garyrc

When I worked in a university bureaucracy, every time someone used the words "end point" it was some kind of cop out. They would say something like, "We interviewed the end point users," but had always stopped gathering information several points away from the end, often consulting people who knew next to nothing about the needs at the end.

FWIW, my best sounding moving coil cartridge was an Ortofon, SL15 in an SME, in 1975. The "L" stood for "light" (weight). I used the moving coil input of a Luxman L580. Very "open," "detailed," etc.

Well, I was going to point out that when we toured The Record Plant in 1974 or '75, we were told that people were working on a player that would scan an ordinary stereo Lp (vinyl) with a laser instead of using a stylus. I thought that was because of what they were smoking. Now I found out that ELP did it!

I'm older. Can't find old pictures (yet). In 1974, I had two Thorens T Tables (124/125), a DH1 mixer, a McIntosh c28 SS preamp, and borrowed McIntosh 40 watt tube amps, feeding JBL 030 speaker systems (D130 extended range and 075 tweeter) in C34 rear loaded horn enclosures, with Crown R to R, DBX, and a single U47FET mic, and a single RE15 mic. Friends pooled equipment when necessary. The speakers were the weak point, balance wise, but they were very clean and dynamic. When I was 20, I still was stuck in mono. A Components brand T Table, a Lafayette copy of a Gray viscous damped tone arm, a horrible Arkay 12 watt amplifier, and a Karlson speaker enclosure containing one of the 030s. As an aside, about that time I was salivating over the Hasselblad "Super Wide" 90 degree angle of coverage lens. Of course, I had no camera body to put it on, just a cheap 35mm with a 50mm lens. I heard a fox nearby saying, "Yeah, but Todd-AO has a 128 degree angle of coverage lens." Talk about curving lines! Since the Karlson was built for me by my Dad, "theater black," It still holds a place of honor in my current room, in the rear, with no speaker in it. .

Yes. Didn't Tomas Jefferson say something like, "If I had to choose between newspapers with no government and government without newspapers, I'd choose newspapers without government."

Indeed! And it can lift my mood, or sink it therapeutically so I can experience catharsis, or interlace both. Up: The last movement of Beethoven's 7th symphony, Rene Leibowitz version. Yes, the sound counts. 1. Vinyl with moving coil Ortofon cartridge, Khorns, Big Room, Bass +6dB. Superb! 2. Chesky CD transfer, Khorns, Big Room, Bass + 6 dB, + Audyssey Reference. Almost as good Down into cathartic release: My jazz or blues selection of the day. Interlace: Some Stravinsky, e.g. The Firebird, or, sometimes, Miles.

That's how it got the name "Death." Then there are its main attractions: Badwater, Devil's Hole Hell's Gate Devil's Cornfield Devil's Golf Course

@Mighty McIntosh, I'd try an Lpad on at least one Khorn, as a one, last ditch, effort. Is there a way to wire it so it just turns down the K55 midrange, and leaves the Tweeter alone? Contrary to many opinions, I think the K77 Tweeter can sound "sweet," but sometimes gets blamed when either the K55 or the recording is to blame. The red trace below is the K77 in a Klipschorn. This seems to be with 1/12 smoothing (???) which is quite stringent: [ graph from outside source vanished !] Here is what the K77s look like in Klipschorns in my room: As you can see, they cross the line at 12.44K Hz, and are down about 5 dB at 17K+. Up to 12K they sound sweet, a little "zingy" (sorry for the technical jargon), but very pleasant, and sweet. My K55X midranges in K401 horns (same as K400, but made out of a different material; Klipsch says, "slightly lower distortion) have a peak at 500Hz to 675Hz ("tuning A" is at 440 Hz) that I don't particularly like, but Audyssey gets rid of that. My guess, having heard K55Vs/K400 almost every day for 23 years, and K55Xs/K401 nearly every day for 15 years, and having played in various orchestras for 7 years, and eaten my lunch in front of one rehearsing for about 20 years, I'd say that a reduction of the K55 level by about 5 dB ought to be worth a try. If you restrict your music to the well recorded, you might not need even that. Reportedly, using REW very thoroughly can be better than Audyssey, with at least 3 microphone positions, in the right hands, but those hands are not mine -- I'm too happy with my system as it is to muster the energy. If you ever use room correction, it should be full range, given that your problems are where they are, as opposed to below Schroeder, as are some. Full Range Dirac could also be good. One Last Thing. Some people have found that turning up the bass helps counteract harshness -- a matter of balance. Too many recordings have the midrange boosted.

