garyrc

I don't think you'd want to lower the surround speakers. One issue is the height of the back of the couch ... does it block the direct path to your ears from the tweeter and midrange speakers? Was there a clear path to your ears when the surround speakers used to be on the sides? The illusion that there is a 360 degree (o.k., 240 in 5.1) curtain of sound around the audience is heavily dependent on the higher frequencies. The higher the treble, the more directional it is, and the more it is gobbled up by any soft surfaces, especially those that block the direct path. Also the ears are more sensitive to the so spatially important high frequencies coming from the sides, straight into the ear canal and surrounding ear structures, than they are to high frequencies hitting the back of the ear. The effectiveness of the surround image with your speakers in their new location will vary with the movie and the decisions the filmmakers made (see below). Did you try several films? The audio mixers for movies (artists!) have a dilemma when laying down the surround. In a real theater, there are multiple surrounds along the side walls of the theaters, and sometimes across the back. Those closest to any given audience member predominate (for that channel), and are somewhat above that audience member's ear level. The mixers are aware that for people sitting in the so-called "film buff seats" (somewhat closer to the screen than the self-selected seating area of the general public, with an image size, in most theaters, more like the size on the retina that the director sees through either a portable viewfinder or the display at the camera) the surround sound will sound like it is coming from a little toward the rear (since the apparent sound source area is pulled to the back to a very slight degree because the majority of speakers are back there, although fainter than the very few speakers located directly to the side, to someone sitting up front), but for those in the general public seating it will sound like it is coming from the nearest surround speakers, which are probably directly to the sides, with a more or less equal number of fainter sounding surround speakers in front of, and behind, their axis. Wow! what a sentence. Sorry about that. Anyway, if the mixers want to keep the surround for those in the film buff seats from sounding too much like it is coming from the back, they can allow a little more of the side sound to come through the front speakers up by the screen (usually behind the screen). This might help you, with your very rearward surrounds, because it would minimize the probability of a hole in the sound field. On the other hand, there may be virtually no surround sound coming through the front speakers, if the mixers decide to optimize the sound for the people sitting more toward the back. I don't know if the movies on DVD or BlueRay are extensively remixed to match a presumed Home Theater layout. Home theater layouts have the surrounds placed anywhere from straight to the sides (180 degrees) to, somewhat behind, maybe 220 degrees. I doubt if the mixers expect a 5.1 layout with surrounds straight behind the listeners. Good Luck!

Rjh65, As much as I love the K-horns, I would definitely not recommend a "blind" purchase under any circumstances. Hopefully you will be able to listen to a pair for at least an hour. The last time I was at that big audio store in Isla Vista was in about 1984. Sic transient Gloria. Oldtimer, While musicals are not my favorite genre (I favor classical, contemporary orchestral, and jazz), the few film versions of musicals intended for 70mm roadshow release have such dynamic, churning, huge orchestra presentations I thought the contrast between those clean dynamics and the K-horns revealing the distortion on the single distorted vocal in the same movie (Oklahoma!) would be a good example for someone considering K-horns for home theater.

If you really have a ceiling that is only 6.5 feet high, I wouldn't hold out for Klipschorns -- both Klipsch and Audio magazine (in a long, fairly positive, technical and detailed review of Klipschorns in the late '80s) say that Klipschorns do better in rooms with fairly high ceilings. Klipsch recommends 8.5 feet or more. I think it has (partly) to do with the tweeter sound bouncing off of a low ceiling too soon with the bounce arriving at one's ears before the sound from the mid and lows get there, since the mid/low horns are long, and the mid and low drivers are located at a greater distance. Yeah, the direct sound of the tweeter gets there too soon also, but the very early reflection from a too low ceiling just compounds it. This may or may not be a problem with Belles, because both the mid and low horns are shorter, and, of course, the tweeters are not up so high in the room. I don't hear a problem in rooms with high ceilings. With lower ceilings, high grade diffusion and/or absorption placed on the ceiling might minimize the effect. I don't know. Belles with the addition of a subwoofer cut in at a very low frequency (let the Belle deliver it's clean and impressive attack at 60 HZ and above) might seem better balanced than Belles alone. The sub would have to be capable of very high output to match the Belles, though. Mine works fine with 2 K-horns and a Belle. It's a Klipsch RSW-15.

