liquidsquid793

I must apologize for skipping a fair number of responses, but there is quite a difference in how wave fronts of sound reaches you from a large, folded horn vs. a dinky transmission line speaker or studio monitor. A good TL design can go pretty darned deep with just a 6" woofer, lower than 35Hz often, and sound absolutely wonderful. But will it slap you upside the head and shake the crap out of your gut? No. Even at the same apparent volume. Think of sound coming out of that large, folded horn with a straight wave front coming out to you, each pressure wave hitting you all at once. Then think of the dinky speaker, wave fronts coming at you in a curve, dispersed over more time (stone in a small pond). Both waves have the same frequency, but one does a much better job at coupling that sound to objects (you). The simultaneous arrival should paint better imaging, especially at lower frequencies. Evidence is in when you give these a listen and feel the audio and the imaging is incredible. I always wanted a pair of these, and I would definitely throw a good sub in the mix as I am a bit of a bass head. However, my unwillingness to spend big money on speakers gets in the way. Maybe if I trip over a good set for cheap, I will pull the trigger. A nice pair went on sale near me for $1500, and I was too slow. For now, I will stay with the Forte IIs which are pretty darned good. Better than anything else I have had to date.

Hi All, I recently purchased some used Forte 2s and needed to pull the PRs to give things a cleaning and pull out a dented dust cap (success!). I wanted to take a peek at the crossover to see if these were abused and check things for any damage as they were in storage for some time. If power resistors were run hot, etc. They do look pristine, but these crossovers don't look anything like what I have been seeing posted on rebuild sites. Are these originals? (See picture) A couple of things I noticed, and was surprised premium speakers have these issues: 1. Wires to the drivers were not held in place, so the top two driver wires were rattling on the back of the woofer magnet. I simply tie-wrapped these up. 2. The crossover and wiring gauge seems a little light, but they work. The engineer in me says a simple bump in gauge probably won't be a noticeable improvement, but I may bump things up on a rainy day with a crossover rebuild. It bothers me they are such a light gauge. 3. Knuckling the enclosure to look for loose joints, cracks, etc. revealed the enclosures were still sound. However, the front baffle between the woofer and squawker rings like a bell. That REALLY surprises me, as in theory this should be messing with response at higher volumes. Some searching revealed that is it common to retrofit this with some bracing. Anyone recommend this change? Do the modern Forte V's address these things? Mostly out of curiosity. Not that I need Vs when I already have these. I am hoping I can make some minor tweaks to my Forte IIs to get a little more improvement, despite them already being wonderful. Lastly, I would like to locate just the Squawker and tweeter drivers (even used works) to build an affordable center that will fit under my screen for when I use the system for HT, any idea where I can locate some of these for this purpose? Mostly lately music listening so these would be off most of the time. I was originally going to build clones of these Fortes myself, but deal was too good to pass up. Recently finished a Dayton 18" sub and the blend with these is a dream come true for me. Solid impact, deep invisible bass that gives that live experience. Thanks! -Mark

(Un)Fortunately it wouldn't fit to stuff another Forte in there under the projection screen. For one I would likely need to locate another single Forte II that is affordable. I have WAY too many competing hobbies that demand my attention and money to be dropping serious cash on a center. I will need to look into the KLF-C7 as an option. The RP-504C is serving modestly well for now, but it needs a little gain to keep up. Thanks. Part of the fatigue may be I have very sensitive hearing (yeah, one of those people) and I simply am not used to a flat response speaker. My wife experienced fatigue also, so I'm not sure what to think as she has fairly poor hearing. It could be the diaphragms, maybe I have some dust in there after being in storage a long time? Maybe a cleaning is in order. Diaphragm replacement is easy enough, so that may be part of the refreshing. Before I found these Forte IIs, I was already picking and choosing drivers to make and design my own speakers, in fact I was going to make a clone of these. Ironically when I was picking up a primer for building a subwoofer, these were on sale at the paint shop by the owner. Put a nix on my self-build project! But I am NOT a fan of centers with a tweeter in the middle between two mid-bass as the mid-bass have interference patterns that can really mess with presenting a good sound stage. I'll let the pros figure out how to compromise on those designs so I am looking for a finished solution. I have no problems rebuilding electronics (high power and RF engineer among other skills) so a crossover rebuild is not a problem. I was even thinking of going down the road of characterizing the drivers in the box and designing my own for shits and grins as tools for this effort are so much better than they were in the late 80s. Thanks for the options though!