Sounds pretty Randy to me.

I didn't change out the crossover. The Klipsch spec sheet I have (from 2014, after the Belle was discontinued) says that the crossovers are at 450 Hz (and 4,500 Hz), the same as the Klipschorn. Maybe it's a misprint or they were undergoing changes near the end of production? What would be the consequences of having the crossover between the bass and the midrange too high for the K-400 (mine is actually a K-401). Thanks for the tip on the F-20 DIYs....

If they (K55s) were in an high humidity environment would the innards be damaged? I don't know. Speculations? Just one more thing. My old room was smaller than yours, and the Khorns sounded wonderful from the main listening position. I had 4" thick professional (1" to 2" thicker than consumer grade) Sonex foam (shaped like anechoic wedges) covering almost the whole wall behind me. Now the Khorns are in a > 4,000 cu. ft. room and sound better, but not spectacularly so -- the main advantage is a much wider listening area.

We have many reasons to believe the 8 mic set up Audyssey runs should provide very good EQ across hundreds of potential correction points. It uses a proprietary process with "fuzzy logic" (a good thing) to weight the results from the mics, that is better than just averaging them. It is also better than the single mic technique or the three mic technique that people used to use. The mics should be placed as Audyssey recommends unless a) there is usually a single listener (you) b) there are usually 3 or fewer listeners, sitting very close together (e.g., cheek by jowel on a couch). Under those conditions, the mic positions should be clustered closely around the listener or listeners. The one caveat is that, for various reasons Mike explains in the link I gave you ( GUIDE TO SUBWOOFER CALIBRATION AND BASS PREFERENCES [and more] ) people often hear a little less bass than they would like. So, most people use a subwoofer boost of a few dB, made by turning up the knob on the sub itself (not in the AVR; reason in Mike's link), and done AFTER (& ONLY after) running Audyssey. The SUB should be placed (BEFORE running Audyssey) in a place it has good boundary support for good boundary gain. That usually means near a wall, or even in a corner. Ears rule. All speakers should be within about 1 to 4 feet from a wall, to produce adequate bass with minimum effort (IMO). "Leave the volume in the middle," is just a starting point. Use the highest crossover on the sub box, and set the crossover in the AVR, instesd. Set phase to 0 BEFORE running Audyssey.