Rjh65: You say: very reluctant due to certain owners saying they have no soundstage depth and have a harsh,strident, canned type of sound. My view: 1) soundstage depth: The orchestra seems to be seated between the very widely spaced speakers with a few instruments right where the speakers are. There is no exaggerated sound stage depth, but the depth seems about like that of an 80 piece orchestra I used to play in when I would lay out and go sit and listen from an audience position 2) I too have heard people complain of harsh, strident (but never "canned") sound, I don't often experience this with my K-horns, except on a few bad recordings. If there is microphone diaphragm crashing, overloaded mic preamps, over-recorded recording media (especially over-recorded digital) you will hear it! As i said in my former post, some other speakers seem more forgiving of bad recording. Also, you will hear a lot of things that some other speakers don't reveal, like the soprano's neclace rattling in Amadeus. When you hear Khorns demonstrated, make sure they are pushed all the way into the corners with a nearly air tight seal. Ask to manipulate the volume control, and play parts of some DVDs at "theater level." There used to be a great and huge audio store that carried and demonstrated Klipschorns, the whole Heritage line, in that college community near Santa Barbara -- is it Isla Vista? They were the first ones I knew of to carry a wide variety of room treatments. I'd be interested in knowing what happened to them. The former editor of Stereophile, JGH, said, "musicians who listen to records are increasingly (according to our mail) choosing Klipschorns over the products of the "high end" speaker manufacturers. It is because their priorities in sound reproduction are not as fouled up as ours ... they are not into any single aspect of sound reproduction; they want something to trigger their musical gestalt." Klipschorns trigger mine! I have heard many pretty speakers -- beautiful ribbon speakers, what-have-you but for the sheer dynamic realism that is important in home theater, the Klipschorn has it! If you get new K-horns, the Klipsch stock upgrades come with them, are part of them, The models (and included upgrades) from 2002 on seem to have a better rep than the ones before, For one thing they give the mid-horn a little less work to do. There is one foreign review (German?) of the revoiced and updated Khorn for which there is a link somewhere in this forum, There is also an older review by Constantine Soo of a Khorn three versions ago -- some people who have heard that version and the version with the AK4 crossover (2002 to approx 2005), seem to like the AK4 version better, so Soo's version may be worst case, and it is a pretty positive review.

Have you asked Klipsch for suggestions on how to hear a pair? With most movies, I love the impact of my Klipschorns, which are placed tightly into the strong, rigid corners, and wouldn't be nearly as effective if they were not. For movies only, I use a sub, usually below 40Hz, despite recommendations to cut it in higher. The Klipschorns are usually allowed to work through their full range, i.e., set on "Large." If I know a movie has outrageous bass down around 20 -30 Hz, and I'm going to play it loud, I sometimes set the K-horns to "Small" at the pre-amp control center, until I get the lay of the land by running the movie through once, partly to protect the woofers, but mainly to keep my 150 watt amps from clipping by surprise, and the clipping by products taking out the tweeters (150 watts into a K-Horn -- rated rather conservatively at 103 dB @ 2.83V @ 1 meter -- produces about the same sound pressure level, "volume," as about 3,000 watts into a typical home theater or audiophile speaker, rated at about 90 dB @ 2.83V @ 1 meter). With a good soundtrack, the K-Horns remind me of the immediacy, clean attacks, great transients of the best goose bump producing motion picture theater sound -- which in my mind includes the very warm, dynamic Todd-A0 and other 6 channel 70mm roadshow movies of the '50s, 60's, 70's, as well as about 75% of modern movies. The review of the Klipsch La Scala II in Stereophile comes fairly close to describing the sound of newer Klipschorns, except the K-horns go lower, and, I think, are allowed to have a little more on the top, since that would be balanced by more on the bottom. Bad soundtracks (a few harsh, over-recorded digital ones, or old distorted optical tracks) may sound a little worse on K-horns. Some cone or dome midranges and tweeters may be more forgiving. Expensive designs have supposedly eliminated this, but some medium priced cone/dome midranges and tweeters produce more "sidebars" than compression horn speakers, and if the extraneous harmonics are favorable, rather than unpleasant ones, they can mask some soundtrack harshness and distortion with a kind of artificial richness. I suspect some speakers and speaker materials are selected to produce a bit of pleasant and "rich" harmonic distortion. Or, maybe the masking happens because something else is happening that I don't know about. But with some, very good, very dynamic soundtracks, the Klipschorns sound about as good as I've heard a speaker sound. Here is an example of what can happen within the same movie. The overture and main titles of musical Oklahoma! sound terrific when cranked way up on the K-Horns -- they make everyone smile, tap feet, and on one occasion, dance -- and most of the rest of the movie sounds almost as good. This was a 6 channel (5 for music, one for surround) 70mm Todd-A0 movie of 1955, presented on DVD in 5.1. But a few bars of Gordon MacRae's singing on "Oh What A Beautiful Morning" are a bit distorted. If we take the DVD into another room and play it on good cone/dome speakers, the distortion doesn't really show very much, and might not have been noticed. But, on those speakers, the rest of the movie no matter how loudly it is played, including the overture, credits, and the tubas and trombones ripping the air between sections of "The Farmer and the Cowman" don't sound nearly as good, as dynamic, as cortex tingling or as chills down your back producing as they do on the Klipshorns.

