garyrc

Thanks for all of the responses. Since I really can't afford many professional diffusers, I'll experiment with home made, plus redirectors, like those of Dr. Bonner. There is only one small area of the listening room / Home Theater (containing 6 chairs) that needs to be ideal, and the walls (and potential diffuser sites) are pretty far away.

I, too, loved 2001 a Space Odyssey, despite the trouble it got me into. In 1968, after seeing it in 70 mm San Francisco, we drove down to San Jose, repeatedly, to see it on a deeply curved screen that was 85 feet across the chord of the arc. The 70mm projection there was impeccable, so we sat dead center in the front row. Even that close, it was sharp as a tack. The grain was about the finest we'd seen. The image was so large that we had to turn our heads to read the main title (which wrapped around us) and the edges of the picture were outside the area covered by my big eyeglasses. The 6 channel, ultra dynamic stereo was beyond belief. Overwhelming! Dreaming-while-awake! No drugs were necessary! The movie introduced me to Thus Spake Zarathustra; somehow I'd missed it before that time, even though I had been steeped in classical and contemporary orchestral music all my life. The Goldsmith disk of the Alex North music is worth hearing. He constructed a more modern piece, clearly inspired by the dynamic emotional morphology of Zarathustra, which he evidently knew was on the temp track that turned out not to be temp at all. The North piece is outstanding, and has some of the numinous, hair-stands-up-on-the- back-of-the-neck quality of Zarathustra, but it's not Zarathustra. For all our sakes, I glad Kubrick went with the temp track. I've often wondered whether it was dumb luck on Kubrick's part that he happened on Zarathustra. There is a three note motif in Bernard Herrmann's score for The Day The Earth Stood Still that is reminiscent of Zarathustra, speaking of emotional morphology, and Herrmann, dubbed "The Man Who Knows So Much" by orchestra members during the recording of The Man Who Knew Too Much, certainly knew Zarathustra. Perhaps it was a homage, and perhaps that score impressed the young (23) Kubrick, so that when he was looking for temp track material for 2001 a decade and a half later, Zarathustra sounded particularly "right." 2001 became part of us, so when a friend came back from Alaska with some 16mm film left over, he asked me to think up a three minute, or shorter, film we could make with the kind of double system stereo soundtrack we used to run with these films with a synchronized tape deck. Unfortunately, I did think of something. The city streets are empty. A newspaper headline informs us that Marshall law has been declared; there is a 24 hour curfew [this was 1968, remember]. A low four octave rumble begins on the soundtrack, as the camera looks up at a tall, monolith-like building. More empty streets. A single peace picket walks back and forth. The Military Policeman is out of focus, and we hear the timpani of Zarathustra as, in slow motion, he comes into focus, rising out of a crouch, and swings his club in a wide circle over his head, bringing it down on the protester. With the repeating progression of the brass, and timpani, the sequence repeats. Suddenly, as the music builds, seams in his uniform start to burst, and long black hair bursts forth. Right at the most triumphant part of the music, hair shoots out of his head all over, and his helmut poofs up several inches on a mound of wiry hair. We catch a fleeting glimpse of his puzzled expression, through all that hair. In slow motion his club slips out of his lowered, hairy hand, and by the time it hits the sidewalk, it has become a tree limb. Obviously, this is a case of almost instantaneous devolution. During the last organ note, we see him, now an ape with traces of a uniform sticking to his fur, walking away from the camera, down the street, which is becoming the wilderness. As Gandhi said, "Violence makes man a beast." O.K., we thought it was funny, especially the way this reversal of 2001's Dawn of Man went so precisely with the music. The police, who were watching from a concealed location, didn't agree. Somehow they thought we were faking news footage, and announced this theory to the Oakland Tribune; the newspaper bought it lock, stock, and ape-man-in-uniform. We got out of jail 24 hours later, with the charges dropped, none the worse for wear. Recommended: The Lost Worlds of 2001 by Arthur C. Clarke, in which he acknowledges that, while the film depended on an idea in one of his earlier stories, the film and novel of 2001 were written simultaneously, "with feedback in both directions," and that much of the scenario was out of the mind of the ingenious "enfant terrible." At a conference on futurology, Clarke told us that when they started, Kubrick gave him a set of Joseph Campbell books, saying, "Here, read these." Also see The Making of 2001, by Jerome Agel.

