Philosophical question for Khorn/LaScala owners

[Coytee]

(Looks like you had no trouble changing colors!)

Yep [Y]

I had to type it all in Word. Is that how you (or others) do the same? type in a word processor and then paste it to this little box I'm currently typing in?

don't get excited

You're cool with me, , even if I don't have your same approach []

[Coytee]

Nope. I use the WSIWIG editing tools provided by the forum software. You do color, fonts and text right in the REPLY box. It's choice you make in your profile somewhere.

Hot diggity dog!

You are once again, The Man!

Obviously, I've found it. Thanks for bringing that to my attention.

[Y]

[Don Richard]

I've owned the very large and the very small, and most of what comes in between. Keeping this in the Klipsch lineup, I had a good chance to make the Big/Small comparison myself. For big I had the Belles with fancy networks. For small, I had RB-75, and I had the RF-62. I had a variety of amps both SS and tube. I simply can't identify any advantage that the Belle had over those other speakers unless and until I decided I wanted ear-bleeding levels from one of the small 20W amps. Then, the Belle had a technical advantage of higher efficiency. Otherwise, the other speakers did perfectly well.

I've not owned Belles, but I've had Lascalas which are very close. I also had my Khorns at the same time. With regards to frequency response in the bass region, the Khorns walk all over the smaller horns. The HF was identical sounding, as it should be - same parts. With regards to convinence of placement and imaging, the smaller horn had advantages in the room I had them in. In a good room the Khorns excelled, resulting in me selling the Lascalas when I moved.

If you love 2W amps, or you have a Versailles kind of home, and you just can't get enough J.P.S. in your life, Klipschorn was built for YOU!

If one wants the widest frequency response coupled with realistic dynamics the Khorn is hard to beat, and a true bargain. If you have a good room for them, they will likely be the last 2ch speakers you will ever buy.

[Colin]

At first I was offended that DrWho would say “speakers are

by far the weakest link in terms of accuracy,” since I always thought of them

as the only bargain in audio.

1. But

let’s forget musical tastes and room size for the moment. Consider budget. Walk

into any big box retail store selling home theater with $500 and what can you

buy? Harmon Kardon is pretty accurate with sufficient power and features.

Certainly enough to get big ole horns to get up and dance, and most bass reflex

cone boxes too. In fact, there are plenty of modest sounding receivers in that

price range to choose from. Leave the box store and you have a lot more

choices. I am a big proponent of refurbished, vintage integrated tube amps

(VITA), such as those NOSvalves.com

refurbishes, with high efficient speakers. To me, this is a wonderful

bargain in sound quality. Between low

cost chip amps like Sonic and Trends, vintage solid-state receivers (like

Harmon Kardon twin transformers) and VITA, the tweaking audiophile can actually

get a lot of relatively good sound for a modest investment. Low cost chip amps,

vintage and new solid-state receivers provide very good measured accuracy within this limited budget.

2. Now,

let’s buy some speakers for the same price. A wonderful single driver speaker,

like http://www.omegaloudspeakers.com/products/

however is way out of this budget. There are even good sounding Klipsch Reference

speakers in that price range. Not perfect, no. But awfully good sounding

nonetheless. According to Klipsch engineers,

one of the highest values in their line-up is the RF-82. The

RF-82 covers most of the music spectrum (33Hz-23kHz) within a very accurate +/-3dB!

Yet a pair of them costs twice this $500 budget. The RF-82 provides very good measured accuracy, but at a

cost of twice this limited budget. My point is that to get good quality sound

on a tight budget, you have spend about twice as much on speakers as you

would on electronics.

3. Therefore,

in dollar terms, the good Dr is right; speakers are indeed weaker links than

electronics. Because speakers are weaker links (in sheer dollar terms) in the

audio chain, improvements to them are relatively more important than

improvements in electronics. The extra dollar spent on speakers makes more of

an improvement than the extra dollar spent on electronics (see Jim Smith

seminar at AXPONA).

The diminishing

marginal utility for electronics is greater than speakers.

The original question

In

other words.... if you could only make ONE change, would you prefer to

have your Khorns mated with a 'decent' preamp/amp or would you rather have your

smaller speakers mated with a fantastic preamp/amp?

Therefore, to answer the original question:

1. I

compared big ole horns with cheap electronics and cheap boom box speakers with

very good electronics (hence my link to my “Stereos, As They Relate

to Indoor Sport” article). “I will say that both combinations impressed me.”

2. I

have smaller speakers (Altec Lansing Ones with new 8” mid-range woofers). I

have heard them on incredible amplifiers (see Delta

Studio and Pass

X250). I have also heard both my Cornwalls and Khorns on mediocre equipment

(see nOrh’s SE9).