I strongly suspect that there were at least 3 different "voicings" of the Heresy I, especially if you go back to the early '70s or before. One, I hear, was intended as a center channel between Klipschorns, and may have been differently voiced than other Heresies. Later PWK decided that a fully horn loaded speaker, such as La Scala or Belle, would be better as a center between Khorns, and the Heresy took off as a popular and affordable Klipsch speaker that would be used in pairs, as what we now call "main" speakers. Odyssey Records (c 1973 - 78) in San Francisco had a bevy of them mounted throughout the store, and that made it the best sounding record store in the Bay Area! I have heard dull Heresy I's that don't sound very "open," and I have heard brighter ones that sound more like Klipschorns in the midrange and, especially, the treble. Even though every (or nearly every) Heresy I had the same drivers for midrange and treble (but a different mid horn, naturally) as the Klipschorn, different Heresy I versions may have different crossovers, some with the treble more cut back, I'll bet. You will probably want to replace the capacitors with new ones -- as you may know, capacitors change as they age. A set of Heresy I of about 1975 a friend had sounded great, and bright enough. The Heresy IIs (very different drivers & horns) I use for surround are great sounding (my wife once said she prefers them to our Klipshorns on some music) and they may be flatter, but less exciting, than my friend's Heresy I's. I suspect the II's are more forgiving of edgy recordings than are the I's. Look up BEC and Dean (and others) on the forum, and see what they say. I assume that Klipsch thinks that the Heresies have been slightly improved over time, with the Heresy I not as good as the II, and the III best of all --- unless some of the changes were made to avoid the very expensive drivers in the Heresy I, a relatively inexpensive speaker. Also since the Heresy woofer limits the efficiency of the whole speaker, there was little need for the extraordinarily high efficiency of the original mid and high drivers --- unlike in the Klipschorn, which still uses a version of both drivers.

I was told by Klipsch service (about a year ago) that the electrical characteristics ("voicing") of the AK4 could be changed to that of the AK5 by taking a certain resistor out of the circuit, and that this conversion would let people hear "a little more midrange." I decided not to do it, and lost my notes as to which resistor. I wonder if this amounts to cutting back the tweeter? In the (highly positive) Stereophile review of the La Scala II, they complain that the tweeter is too soft. I wonder if Klipsch made a decision to soft pedal the tweeter in both the new Klipschorns and the La Scala II, to compensate for bad recordings that have treble that is too loud and/or too distorted. If so, I'd rather eschew those recordings and hear the good ones with sparkling highs.