2.1 channel home theater can be surprisingly good. We had a Klipsch passive subwoofer, two fairly cheap Yamaha main speakers and an ancient (1986) Yamaha 55 wt RMS receiver hooked to our VHS HI Fi, then to a DVD player. The sound was very clean and dramatically powerful, and often was more forgiving of bad soundtracks from the 30's, 40's and 50's than our two Klipschorn, Belle Klipsch center, and Heresy II surrounds are. Some movies hardly use the surround channels, or use them awkwardly, so sometimes they wouldn't be missed (and their sound is usually folded into the two channels in a two channel system). Still, you won't have the ultra spacious (but sometimes lacking in other ways) sound available from the multi channel stereo in films of many decades, such as Around the World in 80 Days (1956 version, originally 6 channel, 70mm), Amadeus, Fantasia 2000, etc.

Stepping aside from the physics, and moving into physiological psychology, one reason you may want "more than 8 of anything," in an orchestra is to increase (and thus manipulate) cortical arousal. Ever-changing and fairly large changes in arousal in the cortex of the brain (and elsewhere, e.g., in the skin -- Yawns or Goose Bumps -- PWK), which are under approximate control of the composer, or other artist, look more and more like an important part of the experience of art, especially music. Increasing Complexity of various kinds is one of the manipulations the composer can use to boost arousal. Massed instruments often sound incredibly complex, partly due to the human impossibility of everyone playing a certain part playing exactly alike. Add other parts with multiple players, and it's off to the arousal races. Personally, I find massed violins, seasoned by a large set of violas and cellos, to be a peak experience. You can guess (correctly) at variables used by artists to cause appreciable shifts (initially increases) in arousal, but it's nice that they were confirmed empirically by Berlyne and others. Some are: Loudness (massed instruments can be louder, right?), complexity, surprise (unbelievable transients, getting louder and louder; unexpected turns in melody or orchestration, unexpected discord), discord itself, novelty, uncertainty, ambiguity, brightness, size, and learned associations. Cortical arousal boost itself often produces pleasure -- and sometimes discomfort, the relief of which is pleasurable -- and what Berlyne called "arousal boost-jag" in which both the rise and decline are pleasurable. Listen to the end of Beethoven's 7th symphony, very loudly, for a some of each or these effects! The artist, especially those who work in temporally unfolding arts, like cinema and music, can be thought of (metaphorically) as manipulating (or, if we think of the artist as having a baton, conducting) complex waves and swirls of arousal. A nice job, if you can get it. A. E. Houseman's statement about poetry is true of all of the arts: "I can no more define poetry than a terrier can define a rat, but we both recognize the object by the symptoms which it provokes in us. Often, my skin bristles ... accompanied by a shiver down the spine ... there is a constriction of the throat and a precipitation of water to the eyes ... the hair of my flesh stands up." Berlyne would understand.

Allan & others, On the debate on whether the country's Founding Fathers & Mothers were religious: It seems that none (that I know of) were atheists in the sense we moderns use that word, and those that have been called deist (like Jefferson) certainly occasionally used theist language, at least metaphorically. My hunch is that most were less literalist than most devout churchgoers of the time, but had core mentalities that were pretty religious. It's interesting how people want to claim the Founders for their own particular religious group. Jefferson has, at various times, been claimed by Unitarians, deists, and "accepted the ministrations of the Episcopal Church," whatever that means, and described himself as a "disciple of the doctrines of Jesus" (Religions of America -- Leo Rosten). One characteristic of Jefferson, Adams, Washington, Madison, Franklin, and most of the rest, even the very religious, was that they were very strong believers in separation of Church and State. Speaking of another kind of Founder, Paul W. Klipsch evidently was a religious man, and left his local Presbyterian Church when he found out that particular local congregation still believed in a form of predestination. I wonder if he walked out over the backs of the pews, as he occasionally did. Probably not. I think he ended up with the Episcopals. Happy Fourth of July.

