How Long is a Klipshorn Bass Section?

[ClaudeJ1]

Here's a composite of various curves in the chamber in Hope. Both the Khorn and Jubilee put out way more bass at 40 Hz. than the MWM bin.

[Guest " "]

Here's a composite of various curves in the chamber in Hope. Both the Khorn and Jubilee put out way more bass at 40 Hz. than the MWM bin.

unless I'm reading the chart wrong...which I could be...the chart compares Khorns in corners and Jubilee's in corners to MWM's not in corners...so the message I get out of this is that corners put out more bass than non corners.

[ClaudeJ1]

Here's a composite of various curves in the chamber in Hope. Both the Khorn and Jubilee put out way more bass at 40 Hz. than the MWM bin.

unless I'm reading the chart wrong...which I could be...the chart compares Khorns in corners and Jubilee's in corners to MWM's not in corners...so the message I get out of this is that corners put out more bass than non corners.

If you look at my curve, it was done in corners, in my concrete basement, 7-foot ceinlings, 13.3 feet apart with a 35 foot room depth. My MWMs contained 4 of the old style (square magnet) K-33's with the super low resonance. The ones Roy tested in the chamber had modern K-43's in them, so it's an apples and oranges kind of comparison, but my point remains about the K33 being the smoother driver (just trust me) and the additinal "effective horn length" that occurswith the corners/room gains is still way down at 40 Hz relative to the rest of the curve, whereas the Khorn bass clearly goes lower and has greater output at 40 Hz, refuting Grasshopper's comments.

I'm not trying to argue with anyone or mess up someone's quasi-religious beliefs about horns or the Klipsch brand itself. I'm just presenting the why and how I achieved great results in my room and why I still think even more highly of the Khorn bin and the vernerable K-33 woofer. They have withstood the test of time even though it is bested by the Jubilee's twin 12" motors and simpler folds. I'm sure if I had Jubilee bass bins, my story would be different, but keep in mind that the curve on large, straight-axix, Constand Directivity, very rare, Peavey MB-1 horn from 180Hz. to 1 Khz.blows away anything coming out of a LaScala, MWM, or Khorn bin, and yes, it even bests the Jubilee's curve from 500 to 1Khz. There's a reason why no Folded horn of any kind from Klipsch is crossed above 500 Hz. in the real world. Folded horns work and sound best in the BASS and maginally well in the midbass, which I prefer to call lower midrange. If you listen to a 200 Hz. it's sounds alot higher than you think. Most of the work done by any power amplifier is below that frequency on music, with extreme power going to the subwoofage. It's really expensive to get flat to 20 Hz. and not necessary on acoustic music, where 35 Hz. is plenty (almost too much for the vinyl guys and their record warpage and rumble). I do use twin large subs with lotsawatts for movies, but I find it muddies up the bass on music, hence my goal of building twin LAB horns with EQ as subs. But there is diminishing returns there for sure.

[mark1101]

Here's what you can do with a little EQ. MWM / K402 (TAD4002). Both channels shown.

[colterphoto1]

"If you look at my curve, it was done in corners, in my concrete basement, 7-foot ceinlings,"

-so then you have all kinds of room gain, negating any really meaning full data, other than 'these sound like this in MY room'.

[Islander]

Here's what you can do with a little EQ. MWM / K402 (TAD4002). Both channels shown.

Mark, that's an impressively flat curve, well, not even really a curve. Were you able to get similar results with the K-69 drivers?

[DrWho]

Basically the MWMs is
a 6-foot horn, while the Khorn is an 8-foot horn, so they go
lower.

The
khorn is a 5ft horn (58" or whatever).....and corner loading benefits
for the khorn will also apply to any other horn in the same corner. To
claim the Khorn gets an additional 4ft from the wall, but the MWM
doesn't is inconsistent logic. I never said there was not room gain from the MWMs.

Sure, but you said the khorn goes lower because it's a longer horn, but it simply isn't a longer horn.

The
length of the horn also has nothing to do with where you bought your
speakers, what drivers are in them, or even how you got them into your
basement and hooked them up. Heck, it doesn't even matter who helped
design the speaker or whatever other broken record name dropping you
want to do.