Marvel, Sorry, didn't mean to cast aspersions on anyone's equipment. Perhaps there were changes made in the 3340S over the years. Mine was c1973-1974. I was recording a great deal of music with very quiet passages, as well as the spoken word. My 3340S was checked out by both a local repair guy and Teac, and declared normal, but it had more intrusive high pitched hiss than my former Teac, a Revox I compared, or the Crown. When switching between "Source" and "Tape" on all three recorders, there was a subtle increase in hiss on the Revox and Crown, and a more prominent increase in audible hiss of "tape" over "source" on the 3340S. With a 1K tone, "tape" and "source" were at the same level in all three recorders tested. All were set up for Scotch 206/207, and those were the tapes used. I remember that both the measured and advertised S/N ratio of the 3340S was only about 3 dB worse than the other recorders. The engineer who measured both the 3340S and the Crown for me said that the difference to the ear was in the spectral characteristics of the hiss .... over a wide spectrum their average noise was within 3 dB of the same level, but the peak of the noise spectrum was higher, and more in the ear's most sensitive range, with the 3340S. As you said, one could make fine tapes with the 3340S, and I would have probably not had a problem with music without many very soft passages and narration with the silent spaces between words. When not considering hiss, the three recorders sounded slightly different, but no one was superior in overall sound quality.

Sorry to hear that John Eargle has died. I think that at least one of his articles is in the loose-leaf Audio Papers collected by PWK. The Crown tape recorders of the 1970s did just fine down to 30 Hz at 7.5 ips, and not quite as low at 15 ips, but 15 ips provided better high frequency response, of course. I can only assume that the Ampex studio models were as good. Then there was the matter of so-called "Head Bumps," narrow band elevations of as much as 3 dB, that were conveniently ignored by advertising depts. The Teak 3340S had them, as well as hissing like a Puff Adder in heat, and the bumps drove DBX code/decode crazy. The Crown was bump free.

To Cask05. Thanks for your detailed reply. Yeah, the room rumble sounds like it contains some long reverberating bass -- so long that some of it is far removed from any discernible musical tone that excited it. If some of the old engineers of the '50s and '60s didn't filter out the deep, sub-musical bass on the grounds that it wouldn't be heard with the equipment of the day, I wonder why the people making the 21st century transfers of those old master tapes to SACD & CD don't filter it out NOW? They could do it quite judiciously. I'm thinking that in the '50s / '60s there may have been an infrasonic filter just before the disk cutter, but too far downstream to affect the master tapes now being used for transfer to digital. Otherwise, some of this mighty bass rumble -- the part between about 30 and 45 Hz would, even in those days, have been reproduced, with a little doubling and attenuation, by speakers like the Bozak Concert Grand, the biggest JBLs, the Patrician (?) with the huge woofer, and the Klipschorns, would it not?

A question for LarryC re: AK4 vs AK5 What, subjectively, was the audible change you noticed in going from the AK4 to the AK5, then back to the AK4? Thanks

Why is there so much "Room Rumble" from the original recording venue on some orchestral recordings, and not on others? It crops up on just a few modern recordings, but on some of my SACD Hybrids (played on a conventional CD player) remastered from great recordings of the 50s and 60s it is overwhelming, and I have to disconnect my sub (which is usually set to activate at 40Hz and below), but then almost as much of the rumble comes through the Klipschorns!

Wonderful decision! I hope, though, that they will still be available in the few stores that display them, so they don't vanish from the public consciousness! For a young, or new, consumer there is nothing like walking into a showroom, spying a pair of Klipschorns, wondering "what is that huge speaker?," then hearing the incredibly clean dynamics that none of the other speakers in the showroom can match! I'll bet that such accidental discovery is the primary way Heritage speakers are sold to new audiophiles. In any case, IMO, a condition for a dealer being permitted to sell any Klipsch product should be a training session in which they are made clearly aware that Heritage speakers exist (show them pictures!) so they don't echo the BestBuy employee reported by someone on this forum, who, on being asked if he carried Klipshorns, looked blank, then said, "All Klipsch speakers are Klipsch horns!"

