ALK crossover upgrade with photos

[DTLongo]

#21 - bonus photo. I just tossed in this stock picture from somewhere in to keep your attention Check back here in a couple of days or so for some listening impressions of the ugraded Klipschorns after I have more experience with them. .

[soundbound]

Very nice. Thanks for sharing.

[Blvdre]

Good thing Al's meticulous, or Pookie would've been all over him about his poor workmanship.

[Al Klappenberger]

Here's Tom taking the first picture of the stuff still sitting in my car. I told him two could play the candid camera game!

Al k.

[Al Klappenberger]

Tom's picture #19 is actually me taking a picture of the cable Klipsch uses to connect the K33 driver to the AK-4 network. Notice that it has a plastic core that makes the cable seem larger then it really is. I can't see what else it could be for! Anyhow, I cut the plastic core away so the actual copper would all fit into the spade lugs I brought along. The picture I took is below. BTW. The installation took from 10 AM to about 3:30 PM to do both speakers.

[Al Klappenberger]

Tom is not the only Klipsch owner in town with a feline quality control inspector. Here's mine. Daisey, also from the Salisbury shelter.

[JL Sargent]

Am I the only one who thinks Tom has a man crush on Al? [6]

[DTLongo]

Hardly! And not on Pookie, either

[Coytee]

Al K. removing the top cover

You actually let someone with Al's skills even touch a screwdriver? []

I'll bet it sounds killer!!

[Y]

[Rudy81]

I guess the ES networks come with the personal install by Al. I only have the ALK universal and Trachorns and Al didn't come to my house. I feel slighted! :-). Nice work gents. Now all you need is a pair of JBL 2470's and you will be all set.

[Rudy81]

Al: Does the ES network not have the variable tap settings? Just curious, I used the mid tap settings quite a bit until I was able to dial in the mids.

[DTLongo]

Tom's picture #19 is actually me taking a picture of the cable Klipsch uses to connect the K33 driver to the AK-4 network. Notice that it has a plastic core that makes the cable seem larger then it really is. I can't see what else it could be for! Anyhow, I cut the plastic core away so the actual copper would all fit into the spade lugs I brought along.

I am not an engineer or anything such but I think I recall reading somewhere some decades ago that electrons flow more easily or efficiently along the surface of a round-cross-section wire conductor than through the center. IF that is true, then that may be the reason for the center core in the wire Al was examining. If that is true, the purpose of the core was presumably to maximize the surface flow.

Perhaps someone with more technical savvy can confirm this one way or another.

[JL Sargent]

Those crossovers are so impressive looking. I think you should have mirrored corners or such to show them off. Or maybe have the crossovers displayed on top, that might be cool too. They are downright massive.

[Oblio]

I am not an engineer or anything such but I think I recall reading somewhere some decades ago that electrons flow more easily or efficiently along the surface of a round-cross-section wire conductor than through the center. IF that is true, then that may be the reason for the center core in the wire Al was examining. If that is true, the purpose of the core was presumably to maximize the surface flow.

That is true, IF you are talking about a solid conductor. It is also one of the reasons conductor is braided, to increase the total surface area efficiently. My guess is that the insulator that gives rise to a hollow braided conductor may be used to reduce inductance.

[Al Klappenberger]

Several points:

Yes, every network I have ever offered, except the one for the Cornwall, had the ability to set the sqawker level.

-------------

The tendency for current to flow near the surface of a conductor is called "skin effect". It only happens at very high frequency. At audio it does not happen at all and certainly not at woofer frequency!

Al k.

[Rudy81]

Al: I had only asked because I could not see the variable setting wires in the pictures. Very nice networks.

[Al Klappenberger]

Rudy,

I think the reason you don't see the wires is because I changed the way I do it. Rather then run a wire from each transformer tap with a plug on each to a set of two terminals, I run two wires with plugs to fit the transformer taps. The other connections to taps 0 and 5 (the input) is also done differently. I use a heavy bare wire on ech to connect the 10 Ohm swamping resistor and the necessary wires to the rest of the network. That's the hared part. Running 7 separate wires and a plug on each is BORING! I actually got this idea from Dean Wescott, He does it in a similar way.