Are those diffusers that I see on the ceiling in the pictures from Hope (Pilgrimage) a special Klipsch design, or someone else's product? Does Klipsch sell them? Does anyone know of a website with diffusers that don't cost an arm and a leg? The best diffusion (and sound) I ever heard was in a room with a huge, very rough hewn and multidimensional, brick fireplace between the speakers. The fireplace reached the high ceiling. To simulate (or exceed) this, I would cover the center part of the wall between my Khorns and above the Belle center channel with RPG Skylines (I've seen pics of a room like this) if they just didn't cost so damn much. Would it hurt the diffusion much to put a purportedly acoustically transparent fabric in front of diffusers (like ACOUSTONE maximum transmissibility FR 94 fabric)? Half kidding, but then again .....If a diffusing area can be thus covered, maybe I'll just put in a big pile of randomly oriented broken bricks and stones, as deep (i.e., varied) from front to back as the 20" deep Belle, mortar the bricks/stones, spray paint them black, and make sure no direct light source is aimed at the fabric -- if this is too diffuse, or bright, wads of absorbent material could be added. That damn fireplace sounded good!

johnyholiday, Are these speaker enclosures variations / improvements on the old Karalson (Karelson??) front and back loaded horn-like enclosures of the late 1950s? Did you ever see the violin with the Karalson wings? I have an old Karalson my dad, a master carpenter, built for me with tender loving care in 1958. Last time I had a woofer in it is sounded pretty good (Impact!) but very little very deep bass. It sounded a lot like a JBL C34, with a little more punch (or peak!) around 90 Hz. The enclosure, now empty, is in my museum. I'll never part with it. How would you compare your enclosures to Belle Klipsch, La Scalla, and Klipschorn bass sections?

Max, In our tests with violin music the two Heresy IIs' tweeters were almost exactly the same height as the two Klipschorns' tweeters. The Belle (center channel) tweeter was somewhat lower, by whatever amount floorstanding Belle tops are lower than Klipshorn tops. I did wonder if the Belle was slightly less articulate than the Klipschorn because it was lower. Squatting down didn't help, but the Belle was closer to the thick rug, and maybe it sucked up some detail/treble. I also suspect the shorter horn for the Belle midrange, and wonder if the Belle is "toned down" slightly, compared to the Khorns. Normally, but not for these tests, the Heresy IIs are used as movie surround (5.1), and very occasionally as surround for music (through a Lexicon reverb processor). You're right, the Heresy IIs lose bass like mad when elevated, but they sound good with movies, and for ambiance for the occasional too "dry" CD. A funny thing happened on the way to using the Heresy IIs as movie surround speakers. We found that the whole soundstage (~~~ 200 degree movie sound environment) sounded clearer, more effortless, and more articulate with the Heresy IIs operating full range ("Large"), even though with weak bass because they are far off the floor, and depriving the Klipsch RSW-15 "movies only" sub of any of the bass assigned to the surround channels.

Thanks Max! I had a living breathing violinist in one of the rooms in which we listen to reproduced music. She played some nice, complex, solos. I wish we had a good recording set up, but we didn't, so we had to compare the sound of her live playing to a variety of commercial recordings. All speakers we listened to had the same type and model of amplifiers, etc. We found: 1) The real violin sounded pretty much like what we hear from many recordings, but ... 2) The violin had a little more upper midrange and a little less high treble than we usually hear over our Klipshorns. "Close miking on all of our violin recordings," I thought, but putting my ears close to the real violin did not produce the louder overtones we heard on the Khorns. 3) Her violin sounded surprisingly loud, louder than we usually play a recording of a solo violin, or the violin part of a concerto. So we checked ... at the listening position (about 15 feet away) a Radio Shack meter, c wt, "fast" gave us a needle swing centering at about 80 dB on the louder passages, with a few peaks pinning the needle at above 86 dB. We later listened to quite a few violin recordings, and we play most as much as 10 dB lower. Why? 4) The Khorns sounded more like reality than the Heresy IIs, and, surprisingly, the Belle. Khorns had the loudest overtones, and the most "detail," then the Belle. Both had slightly more prominent overtones than the real violin. The Heresy IIs sounded nice, but with slightly less on the top than the real violin, the other speakers, and less "immediacy" than either reality or the Khorns/Belle. 5) I'm assuming that this is not a matter of frequency response, or at least not frequency response alone, because in the published Klipsch curves of the late 80s (and reproduced by Garrison on this forum), the Heresy II is a bit smoother than the Khorns and Belle in the treble, and certainly not lacking in treble response. But the Heresy II sounds a bit attenuated in the highs, less "reach out and touch it" --- a violin over them seems less "there." To reverse Gertrude Stein's foul slander of Oakland, with the Khorns and the Belle, there's more "there" there.

