bi-amping la scala II's

[colterphoto1]

" I wonder how big the LS would be if it had no size constraints? Would
it makes sense to add an extra flare section to the front of the bass
bin, making the horn longer and wider, if you wanted the "ultimate La
Scala", whatever size it turned out to be?" - Pat

It would be an MCM stack! LOL

[DrWho]

Would 2 feet longer with appropriate width be enough, or are there other limitations in the conical horn design that would make it not a worthwhile experiment? If the horn extension was removable with metal clasps or latches, it could still be a portable speaker, only 2-piece.

The flare rate through the lascala is something like 90Hz (I've not calculated it myself)....extending the horn with the 90Hz flare rate is just gonna smooth out the frequency response, but not really give you more extension. Extending the horn with a lower flare rate might be able to extend the lows, but it's gonna have to be extra long to compensate for the high flare rate of the lascala. I think you'd be better off buidling from scratch (or going with an MWM).

That's just my thoughts though...I've not tried it, so I would be interested in anyone's results if they experiment with it.

[DrWho]

I also think that a lot of US are using more than an appropriate amount of sub and conditioning ourselves into hearing LF-heavy tracks because of it.

I personally run my subwoofage perfectly flat with my mains, which also happens to be very close to where I usually dial things in by ear. However, almost everyone that comes over always wants to crank up the sub a good 10-20dB depending on the music being played.

Good recordings sound great with a flat bass response, but the majority of recordings need the sub boosted a bit...sorta like a tone control. I think a lot of it could possibly come down to the subwoofer level used in the recording studio's control room. That's why I like to stick to an 80Hz xover at home....because then I can adjust my subwoofer volume to theoretically match whatever was done in the studio.

[jdm56]

The bass response of the Lascala is like a -6dB or so bass shelf. Flat from the 400Hz crossover down to 100Hz (except for the big peak at 150H) and then like 6dB down from 90 to 50Hz. Boosting the bass bin by 6dB so that the deepest lows of the LF matched the MF/HF section is going to result in a very muddy sound beacuse the entire region from 100 to 400Hz is now gonna be 6dB too hot (and then like 13dB too hot at 150Hz).

My LS2's, out of the corners, with no subs or EQ, and measured at the listening position, were essentially flat down to 200Hz. They dropped off below that point: By 100Hz they were down about 6dB. By 50Hz, they were down 9+dB, with no usable response below that. Granted, every set-up is different, but unless you are lucky enough to have a very synergistic set-up, or don't care about flat response down to 30Hz or so, biamping, EQ, subs, or some combination of the three is required. Just my humble opinion, of course. That said, properly sub'd LS2's are my favorite heritage speakers. (I've never heard "cornscalas", "jubescalas" or jubilees.)

[DrWho]

The bass response of the
Lascala is like a -6dB or so bass shelf. Flat from the 400Hz crossover
down to 100Hz (except for the big peak at 150H) and then like 6dB down
from 90 to 50Hz. Boosting the bass bin by 6dB so that the deepest lows
of the LF matched the MF/HF section is going to result in a very muddy
sound beacuse the entire region from 100 to 400Hz is now gonna be 6dB
too hot (and then like 13dB too hot at 150Hz).

My LS2's,
out of the corners, with no subs or EQ, and measured at the listening
position, were essentially flat down to 200Hz. They dropped off below
that point: By 100Hz they were down about 6dB. By 50Hz, they were
down 9+dB, with no usable response below that. Granted, every set-up
is different, but unless you are lucky enough to have a very
synergistic set-up, or don't care about flat response down to 30Hz or
so, biamping, EQ, subs, or some combination of the three is required.
Just my humble opinion, of course. That said, properly sub'd LS2's are
my favorite heritage speakers. (I've never heard "cornscalas",
"jubescalas" or jubilees.)

What equipment did you use to measure? And how much of that could have been influences from the room?