I got good and lucky recently and picked up some original Forte IIs, both for $500. They were in storage for a long time, so they are in great shape! Some finish has a stain on the top I need to try to get out, and a couple of small chips on a corner. Not certain if I will refresh the crossover yet, I've seen mixed reviews with the available crossover updates out there. Any recommendations for crossovers? Thinking that only the electrolytic caps needs to be refreshed. I was using the RP-8000F L&R and they sounded great when grouped with a RP504C center. I of course would prefer to use the Forte's for obvious reasons. I am still using this center, but not entirely sure that it is blending well with the Forte IIs. So, I have a few questions for the brain trust here: What may be a better-matching center? The RC-64III or is the RP-540C not much different? I'm not going to spend a bunch of money on diminishing returns. When doing some A/B comparisons between the two speaker sets, a few things came out of comparing the Forte IIs with the RP8000Fs: 1. The Forte has MUCH stronger mids, notably around 2kHz. I think the RP8000s were weak here, and these are the other way. So the tonality difference is pretty stark with vocals. 2. The Forte has much lower distortion bass at comparable volume levels and fills the room much better. They kick some serious butt when turned up. Combined with a large musical sub and it gets a bit frightening and fun! 3. The Forte doesn't poke out into the room as far as the RP8000F, but this is of course dependent on where I place them in the corners for the PR in the back. Currently at 6" and still poke out 6" less than the RP8000F. 4. The Forte II seems more tiresome on the ears for extended listening, even at lower levels. I toed out the speakers more and that seemed to help, but still, I cannot put a finger on why. The term I see floating around is "shrill", but even playing with a parametric EQ to make the mids sound comparable to the RP8000Fs (calibrated mic), it still seems tiring. Why may that be? Doesn't seem like distortion, but perhaps? Any suggestions would be welcome. Thanks for help! -Mark

Going to jump into this messy issue. There are few ways of getting AC line hum in your audio system: 1. Ground loops. 2. Current induced in cabling (transformer effect) by nearby large current AC loads like motors/compressors, ovens, heaters, etc. 3. Voltage induced in cabling from nearby noisy sources such as florescent bulbs, transmitters, and generally poorly designed electronics. 4. Power supply in a piece of equipment is failing and has abnormal AC ripple. 5. Noisy AC. 1. Ground Loops: These can be stinkers to deal with. Commonly caused by having your system plugged into multiple wall outlets around the room. It is quite possible they are sourced from two different circuit breakers and thus the grounds between the two are not tied directly together or the grounds are poor, allowing them to be different in voltage potential at each outlet. A few milivolts is all it takes. This in turn winds up making the cabling of your audio become part of the ground return which gets AC noise in everything. (Just ask anyone who tries to get hum figured out on large music installations) Grounds need a single point of connection, and the circuit breaker box isn't really it. It actually is the point on your house where the ground rod is outside where the AC enters the home. This allows ground differentials around the inside of the electrical box and throughout the home. To test the theory, try using a multiple outlet heavy duty extension cord and plug all the equipment into it and a single outlet and see if the problem persists or not. If it goes away, ground loop is your issue. To fix if you are forced to use multiple outlets requires a bit of effort. Simply tying the equipment grounds together may not be enough as it only reduces the loop current, not eliminate it. The fix may involve an electrician as the grounds should be solidly tied together at the wall outlet, not on the equipment. Have the electrician get all your AV equipment on a single breaker, refresh the grounds and/or decrease the gauge (increase the diameter of the ground wire). Another method would be to bond the offending grounds together inside of the electrical box before returning to the ground bar of the box, but this runs risk and only an electrician should dink around in those things doing something outside of code. Helpers can be to put equipment on other outlets like subs on wireless which "breaks the loop". Sometimes using XLR connectors for your audio can address the problem in those cables but does not get rid of loop current issue, it just prevents it from getting in that cable's audio. It is still running through the shield if the cable has a shield connected on either end. In many cases, the hum still gets into your electronics through the enclosure or other connections. Shielded cabling should have little effect on this problem, nor expensive wire. Improving house wiring will have the most bang for the buck and is the right solution. Note that lifting/disconnecting the ground from the offending outlet or equipment may fix the hum, it opens your equipment for a whole Pandora's box of other issues. Electrostatic discharge damage is just one of them (a zap from your finger has nowhere to go but to sensitive electronics). Nearby lightning strikes with similar effect as they induce large collapsing electrical fields. No ground, no protection. That is why there is a ground pin. In other cases, there will be noise filtering to ground on both the power supply and speaker outlets. You just defeated all of that by disconnecting the ground. 2. Current induction. Only decent solution is XLR cables for the audio path or moving things away from each other. It can result in creating effects much like a ground loop and is sometimes complicated by long unshielded wires like speaker cables but typically not as the out and back of parallel wires rejects this. 3. Voltage induction. XLR cables and/or higher quality RCAs. Sometimes you take a look at the guts of cheap cables, and find they are aluminum foil wrap with a strand or two of thin gauge wire. Fine for electrical shielding as long as the crimps are the jacks are actually connecting. You cannot solder to aluminum with standard solder, so crimps are used, and those easily fail. Aluminum also gets oxides making it get worse over time. Get decent cables! In the case of strong interferers like nearby cell towers and transmitters (even your cell phone) you may need shielded cable on everything including your speaker wire. You may get away with putting EMI filters on your speaker wires at the amplifier for less money. This is an uncommon issue but can manifest like hum as the RF noise energy gets into circuits it shouldn't and cases all sorts of weird issues. 4. Needs no explanation, track down the offender and get it fixed. 5. Noisy AC is caused by other loads on your electrical system creating noise on your electrical system power. Old-school lamp dimmers were notorious for this. Replace them, they are cheap! Track the load down causing the problem and fix it. If you cannot, a power conditioner may be your only option. Rarely wire is installed in a home with inadequate gauge for the load on it, and this can be a symptom. This is a huge and expensive problem to fix. Sorry.