Too bad that people who purportedly (and probably do) care about film didn't get in there and kick studio and manufacturer *** in the BluRay vs. HDDVD war, to uphold quality first .... people and institutions like AFI, The Academy, big name Directors [e.g. Scorsesee, who was active in the color preservation wars, or Woody Allen, who defended Black and White], restorers [like the guys who restored Vertigo, and Kevin B(something) who restored Abel Gance's Napoleon, and for that matter, Copolla, who sponsored the restoration .... A one page add, signed by all, in everything from Home Theater to Variety to the New York Times, plus personal phone calls and open letters to studio heads and manufacturers' CEOs might have had some effect.

I assume you've seen the old PWK ad of the '70s "A Little Heresy in the Church." It shows a single Heresy perched far above the altar in a large church. IMO, though, if any full voiced person is going to sing through your fellowship hall system, you'll need more than a single Heresy, so custom making something as you're doing -- or installing something like a La Scala II, may be the ticket. Perhaps a Heresy would give a soloist enough clean SPL to balance a room full of our squeaky Presbyterians up here, but you are in the South ....

I agree that some movies seem soft. In some cases they are movies that I have experienced as being sharp as a tack in the theater, so these particular movies were not softened by the original filmmakers for artistic reasons. Why is it that even with conventional, "low def" DVDs, some movies appear much softer than clips from the same movie in the "special features?" One possibility is that if the special features are in "full screen" and the movie itself is in an extreme aspect ratio, so there aren't enough pixels from top to bottom of an extreme letterbox image to provide much sharpness. I suspect this is the case with Ben-Hur. Ben-Hur's MGM Camera 65 (AKA Ultra-Panavision 70) aspect ratio is one of the most extreme ever used (approx. 2.75:1), so it is very ribbon like on the screen, with very few pixels from top to bottom to form the image. In the full screen special features, there are plenty of pixels vertically. In the theater, in 1959, with a very large, deeply curved screen and 70mm projection, one could see detail in every glistening pore! I'd be curious to know if Coulter and other photographers agree with the following: - Most 35mm film images from the late 1970s on, even after several generations (e.g. camera film or negative, internegative, printing master, print etc.) should have higher resolution that any digital format available in the home, unless the film has been abused, or softened for artistic effect. - Even films of the 1950s, if photographed on an especially large negative (e.g., 65mm), and printed in 70mm, would have higher resolution than HDDVD or BluRay, unless abused or softened. - In theaters, images from film prints can be many times as large in degrees of arc (i.e., the one place it counts -- on your retinas) as an ordinary HDTV, and still maintain sharpness. Theatrical digital projection is beginning to look very sharp, with close-ups as detailed as 70mm, but the ones I've seen seem to lack depth of focus ("depth of field"), and, so far, haven't been near as bright as the film projection of the 1950 & '60s with the old carbon arc projector light sources.

The La Scalas will have less bass, BUT with very good recordings they may sound more real (and more "live"), particularly with jazz, chamber, etc. With harsh recordings they may be too revealing of the harshness. This may be less true with the new(er) La Scala IIs -- see the glowing review in Stereophile.

Reply Edit Favorites Contact Are there some wall mounts that can be tilted down and aimed (as with a ball joint) that are strong enough to hold Heresy IIs, being used as surrounds? How about being strong enough to hold them in an earthquake? I've been told that tilted speakers as heavy as the Heresy IIs (unless specially constructed) would tend to pull apart unless given extra support on surfaces other than the mounting surface (e.g., more than just being supported on the bottom or back). Gary

I think that PWK decided not to loan speakers to magazines to review, after a mag produced a frequency response curve on a Klipsch speaker (don't know which one) that he had great difficulty duplicating. The speaker was designed to be against a wall (usual in those days) or in a corner. Finally, PWK put the speaker on a high stool, in the middle of a room, and got a curve like the magazine's.