Even with superb electronics, the Altecs cannot do what the big ole horns do.

So I feel about my beloved Khorns the way Charlton Heston

felt about his guns: you can take them “From

my cold, dead hands!” Even with a low cost chip amp or vintage $5 Harmon

Kardon 330B receiver, the Khorns offer wide soundstage, sharp, detailed, undistorted,

crisp, clean, accurate, quick, dynamic, wide frequency response, delicate

highs, ringing metal instruments, musical, responsive, detailed, deep and smooth

sound.

[Zeke_in_KC]

I'd spend the cash on the speaker upgrade. My two cents.

And ROCK SOLID advice.

[Coytee]

And ROCK SOLID advice.

I'm in a quandry. I'm trying to decide if rock solid advice is better than sound advice or if sound advice is better than rock solid advice...

[]

[Dennie]

And ROCK SOLID advice.

I'm in a quandry. I'm trying to decide if rock solid advice is better than sound advice or if sound advice is better than rock solid advice...

Yeah, it would have been easier if it had been "Rock Solid Sound Advise"! LOL

Dennie [:S]

[DrWho]

For those who are certain that bigger is always better, I offer these 6 foot, 1500 pound Wilson's, which owing to their size, must be a lot better than Klipschorns, right?

http://www.avguide.com/review/tested-wilson-audio-specialties-alexandria-x-2-series-2

Just
because something is bigger doesn't mean that it's designed to the same
principals of another design where size is the limiting factor on
performance. I think I said that right?

Basically, physics will
show you that limiting the size of a speaker for a given target is
going to dictate things like polar response, distortion, frequency
response, phase, and whatever other audible parameters you want to
throw out there. The thing is, each of these audible parameters will
require less performance in other audible areas if you don't allow the
speaker to get larger....and even then, allowing the speaker to get
larger doesn't always help out either.

Anyways, posting a link
to something built to a totally different target doesn't demonstrate or
disprove the physics related to the size of speakers. You can't go by
size alone, but something that is larger AND designed to the same
principals should perform better if the designer knew what he was
doing.

[DrWho]

Therefore,
in dollar terms, the good Dr is right; speakers are indeed weaker links than
electronics.

Well I was thinking in terms of performance metrics, but I guess the dollar analogy works too []

You're lucky if your speakers are doing less than 1% THD, but it's a piece of cake to get 0.01% out of electronics. An unsmoothed speaker frequency response is also quite jagged, and the phase response is all over the map too. The tonal balance of a speaker is also more complicated than just the on-axis response because we hear the off-axis behavior at the listening position too. I'd put the tonal balance at about +/-10dB as perceived in a normal listening environment...whereas with electronics it's a piece of cake to be +0dB/-0.01dB over the intended bandwidth. It's also easy to get a very flat phase response with electronics too. Speakers will run into power compression quite early and create all sorts of transient artifacts...pushing the distortion easily into the 10% region, whereas the linearity of electronics is essentially flat until the point of clipping.

All I can say is thank goodness the recording engineers were also listening on speakers when making the album because then those speaker distortions can be taken into account.

[Don Richard]

For those who are certain that bigger is always better, I offer these 6 foot, 1500 pound Wilson's, which owing to their size, must be a lot better than Klipschorns, right?

http://www.avguide.com/review/tested-wilson-audio-specialties-alexandria-x-2-series-2

Just because something is bigger doesn't mean that it's designed to the same principals of another design where size is the limiting factor on performance. I think I said that right?

Basically, physics will show you that limiting the size of a speaker for a given target is going to dictate things like polar response, distortion, frequency response, phase, and whatever other audible parameters you want to throw out there. The thing is, each of these audible parameters will require less performance in other audible areas if you don't allow the speaker to get larger....and even then, allowing the speaker to get larger doesn't always help out either.

Anyways, posting a link to something built to a totally different target doesn't demonstrate or disprove the physics related to the size of speakers. You can't go by size alone, but something that is larger AND designed to the same principals should perform better if the designer knew what he was doing.

According to an owner of Wilson Audio products, the above referenced speaker is more accurate than Wilson's smaller ones.

[Coytee]

So what Don? That's not a test of the bigger is better hypothesis. "Bigger is always better" - implies the Wilson is automatically better than the "smaller" Klipschorn, merely because it is bigger. How it compares to some subset of smaller speakers is merely anecdotal.

I don't know enough technical stuff to know when bigger is better and when it's not. In the context of MY use of the word 'bigger', I'm personally referring to the sound being larger. It generally happens that it also correlates with the speaker being bigger so by extension, I'm talking about both.