Well, there is what I might call a "Bold" and then a "Conserative" way to look at all this. Part of the idea is to set things up so your mains (fronts) aren't asked to do more, and more difficult, work than they have to. Crossing over lower than optimum increases distortion and risk to the main speakers. For instance, the woofers in your R620F Towers, at only 6.5" each, are asked to cover the range from 38 Hz to 2,000 Hz, before crossing over to the tweeter. Those little woofers may protest a bit if asked to produce 40 or 50Hz at THX's 105 dB peak level at the Main Listening Position. Also, they are direct radiators, which makes them a little more subject to modulation distortion than horn loaded speakers (like your tweeters, or the Klipschorn, La Scala or Klipsch Jubilee) would be. Since you have a subwoofer, that is a golden opportunity to let the sub do the heavy lifting, and free up your towers to handle the middle and upper bass, as well as the midrange. Your perceptual mechanisms (including ears) are much less sensitive and critical at the likely upper range of the sub, than they would be near 2,000 Hz at the upper range of the woofers in your towers, so if a few notes intermodulate, in the sub range, causing unwelcome sidebands which are harmonically unrelated, at least it isn't in your ears' most sensitive zone, plus many of those potential sidebands would be above the range of the sub, but since they are produced mechanically (partly through Doppler effect), would never be born. I'll try to find something that explains this better to attach. Anyway, relative to your two towers: Bold would be crossing over at the F3 of 38 Hz + 10 Hz = 48 Hz. Conservative would be noting the F3 of 38 Hz, then go up an octave (double the Hz), making the crossover at 2 x 38 hz or 76 Hz. Anywhere inbetween that sounds good to you, would be O.K. If you decide to go conservative, since your AVR probably doesn't give 76 Hz as a choice, you could go to 80 Hz, the THX recommendation. When I calculated your crossovers in the former email, I built in a fudge factor, because almost all speaker makers base their F3 on the best possible boundary gain. So I started with 40 Hz instead of 38 Hz for the F3. Now, your center is more of a problem. I'd say: Bold would be 82 Hz (the F3 from the specs) + 10 Hz = 92 Hz for the crossover. Conservative would be 82 Hz, plus an octave (double the 82) or 2 x 82 = 164 Hz for the crossover. So, now you know how to do it. For your bookshelf surrounds, I get Bold: 78 Hz and Conservative: 136 Hz Here is an excerpt on frequency modulation distortion (some times called Doppler) which you want to restrict to areas in which the resolution of your ears is low, i.e. keep it out of the upper bass, midrange, and treble. One way it can arise in speakers is two or more tones (and music has zillions) "riding" back and forth on a speaker cone as it pumps to make a lower tone. So, keep bass in small speakers to a minimum -- send it to the sub. "The results were intriguing. Distortion of the flute was gross at 10mm peak diaphragm displacement and not in the least bit euphonic. On the contrary, Doppler made the sound as harsh as you might expect of a distortion mechanism that introduces intermodulation products. At 3.16mm peak displacement (below Fryer's suggested detectability threshold) the distortion level was obviously lower but still clearly audible; and even at 1mm it could still be heard affecting the flute's timbre and adding "edge." Everyone who uses a two-way speaker (me included) can take heart from the fact that most music signals are less revealing of Doppler distortion than this special brew. But these findings undermine the view, widely accepted in the last two decades, that Doppler distortion in loudspeakers is not something we should trouble about. Having done the listening, I side with Moir and Klipsch more than with Fryer, Allison, and Villchur on this issue—something that may come as no surprise to anyone who has heard the effects of low-level jitter and sees where the Fryer criterion appears in fig.2. . It has often been claimed that, with a two-way speaker, there are audible benefits to using a crossover frequency below the typical 3kHz, the usual explanation being that this removes the crossover from the ear's area of greatest sensitivity. But I wonder. Perhaps this not-uncommon experience actually has much more to do with the D word. A three-way solution is potentially even better. Three-way speakers bring new design challenges, of course, in particular the need to achieve another perceptually seamless handover between drivers. But from the Doppler perspective, having a crossover for the bass driver at 400Hz or 500Hz is, unquestionably, better." -- By Keith Howard, from Stereophile Read more at: https://www.stereophile.com/content/red-shift-doppler-distortion-loudspeakers-page-3#omWdye7G676SYg0g.99

Hi Nick, welcome to the forum! Your ears are the final judge. Try whatever you come up with with a great variety of both music and movies. The modal (play on words) crossover recommended by THX and others is 80 Hz. Your towers are adequate to about 40 Hz with proper boundary gain (i.e. within 3 to 4 feet from a wall, or closer) so a 80 Hz crossover for the front left and front right should be O.K. Your center poops out about an octave above that, so I'm not sure what you should do, other than experiment. Various people have suggested a sub overlap of at least 10 Hz (sub crossing over at 92 Hz for you) to, "No, no, you should have an octave of overlap (164 Hz for you). So -- your ears. By "overlap" I mean the -3 dB point of the front speaker (in this case, the center) would be 10 Hz below the sub crossover point to one octave below the crossover point. Your centers go down to about 80 Hz (a little above, actually), so, by this algorithm your crossover should be about 90 Hz to as high as 160 Hz. Audyssey (which Onkyo has now dropped -- maybe you have an old one?) and some other room optimisers will tell you what your in room 3 dB down point on a given speaker in its location in your room is. Sometimes it is called F3. Set all speakers for SMALL as you have done in the past. One thing about the center channel is that you want crisp dialog, so you may not want a lot of bass. There is an entirely independent Low Pass Filter for Low Frequency Effects (in movies). It is not a crossover, but it is often confused with one. Originally, the LPF for LFE was meant tobe set at 120 Hz so that every last dollop of noise artful sound effects the movie's sound designer put in would be delivered to your lap. The irony is that, in their great zeal, they load that on very, very thickly --- AND they don't dare do that with the lowest frequencies, because it is likely to blow some subwoofers to smithereens. So, some sub manufacturers have advocated setting the LPF for LFE to 80 Hz, instead of 120 Hz. The double irony is that with this lower LPF, the special effects may sound deeper, without the ramped up 80 Hz to 120 Hz range in the way. Counter-intuitive, right? The AVR mixes the regular deep bass (bass management bass) with the LFE just before passing them on. Here is a guide, by Mike Thomas, to practically everything to do with home theater audio. You may want to hit his Cliff Notes section first, since the main section is about the length of War and Peace ... a good thing. GUIDE TO SUBWOOFER CALIBRATION AND BASS PREFERENCES [and more] * The Guide linked above is a comprehensive guide to Audio & HT systems, including: Speaker placements & Room treatments; HT calibration & Room EQ; Room gain; Bass Preferences; Subwoofer Buyer's Guide: Sealed/ported; ID subs; Subwoofer placement.

