garyrc

Big city dwellers should remember what happened to Calhoun's crowded rats. They were not necessarily having existential crises, but were "sliding down the behavioral sink," as Tom Wolfe would have it, as are many denizens of the megalopolis. Some grass of any kind might help.🤪

Some of each, some both. Of course, everyone is flawed, but that doesn't mean we can't improve the situation. Too often, minorities and protestors of any group, quite often justifiably feel "The peace they keep isn't our peace," (Goodman, Making Do). They need to know, and some need to be reminded, that their job is not to determine guilt or innocence, or to mete out punishment, but to bring those they have a legitimate reason to believe have committed a crime before the bar of justice -- even though it itself isn't always quite just. I'm open to the idea of decreasing the number of cops, and mightily increasing the quality, psychological screening, and training. And, yes, having undercover, highly trained operatives to root out agents provocateurs of any stripe. The use of community organizing, social workers, psychologists, and the rest should be tried, with various methods to be compared, in a great variety of socioeconomic and ethnic locations, with as much internal & external validity as possible, always with an eye to individual rights and our common humanity. I like the idea of cops who agree with demonstrators protesting and marching with them (with impunity).

Yes, we have some allegedly 400 years old ones a short walk from our house.

And let's give every penny we save on Social Security to the billionaires. (😖)

We went from living in Oakland, working in San Francisco (few can afford to live there now) to retiring to Oregon. No Sales Tax -- so helpful in buying stuff. Weather not so bad, get to see snow a few days a year, fall colors. Beautiful sky and clouds, less pollution, thousands of migrating geese flying over, and (in a smallish city) deer dropping by to munch on our plants, as well as visitors of other kinds: many, many kinds of birds, squirrels, chipmunks, raccoons, wild turkeys holding up traffic while they delicately cross the street, snakes (who are grateful for the rats), spiders (some pretty large), carpenter ants, and one cougar. Everything is green, green, green, with more shades than we knew existed. Nice houses twice as big at half the price! State Income tax higher in percentage, but on a retirement income .... Property tax higher in percentage, but property valued at a much lower figure than would a newly purchased home in California. The Left coast (naturally) and a ways inland is modernly Liberal (except for places like Medford), and the East is more Conservative. But the full range is nearly everywhere. Unbelievably friendly people. No talk of "Californicating Oregon." We vote by mail, or by drop box if we missed the deadline, and have for years and years. Every religious group one can imagine, mainline liberal Protestants and Catholics, a few conservative Evangelicals, Russian orthodox, Mormons, Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, with what we call the Midnight Monks, who shop in saffron robes late at night at the local supermarket. Not as many cultural attractions as in the S.F. Bay Area, but where is there, outside of New York? We do have a little theater, another on campus, a symphony orchestra, artists and art fairs, old geezers in the demonstrations and on the picket lines, bookstores, etc., but little night life for young people. We talked with a neighbor, who had lived in Los Angeles, and we agreed that we rather miss the sound of gunfire at night.

Exactly!

R.I.P. He was a favorite.

I would use a good subwoofer, with the Forte III probably crossed over at 40 Hz, where, according to the Stereophile, July 16, 2019 review, the Forte III has a peak of about 3.5 or 4 dB, according to my eyeballs, and has a pretty smooth peak, averaging 5 dB from about 41 Hz to 150Hz, which might make a nice, but not extreme, punch. By matching a good sub's level to the Forte III's at 40-ish Hz (+4 or +5 dB), you might produce a bass rise similar (but more subtle) to the Harmon Curve that many people prefer. "Fig.4 Klipsch Forte III, anechoic response on tweeter axis at 50", averaged across 30° horizontal window and corrected for microphone response, with the complex sum of the nearfield woofer and port responses plotted below 300Hz." -- John Atkinson, Stereophile Of course the "port" he refers to is a 15" passive radiator that works kind of like a port. I'm not suggesting relying on Stereophile. I'm still grumbling about them measuring the Klipschorn outside, in a driveway, perched up on a furniture dolly. Clearly, while the new one has closed backs that make it O.K. to toe in, or out, a bit, it would still benefit from, and probably require, both room gain and boundary gain. It's hard to say what was going on in their minds. But, the last comment in the measurement section is worth quoting: " I keep coming back to the Forte III's astonishingly high sensitivity, one of the highest I have encountered. At typical listening levels, the drive-unit diaphragms will hardly be moving, which implies low distortion."—John Atkinson [italics and bolding mine]

Congrats! Just out of curiosity, why were you originally running it at 4 Ohms?