One
of the problems with measuring in-room is that your microphone usually
ends up around 3ft off the floor and about 5ft from the
ceiling.....which will give you big notches at around 95Hz and 57Hz.
Changing the mic height can shift that around. Also, pulling any
speaker out of the corner can introduce other notches corresponding the
1/4 wavelength distanes there too....so a lascala that is a couple feet
from the front wall has a total of around 4ft from the wall to the
mouth. That gives you a big notch at around 70Hz.

Btw, I
agree....LS2's + serious subwoofage is extremely impressive sounding. I
could be happy with a rig like that, but I'll never be caught with just
the LS2 on its own (not for my music anyway).

[colterphoto1]

Three of the best Indy systems (myself, Trey, Roger) utilize LS mains with the Klipsch THX sub system. A match made in Hope!

[Islander]

Three of the best Indy systems (myself, Trey, Roger) utilize LS mains with the Klipsch THX sub system. A match made in Hope!

And they take up less room than a pair of MCMs! And even less room than a pair of MCMs and a sub.

Well, maybe not Roger's 7-LS setup... []

[Islander]

One of the problems with measuring in-room is that your microphone usually ends up around 3ft off the floor and about 5ft from the ceiling.....which will give you big notches at around 95Hz and 57Hz. Changing the mic height can shift that around. Also, pulling any speaker out of the corner can introduce other notches corresponding the 1/4 wavelength distanes there too....so a lascala that is a couple feet from the front wall has a total of around 4ft from the wall to the mouth. That gives you a big notch at around 70Hz.

Thanks for that info, Mike. That explains a few things. I've always had a dip between 45 and 50Hz and a peak at 85Hz in my room, neither of which I seemed to be able to correct. Shouldn't the microphone be at the listening position? My ears usually are around 3 feet above the floor when I'm sitting in my listening chair.

Also, neither of my JS speakers is in a corner, since there's a baseboard heater along the left wall and there is no right wall, since the room opens out to a hallway. Both are along a wall, toed in at around 30 degrees, directly toward me, and the nearest rear corner of each speaker to the wall is 5 inches (the other rear corners are about 15 inches from the wall). Closer to the wall gave more uneven bass response, and further out gave no improvement over the described position.

[jdm56]

What equipment did you use to measure? And how much of that could have been influences from the room?

One of the problems with measuring in-room is that your microphone usually ends up around 3ft off the floor and about 5ft from the ceiling.....which will give you big notches at around 95Hz and 57Hz. Changing the mic height can shift that around. Also, pulling any speaker out of the corner can introduce other notches corresponding the 1/4 wavelength distanes there too....so a lascala that is a couple feet from the front wall has a total of around 4ft from the wall to the mouth. That gives you a big notch at around 70Hz.

Btw, I agree....LS2's + serious subwoofage is extremely impressive sounding. I could be happy with a rig like that, but I'll never be caught with just the LS2 on its own (not for my music anyway).

Well, uh...yer typical audiophool-issue Radio Shack analog spl meter.[:$] ...With the corrections for that devices known deviations from flat response factored in, thank you very much.[] And of course the room was a factor. The room is always a factor. Anechoic measurements, while convenient for engineers (no offense), are pretty much irrelevant to the end user, other than for comparison purposes. And yes, mic and speaker placement must affect the figures; but I listen in a real room, a reverberant space; not an anechoic chamber. So I put the mic wher my big, fat head is, and I put the speakers where they sound best. It's messy, but I don't know any better way...because at the end of the day, I really don't care how a speaker measures under anechoic conditions. I care how it sounds in my room.

Ya know, I think I could be happy with an LS2 on it's own (no subs)...if I had too. As long as I had a pre with a good bass tone control that didn't muck up the lower mids too much. I actually tried my LS2's that way for a bit, and while I did like the sound, the knowledge of what I was missing was too much! Subs and LS2's are a killer combination -- provided you don't mind spending that much money and giving up that much floor space!![*-)]

[Islander]

Subs and LS2's are a killer combination -- provided you don't mind spending that much money and giving up that much floor space!!

