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Glad you found my post useful Chris! There's a lot more to it, but those are most of the basics. You might see some pics of it in the Klipsch Storyteller Contest if Joshua Hall decides to show them. They were taken recently for the Japanese audio mag Audio Basic. Non-professional photos though. They don't really convey the dramatic effect of the lighting. Andhe offsets of the panels look a little shallow in the photos. I'll be posting some that are more representative of what the room really looks like after I complete this revision of the room. Then everyone can get a better idea of the things I tried to describe. In my opinion, room acoustics are one of the areas most neglected by (nearly all) audiophiles. By the way, my cost for building the room inside of an already built home (unfinished lower level)in 1982 was about $15K, using my own labor. artto EQUIPMENT: 1976 Klipschorns (L&R) 1978 Belle Klipsch (center) Crown DL2 preamp/control center/power supply Crown PSA2 power amp (for normal everyday use) Crown D-150A (mono bridged)(for normal everyday use) Crown D60 power amp Crown SA 30-30 (vintage) power amp Crown OC150 output control center (mostly just for looks) Audio Research SP-C preamp (used mostly for phono preamp) 3 Luxman MB3045 class A(for all practical purposes w/k-horns)triode monoblocks Linn Sondek LP12 turntable Thorens TD 125 MKII turntable tonearms: SME III & Decca International phono cartridges: Shure V15 type5MR & Decca Plum (this cartridge deserves some explanation of its design/construction for those who don't know about it...very unique) Nakamichi Dragon & CR3 cassette decks Sony A7 Digital tape deck Denon DN600F Pro Audio CD player Revox B225 CD player (1984)(yes it still works but is beginning to have trouble playing certain discs) Yamaha T-2 & T-1 tuners (with dedicated outdoor antennas) Carver Digital Time Lens (sucks on CD which is what its made for, but great with LPs, go figure) And the latest toy (I used it in my bass rig rack for several years)...an Aphex Aural Exicter....still experimenting, but it seems to have dramatic benefits on some recordings. More on this later.

The fact is, the spectrum above 6000Hz contains less than 1% of the total energy in the audible spectrum. And its mostly low level harmonic content. Most adults can't hear anything over 12-14KHz. Some think they can. Especially if they are using super tweeters (or stupid tweeters as I can them). They are hearing something alright. But its not some 20KHz+ sound. Its the comb filter effect of the super tweeter modulating (reinforcing & cancellation of)the lower frequencies produced by the tweeter. It may sound different, but "better" is quite subjective.

I built an entire room around my Klipschorns in the early 80s & the room has undergone a number of revisions. You & other readers might benefit from what I did & what I learned from my mistakes. The room has been published in several audio magazines over the years. First things first. Ideally.you need a room with the proper proportions to achieve uniform distribution of eigentons (low frequency room modes). The ratio is 1: 1.26: 1.59 (called the Golden Mean) (see Klipsch Dope From Hope newsletter Vol9, No1 Feb 1968). It doesnt have to be exact. And rooms outside of these proportions have been known to sound good. Use the long wall for the stage. It makes a dramatic difference & you may even find that you dont have to turn-it-up as loud. Another trick you can use is the Half-Room Principal (Room Dimensions for Optimum Listening and the Half Room Principal, IRE Transactions on Audio, Vol AU-6, No1 Jan-Feb 1958, pp 14-15). For instance, my room is 27 wide. A 42Hz note has a wavelength of aprox. 27. So based on the longest dimension of the room, the room will accurately convey the full wavelength of a 42 Hz tone. But based on the Half Room Principal, you can expect a reasonably flat room response down to 21Hz (21Hz=54 wavelength. 54/2 (one-half of the wavelength)=27. If you take this one step further & use the diagonal dimension (which you can do with K-horns because of their corner placement & 45 degree angle toe in) it works even better. My room has a diagonal dimension of 32 which ½is one-half of 64. 64 puts you at about 17-18Hz. My system has measured down only 9Db below 20Hz with no electronic EQ. Not bad for folded horn-loaded speaker of this size. And in fact, that puts the K-horns at about 95Db/watt below 20Hz. Much better efficiency than any of the sub-woofers or so-called flat audiophile speakers out there. A dimension you want to avoid is 19 (or multiples & fractions) thereof as it is the wavelength of 60Hz (electrical hum). A quiet room is a good room. Avoid exterior windows if you can. In my room, I isolated all plumbing (sump & ejector pump plumbing too) from the frame of the house. The plumbing is also insulated. Same thing with any forced air vents. If you can isolate the rooms ceiling & walls from the structure of the house, do so. I didnt have the luxury of doing that. Remember that wall mass & no air leaks has more than anything else to do with blocking sound. In my room, I applied silicon beading to the interior of the outside wall studs. Standard R-19 wall insulation between studs. Over the studs I placed ½ ½1/2 inch Celotex http://www.us.bpb-na.com/products.html rigid insulation board. Sealed the joints with silicon beading. Silicon beading over the Celotex where the studs are located. Created a 1 air space by putting 1x2 lath over the studs/Celotex. Repeated this process