Until recently, I used to home-brew my own massive towers to get low-end extension. It never really went well as at the time due to designing crossovers was only based on datasheets, not while they were in the box. Then I bought the 15" SPL, and it was an eye opener for allowing me to get affordable ready-made speakers since they didn't need to dig deep any longer. Then a good hybrid came up three weeks ago: Great condition Forte IIs $500 for the pair! I can scratch the itch by refurbing these, but they don't need much. Just perhaps a crossover update. Add a sub and wow! The Klipsch 15" SPL is outclassed by these Forte IIs (The sub is black for one, so it doesn't go with the decor). The Forte IIs are so tight and low on distortion. The new Dayton 18" PR sub blends well with them as it is also tight and low on distortion. (Tight meaning quick decay, no boominess). Oak cabinets for the Forte's, Oak for the sub. Tasty. Attached with sub in testing. For reference that is a 2U rack unit to the right. It still needs a coat of Helmsman Poly, but waiting for warmer weather to do that outside.

Finally got into these forums! I am thrilled that Klipsch is finally addressing the line of subs that are getting slammed online for quality issues in the amps. I have the SPL-150SW and was more or less enjoying it. However, despite a lot of fooling around with positioning, I could audibly locate it in the room when using it for music. It was distracting, and I can only attribute it to some small amounts of distortion. I have heard it chuff, but that is rare as I have a family that doesn't let me crank it to 11 during movies. At one point my amp did die off, and I took the amp into work and fixed it. One of the traces on the board had etched through as the board was not cleaned well after production, and some solder flux actually ate the trace off due to the heat of the nearby standby circuit. I cleaned the board, repaired the trace, and have been good to go since. However, after seeing how the amplifier was incredibly cheap (despite being a clever design), it left a sour taste in my mouth. This and the distortion left me wanting something different. So, this winter I decided I would piece together Dayton 18" passive radiator sub since they have great reviews for very low distortion. I was seeking low distortion more so than output level (though I do enjoy that a lot too) so I could do something about locating the sub during music. I also purchased a DSP integrated amplifier (Class D) to go with it so I could compensate for room gain. After much trial and error trying to get a finish on the box so it looks nice, (finally settled on oak veneer) and a lot of swearing, I finally got it together. Started playing around with it 3 weeks ago and tuned it up to integrate with my RP8000Fs. It sounded fantastic! And now, Klipsch went and released these on me. Just in time for me to be done blowing way too much time and money on a custom job that cannot got past about 116dB SPL. There is no way I will slip this past the property committee after converting the family room to an assembly room for that massive sub. The real problem is I just landed a couple of old Forte IIs in great shape that may need a little TLC to freshen them up as they were in storage for 15 years, so even more money spent. (Worth it!) Otherwise, I would have been the first in line for the 16" of this. Oh well. The one sub is enough in the room. Tried to run the Klipsch and the Dayton together, and it is a little overwhelming and boomy. I cannot tame the room gain on the Klipsch at 34Hz. Not a fault of the sub, but the fault of not being able to spectrally deal with room gain. I hear a rumor there may be a Heritage version of subs coming also? That will be something to behold. Maybe that would reach a level I could piss off my neighbors that live 1/4 mile away.