the 400 Hz version and changed the name to the "CSW Universal economy". I have since built 77 sets to only a few of the high-priced version built by Dean. Then there is his "super X", alias the "ALK Junior", alias the "Super AA", which I designed and GAVE HIM. It has the autotransformer and swamping resistor at the termination end just like my Universal network. It is, IN FACT, my Universal with one less inductor and computer optimized to compensate and maintain nearly constant impedance. Dean, the next time you build one of these at your exorbitant price, remember who designed it and gave it to you for free and why. One of the things I try to do is not introduce fads an sucker people into swallowing foolish things like battery biased capacitors. If Dean was so keen on offering a biased capacitor network, it could be done WITHOUT A BATTERY! I challenge him to figure out how to do that! Now, there is that HUGE wax dipped autotransformer that he is dazzling his customer with. All it does is run his cost and the customers price up. The original 3619 I used for years is already oversized. It will handle 50W of power all day and has a DCR of about 0.35 Ohms. I have one here that has had half the outer covering chewed off my a rat. It still works fine! BTW: I am nearly 69 years old and my hands are beginning to shake. I can hardly use a glue gun. Dean was being groomed to totally take over my entire product line when I retired. I will never train another person to become a competitor. Now I will train only an assembler when I retire. My designs will be burred with me when I go! Another VERY important point.. The entire audio industry is built on what I call "audio placebos". Our only source of reality is the "computer model" created inside our brain to understand reality. The fact is, a person will hear what he expects to hear, NOT reality. This means good science requires instrument measurement and evaluation of every stage of any complex system scientifically, including a loudspeaker. To measure only the acoustic output and not examine the crossover as a separate entity and as a single cog in the works is not "what engineers do"! Anyone who depends solely on his ears to eventuate a speaker is kidding himself. This also goes for people who claim they can hear the difference between brands of capacitors. It's TOTAL B.S.! Even if you could, the difference is trivial compared to the long list of cumulative boners found in poorly designed filters. If this were not true the point would not be so controversial. Anyone who thinks the AK-3 sounds better than any of my networks either has it set up wrong or does not know what he is listening to! The AK-3 also has an extreme-slope tweeter filter. It has been erroneously called an "Elliptic filter". It, like all the poor designs I see, was simply grafted in! My Universal is not recommend to replace the AK, AK-2 or AK-3, only the AA. The correct replacement for the AK-3 is my AP12-AK3 and ES5800. It will walk all over the Universal or the AK-3 and does not even require the installer to open the Klipschorn woofer hatch! In conclusion, anyone here who decides to call me arrogant may do so. I believe there is a place for arrogance, IF YOU'RE RIGHT. Was PWK arrogant? YES, and he had good reason to be! If this gets me banned again, nobody will question why I need a proxy! If, after all this crap, you might like to see the acoustic output of a speaker using a correctly designed network with transformers and a swamping resistors at the termination end of the filters, look here: http://www.alkeng.com/shelving.jpg It's the ES500 + ES5800. Al K.

:P

:lol:

I think I agree, but it might not be the 500 Hz energy distorting but rather the lower stuff leaking through a low order filter. Put a more agressiver filter between it and the lows and it will probably sound fine. Al K.

Here's the data sheet on the 902. It looks like it will work down to 500 Ok. AL K.

Here's the plot I did with a K55 jury-rigged to an Altec 511 horn. The plot was using an old analog X-Y plotter and swept sine wave so it looks a lot different the the way I do it these days. The lower plot was the K500 horn of the Belle. Both were done sitting on a chair withOUT any mounting flange. The K500 and K400 horns depend on the flange for the low end. That's why the bad response of the K500. BTW: The Altec 511 and 811 are very good sounding horns. I have used both. AL K.

The Altec 511 was designed to operate down to 500 Hz but I have tested it down to 400 Hz for use in the Khorn. It works ok down there. It was also designed for 2-way operation. I would cross it at 500 Hz. I happen to have the polar plots on 4 Altec horns for 1 KHz. Al K.

I just got a pair of Dave's (Gothover) 1 to 1.4 to 2 Inch driver adaptor for his Eliptrac 400 horn. This thing is a real piece of work! It's extremely clever but rather difficult to figure out without some head-scratching. It consists of four detachable segments. The first segment is the motor board for 1-inch drivers. It tapers from 1 inch diameter to 1.1 Inch. The 1.1 Inch side has recessed mounting holes for the K55 adaptor, the 3-hole pattern of JBL drivers and for the two studs of Altec drivers. The second segment consists of two layers which taper from 1.1 Inch up to 1.4 Inch diameter. It has three tapped holes in the pattern of a 1.4 Inch driver. These are used to hold it to the 1.4 Inch driver mounting surface when a 1-inch driver is used. The third segment provides recessed bolt holes to mount a 1.4 inch driver and four long captive bolts which pass through to the fourth segment which expands from 1.6 Inch up to the 2 Inch driver mounting flange of the Eliptrac horn. The fourth segment is double thickness. This adds up to six total slices of 3/4 inch thick material for a total of 4 1/2 inches long. Hopefully the picture will explain all this. The precision fit between the segments and of the bolts holes is extreme. It seems to have been made with zero tolerance in mind! This makes it a little difficult to slide the segments apart but assures a smooth tractrix taper inside the throat. Al K.

If they are working, you might just have a gold mine there: http://mcc.berners.ch/power-amplifiers/MC30.pdf There are 3 eBay listings for MC30 right now. This one is currently sitting at over $700. Item number: 130485539060 Al K.

Dave, I think it's an "Onken". Al K.

Shawn, I agree. I'm just not clear how you would cut back the efficiency of a woofer like the Jube. Is there an alternitive set of drivers that are just less efficienct? Al K.

Shawn, Lowering the efficiency of the woofer would do it, but how is it normally done? Resistive pads are bad news and a transformer would be the same size as the output transformers used in tube type power amps. It would be exactly like the autoformers used in the output stage of McIntosh SS amps. Besides, aren't we all proud of the efficiency of out horn speakers? It seems a crime to cut it back. I always assumed the woofer to be the thing that dictates everyting else. Al K.

Does the 510 horn require EQing? I suspect that it does. The tractrix horns don't. I suspect that this is the trade-off with respect to directivity. If this is the case, it's another factor in the 2-way versus 3-way decision. You can only EQ a horn with a passive network to the degree dictated by the lowest efficiency driver. That's normally the woofer. The Jub is very efficient. The Khorn less so. That limits how much you can cut down the extra efficiency (above that of the woofer) of the high section. The only way then to get a flat frequency response all the way up is with an active equalizer in a bi-amp setup. I hope the drawing below will illustrate the point. Al K.

You guys have got to give Dave a break on the listening tests. The HF200 driver I used to test was Dave's and was shipped direly to me. I shipped it to Lee for the current testing. Lee still has it. Dave may not have one to listen to yet! Al K.