Size (alone) may not be too big a factor -- within reason. I think the BBC ruled out rooms below 1,500 cu. ft. ,,, PWK used to prefer a 32 foot (or greater) diagonal, because he doubted that bass waves could be miniaturized. But it turns out that deep bass can be heard in small rooms, just attenuated and given choppy peaks and valleys by barriers that are too close. I had once had Klipschorns in a room that was 14 x 12 x about 9, with a sloped ceiling (non-parallelism can help). They sounded great from the sweet chair, good from elsewhere, and went down to 31.5 Hz smoothly (below the spec of 35), with decent sounding, but attenuated, output at 25 Hz. This result (fluke? The effect of extra firm walls and floor?) was a little better than I get with the same speakers in my current room, which is very large (about 4,500 feet). Shape may matter, in that you don't want an unseemly cluster of standing waves. Many people on this forum could help you look at the room proportions. See the many, many posts on acoustics by "mas." and others.

Are there some wall mounts that can be tilted down and aimed (as with a ball joint) that are strong enough to hold Heresy IIs, being used as surrounds? How about being strong enough to hold them in an earthquake? I've been told that tilted speakers as heavy as the Heresy IIs (unless specially constructed) would tend to pull apart unless given extra support on surfaces other than the mounting surface (e.g., more than just being supported on the bottom or back).

At one point, Holt (in the 1970s or '80s) was going to borrow a pair of Klipschorns and review them, because he said that so many musicians wrote the magazine saying they liked them. I can find no evidence he ever did that. Did he? PWK reported on a blind comparison between several highly reputed speakers and live instruments (all were invisible behind a scrim). I believe he said, "Reality came in third." Does anyone have a copy of this article or memo? The only part of Holt's comments I seriously disagree with is his view of the Baby Boomers: I don't really think we Boomers were spoiled, especially, just fortunate in some ways (attenuation of authoritarianism on our parents' part, raised in a relatively stable economy) and very unlucky in others (Vietnam, hypocrisy in our parents' generation regarding their best ideals -- ideals some of us took seriously, and tried to hold them to). We converted some of the negatives into positives (and blew others). In reality, we were so diverse that most of the negative and positive stereotypes apply only to small slices of our population -- and it's almost always true that it's not crowded on the leading edge. Of course, tragically, some of the worst of the Boomers are now in very powerful positions.

Yeah, I prefer "A Legend in Sound." Any manufacturer of high quality equipment could claim to provide "The Ultimate Sound Experience," which sounds like hype, but only Klipsch, McIntosh, and a few others could claim legendary status.

Can you also let us know how your new Accuphase compares with your old Luxman, overall, as well as in the treble, midrange, and bass? I've heard great things about Accuphase, but I'll never lose affection for the Luxmans and Macs that are past. I've had McIntosh tube amps, Dyna tube amps, Marantz SS, Luxman SS, Yamaha SS and NAD SS ..... In the midrange and treble, the best sounding were the McIntosh and Dyna tubes... Overall, taking the bass into account, the best sounding was the Luxman. The only one that sounded bad with Khorns was the Marantz SS, 80 wpc, c 1973 ... It was a bit hard and harsh, compared to all the others. I don't know why. If I wanted to baby tubes along, and if I wasn't a bit OCD, I'd go for the warmth of tubes in a minute ... but the reliability of SS helps me relax (pitiful, I know). The NAD 272 is fine, and almost as warm as the Luxman L 580, which self-destructed a few years ago and is beyond repair, according to someone who took $40 to tell me that.

I use digital for economic reasons, and because I got tired of having my 35 mm Nikon repaired over and over again. Most Hollywood feature filmmakers still use film --- it must be because of film's potentially higher quality, and the fact that if anyone ever comes up with a truly high resolution, high acutance DVD-like medium, the filmmakers will have a higher quality original (film!) of their current films to get transfers from. On a panel with George Lucas and others, Spielberg said he liked film, liked its feel, liked its smell, and that he would not go to digital, "Until George makes me." Sputnik: Great shot of your Nikon lenses! There is something about a lens .... Here is my favorite lens shot ... even the viewfinder lens is impressive! If the picture doesn't come through, I'll try again if someone will tell me how to get a picture on to the forum, I realize the reflection is via composite, but even so ... I believe this particular Todd-AO ultra wide angle (128 degrees) lens was about 9" in diameter, and with the 65 mm film moving at 30 frames per second (in the early Todd-AO), the image was great, even though the ultra-wide had a little distortion. Mike Todd reflected in his "Bugeye" lens.