According to Roys chamber measurments of the Khorn and
MWM, the Khorn has 6 db greater output at 40 Hz. than the MWM, so your
statement bears no resemblence to Roy's cuves or to reality in my room.
Don't believe me, believe the numbers.

You need to learn
how to read measurements. Those measurements are showing the MWM doing
well over 6dB better than the Khorn. Find the plot that shows the Jub
in the middle of the chamber and compare that against the Jub in the
door. I'm working off memory, but I recall it being about a 15dB
difference at 40Hz. Now apply that transfer function to the MWM and it
is totally killing the Khorn.

Principles are the same, I just choose to make different tradeoffs

Principals and choice of tradeoffs are the same thing to an engineer that fully understands the tradeoffs.

Btw,
you've got a huge room mode at 38Hz. There is no reason a horn will
drop off at ~45dB/octave. If the khorn doesn't exhibit the same dip,
then it is because the khorn or microphone have moved relative to the
modal response of the room. I know this because of experience....not
because I want to twist the lines on a graph to say what I want them to
say.

As far as I know, modern theory is
the same as ancient theory. Jubliees have evolved in detail rather than
principle, just like any other horn or waveguide.

Modern
theory is not the same as ancient theory because the solution sets are
very different. Modern tools free up compromises that had to be made in
the past.

It's also a shame that PWK's beliefs from after the
80's aren't published. He very much became a fan of time-alignment, and
the interesting thing is that it doesn't invalidate all the data he
used in the past to verify his original claims...it just requires
looking at a different form of human aural perception than he was
originally focusing on. After talking to Roy, he seemed very convinced
that PWK would have eventually adopted a CD horn for the top too. But
regardless, my personal experience agrees with Roy that CD is the way
to go....and all of my reasons have nothing to do with combining the
wavefronts at the listening position.

[DrWho]

Btw, I just wanted to add that I would probably go with a Khorn over the MWM for the home (for purely sonic reasons). I would go with a Jub LF over the Khorn though...the entire 50-100Hz octave of the Jub LF has way lower distortion than the Khorn (I wanna say around 6dB). My reasononing would simply be that the MWM has way too much LF, and the folding of the horn doesn't maintain a good consistent impedance transfer (thus the craziness in the higher frequencies).

I'm personally going with tapped horn for 20-80Hz and straight tractrix midbass from 80-800 with a K402 on top.

[jwc]

I'm gettin a kick out of this thread...

I would take MWM's anyday over jubes or Khorn. Jubes easily over the Khorn.

jc

[mark1101]

Having had Khorns, Jub clones, and currently having MWMs, they were all excellent in there own right and all different. It is still my perception to this day that it is a very close contest of which playes LOWER, the Khorn or the Jub. This goes beyond chamber measurements and gets into what you actually hear in your home. IMHO the Jub was better because it fires right at you like a lascala and you feel more impact. Overall better bass. The MWMs have the BIGGEST sound of all 3 and while they don't go quite as low as the Jub nor Khorn, you can see my curves. I get the MWMs down there into the 30s easily. They are in corners. There is very little boosting going on. That is what you can get. That is 1/24th octave resolution with a 300 reading average. It is also smoothed. It is VERY clean sounding, and it does go low.< /p>

Claude, no offense but your curve from 4K on up is taking quite a dive. Why is that? Also, it appears that there are drop outs at your crossover points or other areas. Are your drivers out of phase, or of different sensitivities? It just doesn't look right to me. Again, I'm just going by what you posted. Please take no offense. I'd just like you to explain the anomalies so I can understand.

[mark1101]

Islander, As far as the K69s go, no not quite as flat but almost. The K69 dropped off on the top end. I always ran 3 way with a tweeter because I never was able to be satisifed with the K69 in 2-way. No matter what I did with EQ......I wasn't happy with the sound in 2-way. Looking back now, I was never a true 2-way believer until those TADs came to my house.