again. Then applied 5/8 sheet rock (Gypsum wall board). Since my room is only partially below ground, the upper wall exposed to the outside received an additional layer of Celotex with a 2 air space between it & the wall. Similar treatment was done for the ceiling. Ilbruck (maker of Sonex acoustical products http://www.mhtc.net/~lowey ) now makes a product called ProSpec Barriers which I would recommend using between the layers of the wall & ceiling. I also heavily reinforced the corners for the Klipschorns, from the corner, to 8 out from the corner. I used a staggered 6-12 stud spacing, both horizontally & vertically to eliminate any wall resonances. I then made 4 plates out of 2x12 wood, fit into the studding & secured them & the wall, tightly against the foundation. I made a corner fitting out of 2x12 to fit securely & air tight (use foam weather striping) in the corner for the tail board of the Klipschorns to be secured onto. The corner board is secured to through the wall to the foundation with 10 ¼1/4 inch lag screws. The tailboard of the K-horns are secured with 8 ¼ ¼1/4 inch lag screws to the corner plate. The K-horns are sealed air tight into the corner with weather stripping foam. In regards to electric, have everything on its own circuit. Im not sure that 20 amps is enough nowadays. Obviously this depends on what kind & how much equipment you have. Tape decks for instance can draw a lot of current because of the motors in them. Make sure you use an isolated ground for that circuit, isolated from the rest of the electric in you home. Ground the system at only one point, preferably from a regulated power supply that everything else is plugged into. Float all the rest of the ground connections on your equipment using a 2-prong adapter so that the ground(s) seeks their own level & does not produce any ground-loop hum. If you are using light dimmers, make sure they are the kind that have RF filtering. No fluorescent lighting. Now for acoustics. The Klipschorns do not like dead areas around them, so forget that dead-end/live-end room stuff. It doesnt work with K-horns. I use large polycylindrical surfaces made from ¼1/4 inch tempered Masonite (a wood-based fiber hardboard) (cheap) bowed to 12 on larger ones (4x8), 6-9 inches on smaller ones. These can be painted to match room décor. Behind the cylinders I mount Sonex acoustical foam on 3-6 standoffs on the Celotex behind the Masonite so the Sonex can capture sound more effectively from all directions & angles. This produces a room with very well distributed/dispersed middle & high frequencies. The larger polycylindrical surfaces help to damp bass resonances & break up standing waves. The principal here is to allow the room to be relatively live at low volume levels. But as the sound levels increase, more & more reflected sound gets trapped behind the cylindrical Masonite panels & gets totally absorbed by the Sonex & Celotex behind it so the room does not acoustically overload due to increased reverberation time at higher volume levels. A simple thing such as clapping your hands can be very useful in locating hot spots or ping in various areas of the room which will require sound absorption or dispersion. Likewise you dont want any dead spots either. These Masonite panels can create quite a dramatic appearance, so be creative & experiment. Keep in mind that the bow in the Masonite panels will tend to push the walls of the room in making the room seem somewhat smaller. This can be overcome by the use of lighting to highlight the depth & curve of the panels.

I built an entire room around my Klipschorns in the early 80s & the room has undergone a number of revisions. You & other readers might benefit from what I did & what I learned from my mistakes. The room has been published in several audio magazines over the years. First things first. Ideally.you need a room with the proper proportions to achieve uniform distribution of eigentons (low frequency room modes). The ratio is 1: 1.26: 1.59 (called the Golden Mean) (see Klipsch Dope From Hope newsletter Vol9, No1 Feb 1968). It doesnt have to be exact. And rooms outside of these proportions have been known to sound good. Use the long wall for the stage. It makes a dramatic difference & you may even find that you dont have to turn-it-up as loud. Another trick you can use is the Half-Room Principal (Room Dimensions for Optimum Listening and the Half Room Principal, IRE Transactions on Audio, Vol AU-6, No1 Jan-Feb 1958, pp 14-15). For instance, my room is 27 wide. A 42Hz note has a wavelength of aprox. 27. So based on the longest dimension of the room, the room will accurately convey the full wavelength of a 42 Hz tone. But based on the Half Room Principal, you can expect a reasonably flat room response down to 21Hz (21Hz=54 wavelength. 54/2 (one-half of the wavelength)=27. If you take this one step further & use the diagonal dimension (which you can do with K-horns because of their corner placement & 45 degree angle toe in) it works even better. My room has a diagonal dimension of 32 which ½is one-half of 64. 