Potted Transformers "Moisture Resistance: The potting compound guards the transformer in damp and humid environments" One McIntosh MC30 and one MC40 tube amp (which had gigantic, potted, power and output transformers) were taken in trade by Berkeley Custom back in the '60s. They had been on the floor in somebody's basement, and a higher level swimming pool leaked (big time) inundating the basement. The amplifiers sat under water -- chlorinated water -- for quite some time (I think it was a summer home, and nobody was around). Berkeley Custom hung them on hooks in the backroom, first one way, then another, so the remaining, now filthy, water could drain out, then toweled them off, and replaced some tubes. I think they replaced a very few soggy capacitors, and that's all. The beautiful chrome finish of the "deck" of the amps was totally corroded, and could not be remedied. Now this is going to sound like an urban legend, but I saw them, and I heard them through Klipschorns. Not only did they sound great, but they sounded much better, warmer, airier, than the Marantz 80 wt/ch RMS solid state amp they had in the store.

Re: Luxman: Thanks jbsl and stormin. I wonder what happened to their American distributer to stores.

To jbsl, and anyone who knows, Wow, are Luxman components still available? I thought they went out of business, at least in home audio. I looked high and low in 2004, trying to replace one that self-destructed (after 24 years of hard use). Here's why I'm interested: The only tone controls I ever really liked were on a c1980 Luxman component; there were many choices of turnover frequency. I generally used the very highest turnover on the treble, which produced a very steep curve that had low magnitude --- at full clockwise (almost never used) it boosted by only 7 dB at 16K Hz (as opposed to 15 to 20 dB on many treble controls). For almost all recordings I used about a 2 O'clock position, with the highest turnover, which added a little spice to the Klipschorn K-77 tweeters in my room, mostly at 10K and above, sloping upward to a maximum of just a few dB (about 3, if I remember correctly) at 16 K --- very subtle, but distinctly audible, and very welcome. I used the bypass switch to compare, and nearly always preferred the slight boost with clean recordings. A few dull recordings were helped by more boost, but most remained the ears of sows.

Thanks, Daddy Dee, and Dean G, for the info. If anyone out there knows which way is most nearly flat, I'm still interested. With the Klipschorn AK-4 upgrade, I think the K-77-F is allowed to get 4,500 Hz, but with a very steep roll off below. I once had the somewhat similar EV T35s and x 36 crossovers allowing the T35 to get 3,500 Hz with a 12 dB/octave crossover, and never damaged the tweeters, even with very high SPLs. I hear that the K-77-F slope in the AK-4 is considerably greater than 12 dB. Steve Phillips (quite a helpful fellow) has called the latest version AK-5 twice, but I thought I picked up a nuance or two that "AK-5" might be a nickname. Too bad emails don't let us hear tone of voice. He did say that there is a little less tweeter, and he believes that all upgrades being shipped now are up to date in this regard. Mine is an AK-4, though, and that's fine. I would want to live with the AK-4 a good long time, and try it in our new music room (being remodeled -- slowly -- now) before making any changes -- if ever. I'm cautious because of what I went through with JBL years ago. They recommended a lower setting than that which would measure flat on one of their tweeters (without really saying it was somewhat attenuated compared to flat). On good program material I was constantly crawling behind the speaker and turning up the pot. Later, in a conversation with one of their engineers, he revealed that the flat setting was indeed higher, but too many people complained about screechy highs on LPs that were slightly distorted in the treble. He said they used flat with good master tapes. I turned the tweeter up to approximately flat and left it there, and my direct-to-disk, and other good LPs sounded much better. I tended to not play the screechy ones, or used those nearly extinct devices, the tone controls.