Al K.

[Rudy81]

I see. Very nice, a much neater appearance. Nice job as usual.

[DTLongo]

As promised at the beginning of this string, here are listening impressions of my Klipschorns with the new ALK Trachorns and ES crossovers. These are based on a cumulative ca. 12 hours of listening over three days to a variety of material.

Overall impression: The Khorns sound distinctly "sweeter" and fuller. There is greater, more precise separation of group-singing voices and of the inner voices of a symphony orchestra, particularly woodwinds. Plus, I encountered a major, pleasant surprise in the bass. The speakers sound fuller in the woofer range. I did not expect that, rather, I expected improvement basically in the midrange only. Al K. did say I would hear some improvement in the upper bass. It's counterintuitive and I don't what is the exact cause, but perhaps it is because of Al's default setting holding the midrange back 6 db (the level is adjustable).

Anyway, the Klipschorn woofers seem now seem literally to have "bloomed" and to be much more in the action than they were before. In fact, need for a subwoofer is now eclipsed. I am running the Khorns now as much without as with my Velodyne S1500R sub. The sub still comes in handy to "excavate" some deep-low to augment program material that is otherwise bass-shy.

Some specific listening examples:

The Beach Boys - Endless Summer: One hears each of the voices such as really to sense the presence and the different voices of the individual performers.

Other vocal music (Dean Martin, Dolly Parton): fuller sound and greater realism, they're truly in the room with you.

Piano music: greater fullness, realism and tactile presence.

Symphonic music. This is my forte, my primary listening. I am especially closely familiar with the sound of a local professional symphony on whose Board of Directors I sit, the Mid-Atlantic Symphony Orchestra (www.midatlanticsymphony.org). Since 2006 I have been making DVD's of selected MSO performances for archival and promotional purposes, using a Sony DCR-SR100 camcorder. .These are non-professional recordings using the camera's own microphone, which captures a commendably clear and articulate sound. Compared with the pre-ALK Klipschorns, the same recordings of the MSO sound sweeter with more precise instrument definition and separation, and fuller in the bass. Before, I had to crank the subwoofer to pull out bass to round out the sound. Now, the sub is essentially superfluous.

Other symphonic:

Boston Pops - Leroy Anderson's "A Christmas Festival." There is a passage where oboe and clarinet are playing in unison. The ALK upgrade separates the instruments so you can hear each. I had never before perceived that particular stretch as involving the two different instruments. Now I hear that clearly. Later in the piece where some really deep symphonic percussive bass comes in, the Khorns now pump that out way down low. They didn't before.

Acid tests: the famous Telarc Tchaikovsky "1812" with the Cincinnati Symphony and the cannon shots, and the Telarc Saint-Saens Organ Symphony #3 with the Philadelphia Orchestra. With either, no subwoofer necessary! 1812 - The strings shine, they are luminescent. One has a sense of hearing actual multiple violins rather than a generic string sound. The non-cannon-shots orchestral deep bass thumps and crescendi are tactile. The cannon shots themselves come through the Khorns as excitedly as you can imagine. In fact, I have never heard this recording as thrillingly reproduced as it is now on the new setup, since sometime in the 1980's when I heard it through 1500 watts into a set of then-$40,000 Stonehenge-like Infinity Reference Standard speakers at a now-defunct retailer called Excalibur in Alexandria, VA.

The Organ Symphony - Same general impression about the strings and about overall smoothness and precision as above. Plus, the opening and closing fortissimo portions of the Third Movement, played at volume, literally took my breath away. This was real, wall-shaking, pants-flapping sound, no kidding, like I had never heard before through those Klipschorns. Yet all undistorted and pure.

My "Mighty Klipschorns" are now just that. They now whisper and roar palpably more clearly, precisely and satisfyingly than before.