"Harshness" may be between about 800Hz/900Hz and 3,500 Hz, to my ears, with very harsh recordings (often those made during the first year or two of the CD era. YMMV. There was a "BBC dip" in some BBC speakers in the '60s through the '80s to cut down on harshness. This may -- or may not -- have been at about 2,000 Hz -- people fight about where it was. I guess Klipsch stopped using a K55 midrange in the Heresy I after a while, and changed to a K52K ... except I thought it was a K-53-K. Not at all sure about compatibility, but the Klipschorn crossovers may try to send a 400 Hz or 450 Hz signal through the K52Ks or K53Ks -- whatever they are. I don't know where they are supposed to crossover in the Heresy. It would be a shame to damage the Heresy drivers you love so much. I would skip everything else, for now, and phone Bob Crites, and see what he would charge you to test the Klipschorn midrange drivers you have, & also the tweeters.

Done. May God bless you both and give both of you healing and peace.

The small rubber washer that is between the midrange driver and the mid horn in both the Khorns and the Heresy I may be partially deteriorated. They may fall apart or crumble a little when switching drivers. Ask Bob Crites where to get new ones (you'll need 4). He may have a supply. P.S., I had Khorns in a room with a floor plan of only 9' x 11' 4" but with a high ceiling. They sounded wonderful from the one, narrow, sweet spot. The room was very diffuse and also had a thick rug and a big slab of 4" anechoic wedge Sonex behind my head (that was only about 7" from the wall). Of course, they sound better now, in my current big room.

Wow, it's still a mystery to me! I agree, a lack of bass balance can make mids and treble sound over emphasized. Sealing the Khorns into the corners may well help. Although it depends very heavily on the room, Klipschorns often show a dip at 60 Hz or 70 Hz, but recovers by the time it gets down to 48 Hz. I often run mine with the bass control at + 6 dB. I, too, listen mostly to classical music, and, occasionally jazz, and played in several orchestras. I get a lot of detail, and love what the mid and high frequency response does with orchestra bells, triangles that float in space, the purity of the treble end of the piano, brass, etc. To borrow from J Gordon Holt, the Khorns do, indeed, trigger my musical gestalt. As to violins, they sound just right about 60% of the time, close to correct about another 20%, and too "steely" about 20% of the time. My Pagannini set sounds incredibly good except for a single selection, V1, #1. Did they fix whatever was wrong after the first selection? Many times the gutty string sound is very detailed and very near what I used to hear in the orchestras (~~ 15' to 25' away), and also much like the sound of a violinist who performed for us in the room our sound system is in. They always have been difficult to record; Leo De Gar Kulka thought so to the degree that when he finally heard them right (using the Colossus recording system) he had to yell out in the control room, "The strings! The strings! Placing a highly absorbent pad where a yardstick placed flat on the front grille would touch the side wall, and reaching two feet farther into the room is recommended by some (see the post "Corner Horn Imaging" by @Chris A on this forum).