Thanks for all the help you have given me in the recent past.... Here are a few questions about KHorn stock upgrades, life of Klipsch stock caps, and EQ: I have AK-4 KHorn stock upgrades. Does anyone know: 1) Of the AK-4 and the AK-5 mod (lower tweeter level -- can be achieved by the minor change of losing a resistor in the AK-4) which one is the nearest to flat? I wonder if the mod is primarily a way to be gentle to bad program materiel by reducing treble slightly, while depriving the best program material of some sparkle? Does anyone know if the treble reduction (in the AK-5 mod) varies with the frequency within the K-77-F's assigned range, or just turns the whole thing down like a ("shelving" ???) pad? 2) I've heard that there is some EQ factory built into the stock AK-4s. Other than bringing each driver in at the correct level, and imposing the crossover slopes themselves, I wonder what's been done ... I've heard about the cutting off of two small peaks and one dip in the K-33-E range, but can anyone describe the EQ, if any, in the midrange and tweeter range? 3) For Klipsch stock networks, is it feasible to set up a very approximate cap replacement schedule? When should I check (how?) and/or change the caps in my new AK-4 stock K-Horn upgrade networks, in my year old Belle center channel, and in my 1988 Heresy II surrounds? 4) Do caps change because of age alone, use, or disuse? Thanks, Gary

Parrot, In answer to your question, in the orchestra, I was in the kitchen, i.e., I was a percussionist. Naturally, I became a fan of unrestricted dynamic range, shimmering cymbals, and bass with authority and depth. At home, I fooled around & improvised on the piano endlessly, but rarely with anyone else present. One advantage of being a percussionist is that there are many long rests, and, if you know the music, you don't have to count. During the rehearsals, we percussionists would slip out into the audience area during the rests and listen to the orchestra from various close-in seats. This, playing in many different halls, and listening to competing orchestras gave us a good sense of what live music sounded like. It sounded like music played through Klipschorns, and a little less so, through Paragons. It's interesting that you should ask what instrument I played, because when we went traipsing off to Hi Fi fairs, sound stores, and the like, we noticed a relationship between instrument played and speaker preference. At the top, there was more or less a consensus that the clean sound of the Klipschorn and the Paragon won out, but with less expensive speakers, the preferences were telling. The brass section liked JBL, Klipsch, EV, and sometimes Altec. The little EV Aristocrat, with the T-35 tweeter, did well and was less expensive than most. Violins, violas, and cellos liked Bozak, and the smaller Bozaks seemed more integrated to them than the Concert Grand. Upon discussion, we found that the preference for Bozak was 1) for the "wood sound" of the cello, and 2) Because the Bozaks had less of a tendency to make massed strings harsh or steely than other speakers. Nonetheless, we concluded that the natural sound of massed strings was well nigh impossible to record. For one thing, the gutty, "phasey," (?) marvelously exciting sound that seems to grow out of position differences, and slight time differences in attack on the part of the many players, is almost always missing. The first time we heard it reproduced was, once again, in our favorite 70mm 6 channel mag sound theatre, during the overture in Ben-Hur. Over the decades, we found that a few of us had been trying to recapture that sound, from any massed strings recording that presented itself, and from Ben-Hur in particular. The Lp (not even the true soundtrack, due to a contract dispute) sucked in this regard, as did the VHS, the Rhino CD, and the DVD. Until now. Finally, with PWK's "Wide Stage Stereo," two Klipschorns and a Belle in the center, I've got it -- but only from certain seats. I'm convinced that nearly any speaker that purports to be good, can sound pretty good if positioned and tweaked with tender care, in an acoustically good room. My friends and I almost always disliked the Bose 901 series, finding it muddy and lifeless. But I've been visiting Alphonso's Mercantile in Mendocino Village, CA every 5 years or so since he got his Bose 901s in 1972. Every time, the sound is great, incredibly natural, in a room that is an acoustical marvel, by design, or by accident. The little craft and music shop is a small, L shaped clapboard affair, overlooking an inlet in the ocean. He has a great music reference library, music from all over the world, and encyclopedic knowledge of classical and contemporary orchestral offerings. He introduced me to music I would probably never have otherwise known, like Kabelac's Mystery of Time. Whenever I buy CDs from him, it takes several hours to get them to sound as good on my home system. Some of us are getting long in the tooth -- I hope Alphonso is still there.