Three floor standers, an acoustically transparent screen, and a good projector, with at least the center channel behind the screen.

These spikes may be available -- I hear she has retired.

FWIW Trivia: When but a child, I attended many 70 mm roadshows, when they had tube amps (often Ampex made for Todd-AO). We always arrived early (by unreliable bus) and I noticed that we could hear some very soft sounds from the speakers about 20 to 25 minutes before the overture started. When we started visiting projectionists after the showing, the answer we got was that they were queuing up the soundtrack.* We asked why they just didn't leave the amplifiers off until the sound was queued up? They said the Todd-AO technical playbook advised warming up the amps for about 20 minutes. * For the first two films, the sound was gorgeous, and, in some cities, was on a separate full coat 35 mm magnetic film, traveling at high speed, containing 6 soundtracks. Later films had all 6 magnetic tracks on the main picture film.

Electroacoustic OCD. Listening, wrapping yourself in music, tends to diminish it. When you get to one of those plateaus Schu mentioned, stop reading audio magazines, audio advertisements, magazines, websites, audio Youtubes, etc. and don't start again until something breaks.

And perhaps power transformers also may make a difference with bass dynamics? I don't know, just speculating. Also, a person who was banned from this forum, but very bright and well informed, maintained that warm-up time was important for power transformers.

MMPIs tend to be a bit elevated on both coasts, but that makes for rich variety and diversity, all channel net, creativity, and mental cross fertilization.

In California I'll bet there are many lawyers at the starting like, ready to take such inequities to court. In Oakland, people in Montclair (moderately wealthy) had the very ugly clusters of no parking (right in front of their own houses) signs removed. I don't know, but I think the same happened in Piedmont (very, very wealthy). In our middle class neighborhood, a neighbor said, "Say what?" He demanded that ours be taken out. They were slow about it, so somebody used an excellent saw that didn't mind cutting metal in the wee hours of the morning. Rumor has it that some people heard it and put pillows over their ears (we were used to strange sounds in our neighborhood, like a few days after we moved in, a voice from the sky -- police helicopter -- barked down at us, "residents, go into your houses, and lie down on the floor -- take your dogs with you -- there may be gunfire"). In any case one of the signs and its pole was gone by morning. Most of the others were removed in the following 1 or 2 months. When we finally left that neighborhood, our ~~1,000 cu ft house, built (by amateurs?) in 1928, with a sloping front room floor (disclosed and obvious) sold for $525,000, about 16 years ago. Zillow's zestimate is now $804,000. When we moved to a mid-sized town in Oregon, where homes of twice the size sell for half the price, our daughter compared notes with a girl in the new neighborhood. That girl used to live somewhere in LA. The both agreed that they sort of missed the sound of gunfire at night.

... today there is no Draft, Ireland may have decided it's better to talk than fight, Vietnam is quiet & apparently stable, and we are in the midst of radical change once again. May we have health, love, peace and Joy!

Is that a Crown R to R up there? Loved mine.

Write a short, to the point, email, without a lot of background, to both The Home Theater section of the Klipsch forum.... and ... Klipsch Support When they get an email with a lot of blank screen showing, they may think it's easy, and answer it first. Separate points, like this:

Obviously, a way to avoid WASPS is to frequent areas where there are very few white people, and hardly any Protestants.