64 puts you at about 17-18Hz. My system has measured down only 9Db below 20Hz with no electronic EQ. Not bad for folded horn-loaded speaker of this size. And in fact, that puts the K-horns at about 95Db/watt below 20Hz. Much better efficiency than any of the sub-woofers or so-called flat audiophile speakers out there. A dimension you want to avoid is 19 (or multiples & fractions) thereof as it is the wavelength of 60Hz (electrical hum). A quiet room is a good room. Avoid exterior windows if you can. In my room, I isolated all plumbing (sump & ejector pump plumbing too) from the frame of the house. The plumbing is also insulated. Same thing with any forced air vents. If you can isolate the rooms ceiling & walls from the structure of the house, do so. I didnt have the luxury of doing that. Remember that wall mass & no air leaks has more than anything else to do with blocking sound. In my room, I applied silicon beading to the interior of the outside wall studs. Standard R-19 wall insulation between studs. Over the studs I placed ½ ½1/2 inch Celotex http://www.us.bpb-na.com/products.html rigid insulation board. Sealed the joints with silicon beading. Silicon beading over the Celotex where the studs are located. Created a 1 air space by putting 1x2 lath over the studs/Celotex. Repeated this process again. Then applied 5/8 sheet rock (Gypsum wall board). Since my room is only partially below ground, the upper wall exposed to the outside received an additional layer of Celotex with a 2 air space between it & the wall. Similar treatment was done for the ceiling. Ilbruck (maker of Sonex acoustical products http://www.mhtc.net/~lowey ) now makes a product called ProSpec Barriers which I would recommend using between the layers of the wall & ceiling. I also heavily reinforced the corners for the Klipschorns, from the corner, to 8 out from the corner. I used a staggered 6-12 stud spacing, both horizontally & vertically to eliminate any wall resonances. I then made 4 plates out of 2x12 wood, fit into the studding & secured them & the wall, tightly against the foundation. I made a corner fitting out of 2x12 to fit securely & air tight (use foam weather striping) in the corner for the tail board of the Klipschorns to be secured onto. The corner board is secured to through the wall to the foundation with 10 ¼1/4 inch lag screws. The tailboard of the K-horns are secured with 8 ¼ ¼1/4 inch lag screws to the corner plate. The K-horns are sealed air tight into the corner with weather stripping foam. In regards to electric, have everything on its own circuit. Im not sure that 20 amps is enough nowadays. Obviously this depends on what kind & how much equipment you have. Tape decks for instance can draw a lot of current because of the motors in them. Make sure you use an isolated ground for that circuit, isolated from the rest of the electric in you home. Ground the system at only one point, preferably from a regulated power supply that everything else is plugged into. Float all the rest of the ground connections on your equipment using a 2-prong adapter so that the ground(s) seeks their own level & does not produce any ground-loop hum. If you are using light dimmers, make sure they are the kind that have RF filtering. No fluorescent lighting. Now for acoustics. The Klipschorns do not like dead areas around them, so forget that dead-end/live-end room stuff. It doesnt work with K-horns. I use large polycylindrical surfaces made from ¼1/4 inch tempered Masonite (a wood-based fiber hardboard) (cheap) bowed to 12 on larger ones (4x8), 6-9 inches on smaller ones. These can be painted to match room décor. Behind the cylinders I mount Sonex acoustical foam on 3-6 standoffs on the Celotex behind the Masonite so the Sonex can capture sound more effectively from all directions & angles. This produces a room with very well distributed/dispersed middle & high frequencies. The larger polycylindrical surfaces help to damp bass resonances & break up standing waves. The principal here is to allow the room to be relatively live at low volume levels. But as the sound levels increase, more & more reflected sound gets trapped behind the cylindrical Masonite panels & gets totally absorbed by the Sonex & Celotex behind it so the room does not acoustically overload due to increased reverberation time at higher volume levels. A simple thing such as clapping your hands can be very useful in locating hot spots or ping in various areas of the room which will require sound absorption or dispersion. Likewise you dont want any dead spots either. These Masonite panels can create quite a dramatic appearance, so be creative & experiment. Keep in mind that the bow in the Masonite panels will tend to push the walls of the room in making the room seem somewhat smaller. This can be overcome by the use of lighting to highlight the depth & curve of the panels.

The network mod you refer to regarding the inductor had to do with the bass driver. The inductor (transformer)connection to the bass driver was removed. The result was a slight measurable improvement in the peak to trough amplitude which removed a slight hump in the frequency response around 180Hz. Its doubtful that this hump is all that audible and seems to be dependent on the program material. It may be more audible when listening to vinyl records because of the nature of the beast (microphonic effects at the phono stylus/record). Later model networks did not have this inductor. This was published in a Klipsch "Dope From Hope" newsletter some years ago. I can't seem to locate the issue in my library. So please understand that I'm doing this from memory. I doubt this modifcation will do anything to open up the highs. I have the inductors disconnected on my Klipschorns & Belle Klipsch. Both use type AA networks. Also, I believe later models had fuses or zeener diode protection. I would remove these if they are present. I can hear them & they deteriorate the sound quality in my opinion. This may have more to do with "opening up the highs" more than removing the inductor.