With many bookshelf speakers (especially inexpensive or midpriced ones) turning up bass controls, "would necessarily muddy up the sound," partly by straining the speakers (especially if the volume was high), partly by mid-priced amplifiers beginning to clip when loudly feeding acoustic suspension speakers that were 20 times less sensitive than my JBLs at the time (of course, in bassy passages, a bass boost of 6 dB would increase the power needed by 4 times, and, to begin with, to replicate the 107 dB at the main listening position the JBLs would produce with 16 watts in my big room, would take 250 watts into a "normal" speaker, and about 700 watts into, say, a B & W 801 F ), and, finally, partly because of extra woofer excursion caused by turning up the bass control, increasing frequency modulation distortion. If the bass control reached up into the midrange, the distortion would be increased there, as well. So, bass controls used with inadequate speakers did tend to muddy things up. With my big, horn loaded, JBLs, they did not. With my friend's medium sized EVs, with horn loaded ports, they posed no problem. With my Klipschorns, no hint of muddiness, with the Luxman 150 Hz turnover bass turned up, in addition to the Luxman Low Boost 70 Hz "on." At the time, Gary Gillum told me, "You won't need "Low Boost." Well I sure didn't need it, but I enjoyed using it, especially with Fanfare for the Common Man, which shook the whole house. But I did hear low frequency muddyness on turning up the bass with my friends' EMI, KLH, ADC, Infinity, AR, Wharfedale, etc., etc. During the '60s and '70s, most of my friends, adjusting by ear, ended up with a typical tone control setting of about "Bass +2," which would be anywhere between a 6 dB boost on the average, and an average boost of 8 dB (McIntosh C28), depending on the preamp. We were surprised at the consistency of this finding.

Welcome to the forum! "What's up with this?" Eliminating bass and treble controls is most definitely a step backwards, IMO. It was based on a misconception, namely that if the listener imposes no EQ on a recording, the music will sound both more natural and more like the mixers in the booth heard it, thereby preserving their artistic intentions. Also eliminating tone controls would eliminate some phase problems that can be generated by using tone controls. Well, tone controls with a neutral or flat position (straight up) that takes the tone control out of the circuit provides a true choice: no tone controls with no problem, or EQ if that sounds better to you than flat with a particular recording. As to sounding more like the mixers in the booth herd it, your speakers are different than theirs, your room is different than theirs, your electronics are different than theirs, your player is different than their playback equipment, your SPL is different than theirs, your ears are different than theirs, and I'll bet your preferences are different than theirs. Also, there are demonic pressures within record companies, on the part of the "suits," to tailor frequency response to what they think will sell best, as part of "the loudness wars." This often takes the form of cutting the bass, and often pushing up the midrange, sometimes causing harshness. See Chris A's many posts on fixing these recordings by "demastering," starting with The Missing Octave. You probably won't find an amp with a midrange tone control, but you probably won't need one because careful adjustment of bass and treble will probably suffice. Back when midrange controls were sometimes called "presence controls," Paul Klipsch, with his usual humor, suggested an "absence control." A marvelous integrated amp, the Luxman L580, is the best solid state amp I've ever had, and while it doesn't have a midrange control, it has bass and treble, with three different slopes each, plus a "low boost" 3 position switch, and many other choices. If you could get a used and tested one of these ... and rosewood, with a silver front ...

Well, not as much as you can, but: Thick Carpet Absorption at the first reflection points along the wall & on the ceiling https://www.gikacoustics.com/early-reflection-points/

Unlikely, but, the Heresies might not have revealed as much midrange distortion (different horn). Try some other recordings. Discuss with @Chris A and @BEC Treat the room Change the capacitors (or have someone like Bob Crites [BEC] change them for you}. Critesspeakers.com If you work at a desk, put a soft blotter on it, or, better yet, cover the top of the desk with absorbent material, leaving it hard only where your computer sits (to not block the ventilation intakes).

For the future, or even for now, would it be possible to put the screen and the front speakers on the other end of the room, or against some other wall, not the one with a fireplace, and use a third Cornwall for a center speaker? Best of all would be an acoustically transparent screen that rolls down electrically, and a projector. "Timbre matters." Ultimately, three Cornwalls (or three identical speakers) is the way to go. Some films rely on a good, full range, center speaker, because the music is spread across the wall. Others don't utilize the center as much for music, but they don't sound as good, IMO.

I used to have a 9 X 11.33 room (!) for my Klipschorns (but with an about 14 foot ceiling). They, too, sounded GLORIOUS from my single, centered seat. I had a wall covered with 4" Sonex behind me, and a good rug on the floor. The K-horns are now in a big room, and sound better in 5 other seats, but about the same in the sweet spot.

The dichotomy may be false. I listen to the music, including, of course, all of the beautiful overtones that make up the timbre of each separate instrument, and the dynamics, etc., all of which depend on the quality and idiosyncrasies of the equipment.