Thanks to 3dzapper and Marvel! 3dzapper, do you remember where you got your data? It agrees closely with my measurement of the amount and direction of comp applied by Rives -- exact agreement 10K and above, and within 0.9 dB from 5K through 8K --- probably normal measurement variation. The reason I don't like to use the Rives CD directly (instead of just noting with interest their degree of comp at their single frequency points), is that they use just a few single tones, rather than, say, 1/3 octave noise comprehensively covering the spectrum, with no gaps). Looking at the frequency curves PWK published in the mid 80s, for the entire Heritage line and more (Garrison reproduced them on this forum a few years ago), one can see that a single tone could be placed anywhere along a 7 to 10 dB peak / trough distance, and not be at all typical of its neighbors, or the mean elevation of that 1/3 octave. Since there is nothing magic about the center (as opposed to the average) of the 1/3 octaves, I can't figure out why Rives did that. Are there any other Radio Shack curves out there, particularly ones with a known source ? Can anyone recommend an adequate realtime analyzer for $500 to $1,000? I borrowed an old one that gave me outrageous elevations (up to 12 dB) above about 5K -- I don't believe it! Any experience with online software for FQ measurement? My goal is twofold: 1) to get nearfield and farfield response curves on my K-horns, Belle, and Heresy II surrounds (perverse curiosity, EQ temptations, and a desire to try the SMPTE curves for a small theatre) and 2) look at the response of the room at various listening positions, and make seat placement, diffuser, absorber, and trap adjustments.

I definitely remember the Aristocrat being advertised in very late 1950s catalogues (BA? Lafayette?) as a Klipsch design. In fact, it was in one of these ElectroVoice ads that my circle of teenaged instrumentalists first heard the word "Klipsch." My guess is that PWK let them adapt and miniaturize the corner horn in exchange for his use of some of their drivers. In about 1958, we visited Joe Minor's Berkeley Custom Electronics (a "hole in the wall" store, but the best anywhere in the San Francisco Bay Area, often visited by PWK when he was in town) and auditioned Klipschorns in stereo (from 15 ips two track tape). One of us described the sound as "free floating" (a good thing). We had never heard reproduction that so nearly resembled the natural sound of the traveling orchestra in which we all played, except for the sound in the 70mm Todd-AO version of Around the World in 80 Days(1956, ran almost 2 years in 70mm), with it's 6 channel magnetic sound (double system), reproduced over gigantic JBL theatre systems. Amazingly, Joe Minor's two Klipschorns, Marantz tube electronics, and tape source, sounded just about as impressive as 6 channel Todd-AO, and slightly purer and more effortless at times. Naturally, none of us could begin to afford K-Horns, but one bought Aristocrats, with an EV two-way speaker system. They, too, produced "free floating" sound, without the usual stodginess and groundedness (a bad thing) that the usual boxy sounding bass reflex and infinite baffle speakers of the time. The EV T35 tweeter (K-77) was cortex tingling. A joyful experience all around. The Aristocrat enclosure did quite well in the upper bass, but seemed to roll off very severely below 80 Hz (we never ran a curve), as did the popular JBL C34 and Karalson horn speaker enclosures. All three of these enclosures (with appropriate speakers) seemed to reproduce more effortlessly than all other speakers at the 1959 Hi Fi fair, except for the Klipschorns, and the JBL Paragon. The latter two were by far the most orchestra-like of all speakers there (including AR, the Bozak Concert Grand, and the EV Patrician). The Klipschorn seemed the best balanced by far, with much more realistic bass than the overall runner-up, the Paragon. The AR (1?) had smooth bass, but was undynamic, and, unfortunately, as muddy as hell. Musically, the Aristocrat held its own. I ended up with improved Klipschorns 23 years later, and never regretted it. Now, 47 years later, I'm about to install the AK-4 upgrade. I'll let you know what my family and I think of them after we have lived with them a few months.