[Islander]

Good to know. Well, actually, bad to know. When I finally get a pair of Jubilees, I'll be wanting the TADs to go with them. Just like with bikes and cars, performance costs money. How fast can you afford to go? At least my dream speakers are much closer to affordable than my dream car, the Veyron... []

[mark1101]

Keep in mind, those were just MY comments. There are many satisfied Jub owners using K69s in 2-way. I was just always a dedicated 3-way guy.

[Islander]

Oh, good. I always had 2-way speakers until I got the 3-way La Scalas, which sounded great, but I found that going from them to the 2-way JubScalas was a big step up in sound quality. In my room, with my amps, with the 09/2008 Dx program, the high end sounds fine, with quite realistic cymbals and the like, so no grumbles here.

[DrWho]

I would take MWM's anyday over jubes or Khorn. Jubes easily over the Khorn.

I meant to clarify about using a single MWM vs a single Khorn when choosing the Khorn....just wondering if you felt the same way if it were just the single.

I was going to qualify further that I'd want EQ on the Khorn, but I've not heard what an MWM can do with proper EQ either. I'm not a big fan of the 50Hz "bloom", but then I can see how it would compliment a lot of music.

[DrWho]

Also, it appears that there are drop outs at your crossover points or other areas. Are your drivers out of phase, or of different sensitivities? It just doesn't look right to me.

Looks like every single pole xover topology I've ever measured....the acoustic centers shift throughout the passband in addition to the natural phase rotation of the driver, which prevents one from being phase aligned over a wide bandwidth. Low slope xovers have a wider region where the two drivers interact, which often forces one to choose where the phase is aligned. Getting rid of each individual dip will cause two smaller dips to each side. It gets a bit more complicated when you take into account that the driver impedance isn't flat either. It should also be noted that shifting the dips around also "steers" the polars around. This can actually be beneficial in live sound settings if you happen to have a xover frequency near a feedback frequency....steer the polar away from the microphone and you can increase your gain before feedback. In a home setting, you're changing the tonal balance and time arrivals of the indirect sound, which is why it is often far more complicated than just making it measure flat on-axis in an anechoic environment (unless it has flat polars, and then it accomplishes both at the same time).

[jwc]

I would take MWM's anyday over jubes or Khorn. Jubes easily over the Khorn.

I meant to clarify about using a single MWM vs a single Khorn when choosing the Khorn....just wondering if you felt the same way if it were just the single.

I was going to qualify further that I'd want EQ on the Khorn, but I've not heard what an MWM can do with proper EQ either. I'm not a big fan of the 50Hz "bloom", but then I can see how it would compliment a lot of music.

I can't really comment on a single MWM....not sure I would pick that over a Khorn or Jube

[djk]

A single MWM has nothing below 60hz in 2Pi.

(I made the mistake of putting in such a system in a dance club)

The full four-way MCM system is just OK for live music, but deep bass..................

Not really.

[ClaudeJ1]

Here's what you can do with a little EQ. MWM / K402 (TAD4002). Both channels shown.

I think you used more than "a little EQ." Besides, it looks to me like your microphone was fairly close to the horns when measured because a high end that flat at the listening position would drill holes in your ears. Flat power response usually shows a rolloff in the high frequencies at the listening posigion. But, that is one smooth curve nonetheless.

My curve is over a year old and doesn't represent what I have achieved recently, so I will post that when it's done. Right now we are dealing with severe medical issues in the family so this audio stuff has to take a back seat. Also, the reason I posted it was to show the NATURAL behavior of the MWM bins without EQ, not to show the ultimate flat curve.

[ClaudeJ1]

Oh, good. I always had 2-way speakers until I got the 3-way La Scalas, which sounded great, but I found that going from them to the 2-way JubScalas was a big step up in sound quality. In my room, with my amps, with the 09/2008 Dx program, the high end sounds fine, with quite realistic cymbals and the like, so no grumbles here.

Like I said in my prior post, the reason for the better sound was NOT the bass bins, but in the Large Format drivers and a better horn.......midrange again.

Mark EQ's his MWM bins and his TADs in the 402, which cost more than my entire 7.1 system, receiver included. I'm sure it sound way better than unequalized MWM bins, but if he's EQing that much low end on a short horn, the distortion must increase at least a "tad." LOL, but with 4-15" drivers, it's probably just fine.