Get black La Scalas. They start to look smaller after a while, and that's not just me. Other black La Scala owners have mentioned it too. Maybe that's an unexplored sub-field of audio psychology...

On the plus side, they never sound any smaller, which is great!

[DrWho]

Well, uh...yer typical audiophool-issue Radio Shack analog spl meter. ...With the corrections for that devices known deviations from flat response factored in, thank you very much. And of course the room was a factor. The room is always
a factor. Anechoic measurements, while convenient for engineers (no
offense), are pretty much irrelevant to the end user, other than for
comparison purposes. And yes, mic and speaker placement must affect
the figures; but I listen in a real room, a reverberant space; not an
anechoic chamber. So I put the mic wher my big, fat head is, and I put
the speakers where they sound best. It's messy, but I don't know any
better way...because at the end of the day, I really don't care how a
speaker measures under anechoic conditions. I care how it sounds in my
room.

Yikes, surely not using test tones? REW is free
and allows gating of the impulse response....it's a great way to get
much better correlation between the measurement and what we perceive
(provided you do the gating right and interpret the results correctly).

Music
doesn't
consist of steady sinewaves that never change, so the steady
steady modal distribution doesn't correlate very well to what we hear
with music. In fact, everything outside the Haas window gets perceived
as the "reverb" of the room and can be consciously ignored, allowing
one to focus on all the sounds inside the Haas window....which would
consist of the direct (anechoic) sound plus all the early reflections.
Time gating lets you see the direct sound + early reflections
independant of the reverb and steady state modal distribution of your
room....which is the sound you really want to focus on when dealing
with tweaking a system for your room. In an ideal world, the content
inside the Haas Window would consist of only the direct sound....so
there is great merit in knowing what the anechoic performance of the
speaker is. If the reverb/late arriving
reflections are a source of annoyance, then they will need to be
treated in the time domain, which could also include speaker
positioning and polar response depending on the problem...so it's not
totally decoupled from the speaker, but looking at the impact on the
frequency response can be very misleading.

Btw,
engineers care more about how something sounds than what the numbers
say....in fact, that which makes a number a good number is the fact that it sounds good.

[Islander]

Music doesn't consist of steady sinewaves that never change, so the steady steady modal distribution doesn't correlate very well to what we hear with music. In fact, everything outside the Haas window gets perceived as the "reverb" of the room and can be consciously ignored, allowing one to focus on all the sounds inside the Haas window....which would consist of the direct (anechoic) sound plus all the early reflections. Time gating lets you see the direct sound + early reflections independant of the reverb and steady state modal distribution of your room....which is the sound you really want to focus on when dealing with tweaking a system for your room. In an ideal world, the content inside the Haas Window would consist of only the direct sound....so there is great merit in knowing what the anechoic performance of the speaker is. If the reverb/late arriving reflections are a source of annoyance, then they will need to be treated in the time domain, which could also include speaker positioning and polar response depending on the problem...so it's not totally decoupled from the speaker, but looking at the impact on the frequency response can be very misleading.

Wow, I actually understood most of that! Time on the forum is time well spent.

[Coytee]

Time on the forum is time well spent.

Or you're turning into a nerd. Do your friends still talk to you or do they always happen to have somewhere to go?

[]

[Islander]

My friends are all here. I never have to go out. Or shower. Or shave. What day is it? Is it summer yet? I want to go outside when the weather gets warm.

[Philip McDonald]

On 8/28/2009 at 10:38 PM, Islander said:

My friends are all here. I never have to go out. Or shower. Or shave. What day is it? Is it summer yet? I want to go outside when the weather gets warm.

 

[Philip McDonald]

I’m 100% with you buddy,I know I’m only about 15 years to late but so what, 

never truer in todays world 👍😂🤷‍♀️

thr best of these days are definitely behind us