I see that the three correction charts I just posted have well scrambled columns. Apologies to all, particularly to Mike Lindsey, because his chart is misrepresented in the scrambled columns. For those who may be interested, I'll write the data out linearly. For the following 1/3 octave points of 5K, 6.3K, 8K, 10K, 12.5K, and 16K: My reading of Radio Shack's free field C wtd graph, the compensation needed would be -4 dB, -5 dB, -4.2 dB, -3 dB, -1.8 dB, +1.2 dB. The corrections I measured on the Rives CD for the RS Meter are -1.3dB, -1.1 dB, -2.1 dB, -1 dB, +0.5 dB, 0 dB. In Mike Lindsey's post, he recommends 0 dB, +2 dB, +3 dB, +4.4 dB, +6.2 dB, + 8.5 dB

I see that the three correction charts I just posted have well scrambled columns. Apologies to all, particularly to Mike Lindsey, because his chart is misrepresented in the scrambled columns. For those who may be interested, I'll write the data out linearly. For the following 1/3 octave points of 5K, 6.3K, 8K, 10K, 12.5K, and 16K: My reading of Radio Shack's free field C wtd graph, the compensation needed would be -4 dB, -5 dB, -4.2 dB, -3 dB, -1.8 dB, +1.2 dB. The corrections I measured on the Rives CD for the RS Meter are -1.3dB, -1.1 dB, -2.1 dB, -1 dB, +0.5 dB, 0 dB. In Mike Lindsey's post, he recommends 0 dB, +2 dB, +3 dB, +4.4 dB, +6.2 dB, + 8.5 dB

Hi -- I'm returning to the forums after a break of a few years. I'd like to use my Radio Shack meter to measure the response of my Klipschorns in my room, and to help tune the room. I saw the compensation chart Mike Lindsey posted when evaluating the K-77 v.s. another tweeter, I've looked at the response curves Radio Shack published on their meter (and later removed from the meter's manual), and I also measured the difference between the uncompensated and special Radio Shack Meter corrected tones used by Rives on their Test CD 2. They are all pretty different above about 5K Hz and sometimes call for compensation in opposite directions! Mike, where did you get your chart? Are there other compensation charts out there? Looking at Radio Shack's set of response curves, I'm guessing that "FREE FIELD", C weighting, on axis would be the nearest to appropriate for nearfield measurements, because I assume that the "RANDOM RESPONSE" curve droops (therefore calls for more compensation in the form of adding positive numbers to the reading) due to sound (reflections) entering the microphone at oblique angles. The compensation needed when "FREE FIELD" is used produces speaker / room curves with the least elevated treble. Here are three very different compensation charts. The first column is the compensation needed derived from the Radio Shack response graph for C wt. Free Field, as closely as I can read it with a magnifying glass, i.e., it is a mirror image of the graph at the 1/3 octave points from 5K up. The second column is the difference between the uncorrected and corrected Rives tones, and the third is Mike Lindsey's, from his post. I haven't pasted anything onto the forum before, so wish me luck -- i hope the columns stay straight. THREE CORRECTION CHARTS FOR THE RADIO SHACK METER <?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" /> 5K Hz to 16K Hz (approx. the usual K-77-F rage) (Apply the corrections shown to the raw readings with the Radio Shack meter) Radio Shack Chart Rives Mike FREE FIELD Correction Lindsey's 5K - 4 - 1.3 0 6.3K - 5 - 1.1 + 2 8K - 4.2 - 2.1 + 3 10K - 3 - 1.0 + 4.4 12.5K - 1.8 + 0.5 + 6.2 16K + 1.2 0 + 8.5 Any ideas on 1) Why these are so different, 2) How to best use the Radio Shack meter to measure speaker and room frequency response? Thanks

I have four Klipsch products (Klipschorns, Heresy II's, SW sub, Promedia)and would love to recommend some specific speakers for a friend to audition, perhaps to buy .... But I can't seem to find a Klipsch PRICE LIST on the website. I would like to recommend that she locate and listen to the two or three most promising in her price range, but for that I need to know the List or Maximum price for the contenders. Where can I find such price list?