Antediluvians like me remember when nearly all layouts were that way, before people got paranoid about speaker cable length. My layout is still that way (but with relatively inexpensive low capacitance, low resistance 12 gauge cable, instead of the 14 gauge lamp cord my friends and I used to use which was not audibly different) and it sounds great. There are no pilot lights or LEDs up front to distract, no guests straining their eyes to see where the tone controls (!) are set, and no momentary obstructing of the speakers by someone walking in front of them after putting on a disk.

We used a phantom center for about 10 years, back in the VHS era. The LF and RF were about 4.5 feet apart, but we were about 7 feet away. The stereo effect was minimal unless some dialog moved off-screen, but the sound was very good, full, and more spacious than mono. If the Cornwalls aren't too far apart, phantom should work pretty well. Right now, we are in a 4,300 cu.ft. room, with Klipschorn LF and RF and a modified Belle Klipsch center, plus surround. While it is much better (increased clarity, better tonality, dynamics, etc.) most films were almost as absorbing with the old, little system. With music, no comparison, though.

Since people are posting results with various EQs, here is a pair of Klipschorns with Audyssey Flat (an automated EQ using hundreds of points), using 8 (Audyssey) microphone positions. The REW calibrated mic is slightly off-axis to both speakers, because the lines perpendicular to the baffle boards cross about 7 feet in front of the listener. IGNORE the red curve. I can't remove it; it is a Belle Klipsch in a very bad position in the room. I would run new curves, but my mike preamp conked back in 2011, and my calibrated mic won't work using USB. The Green and Blue curves are the Left and Right Klipschorns. What's the point? While the automatic Audyssey FLAT EQ fails to EQ the two Khorns absolutely equally, it does make the two tweeters (K77F) virtually identical above (and even slightly below) the 4.5K Hz crossover point. In practice, the Left/Right balance, overall sound, and imaging are all pretty good (to my ears). I've never been sure what causes the 43 Hz peak.

It is puzzling. Some FM stations with EQ in the line might make voices shrill, but most don't. Why you would have to turn up the mid gain, when the voices already tend to be shrill and thin is a mystery. Ti diaphragms have a rep (in some quarters) of being bright. Make sure your midrange horn is working and is undistorted with good program material on both speakers. Confirm the function of the woofers on both speakers, as well. One woofer not working would make the voices thin, since the male voice can be robust well below the lower crossover frequency of 600 Hz (?), in fact to below about 80 Hz with some men, like a basso profundo. So, a male (and some female) voices with extreme roll-off below 600 Hz (due to not working), could sound thin. Is the voice thin and shrill only when very loud? Did your system used to sound good? What has changed? Is it a different room? You could put a little more absorption in at the first reflection points, but I don't think that is likely to be the problem. Although, if the room is new to you ...

I think you should remeasure, following Chris A's advice (above), unless that's what you did, without telling us.🙂 Here is what HI FI News and Record Review found, above 200 Hz. Their technique could range from dreadful to superb. Please note that the vertical graph grid line to the right of 10K is, in all probability 20K, and the one after that 30K, ending with 40 K. IMO, the La Scala V should not be expected to respond above 20K, where it is 5 or 6 dB down, RE: 1K. At about 17K it is flat, RE: 1K, which is more than enough for your ears and mine. The overall graph, IMO, is 200Hz to 17KHz, 96dB to 104dB trough/peak, or +/- 4 dB, which is very good anywhere but in the advertising department. Once again, more than smooth enough (IMO) given that there are more important characteristics than frequency response (Chris A listed them somewhere in a forum post). HiFi News and Record Review's conclusion: "It makes music a living, breathing, tactile entity that has you on the edge of your seat, transfixed." Does the Behringer use a calibrated mic? Does it use at least 3 mic positions? Recommended by some in a real room. because moving the head (or the mic) a few inches can change the reading. Audyssey XT32, for instance, uses 8 mic positions, and does a proprietary fuzzy logic central tendency thing with them. I don't know what the top-of-the-line Dirac does, but people like it.