I never knew how to describe it so I finally asked Roy the following basic question.

"If you have a Heresy playing 100db's to my seating position and a Khorn/Jubilee also playing 100db's to my seating position, why does the Jubilee sound so much BIGGER" (note, this is not to say louder since they are both qualified to be 100db's at the same location)

The following is an artistic representation of my understanding his answer.

These bigger speakers put out a wider dispersion of coverage. Meaning, if you look at the smaller bubble, we'll call that the sound from the Heresy. It is 100 db's at the EARS of the figurine (that's me waiving at everyone!)

As you move away from that exact point in space (where the ears are), the output of the speaker falls off. I do not pretend to know how quickly it falls off nor if it effects the balance of the sound although I do presume it affects the balance of the sound to a degree. I think this is why Roy focuses on constant coverage (even coverage?)

Anyways.... the larger bubble is also 100 db's at the same pair of ears HOWEVER it has a larger bubble and the larger bubble carries more sound impact/information (again, NOT to say loudness). They are the same loudness at the same location. It's only when you start to move around that the wider coverage of the .... larger speaker!... starts to show what it can do relative to the smaller one.

This is what I'm talking about when I'm talking about the scale of the sound. Heck... we all know that a 6" tall speaker might be able to knock out 100 db's at a certain location. It will not sound the same though when you walk around or are sitting to the side of that focused spot.

by the way, this drawing is of a LaScala pointed sideways. Sound is firing out in the direction of the arrow and those are the K77/400 that were so artistically drawn into the top section.

Ya'll didn't know I was an artist, did ya! [+o(] I'm having some prints made so I can sign them....for anyone interested.... I'll take Paypal [A]

This is probably my primary reason why I shoot for larger sound which is typically found in larger speakers....especially if we are dealing in the world of Klipsch and since most of us own Klipsch speakers and this is a Klipsch forum.... I think it's reasonable that the rule of thumb that bigger is better is very reasonable. (subject of course to room constraints, wife constraints & other constraints)

[Don Richard]

So what Don? That's not a test of the bigger is better hypothesis. "Bigger is always better" - implies the Wilson is automatically better than the "smaller" Klipschorn, merely because it is bigger. How it compares to some subset of smaller speakers is merely anecdotal.

But when the measured performance of the larger one also exceeds that of the smaller, the comparison becomes factual.

And the amplifier used thus becomes irrelevent in such a comparison, despite your anecdotal "evidence" to the contrary.

[russ69]

Coytee,

Back to your original question. What's the deal? Does the wife want her living room back? Details please.

[Coytee]

Does the wife want her living room back?

Yep, that about covers it!

[Coytee]

I wouldn't want to attempt to understand Roy's comments paraphrased

I'll try to rephrase it then (and perhaps butcher it again). Simply put, some speakers put out a sound front that let's just say, (although it's really spherical) might be three feet wide by three feet tall. If you are in this window at your seating position then you get the best sound. If you travel outside of this range then the "wall of sound" drops off. (perhaps dramatically, perhaps not?)

Other speakers where he designs them for 'constant coverage' are more aimed to have a 10 foot by 10 foot window of sound, even if at the same loudness. Again, the size I'm using is being arbritraily made up by me just to try to paint the picture (as indicated by the ovals above). put a bit differently, some of their speakers might put out more of a flat "wall" (think a pool table coming at you) of sound.

I know I'm probably butchering it a bit but I would certainly think that someone with your background would have already been up on this concept to the point that you could correct what I'm trying to say.

When it comes to any discussion of soundfields and speakers, DISTANCE from listener to speaker is an essential piece of information. Without this information it's difficult to compare anything

If this is related to my above scenarios, I believe I prequalified my comments with at the same listening position (if you are not referencing those comments then please ignore my clarification).

it is VERY possible to be sitting "too close". And, when that happens, the sound is totally unnatural in a very bad way. You can actually "hear" the individual drivers woofing, and honking and tweeting. I find nothing at all attractive about that. Likewise, if you sit far enough away from speakers (like 50 feet), you probably can't tell one speaker from another, or eveen a speaker from a live player. This was shown 50 years ago in Villchur's "Live vs. AR-3" demonstrations which were done in an AUDITORIUM!

I absolutely agree with you 1,000,000,000,000,000,000.00 percent!!! This alone was the most significant "WOW" factor I think I experienced when I replaced my Khorns with the Jubilee's. Being a 2-way, we dropped one driver and the sound focused together much closer/quicker. I have numerous repeats of the same comment here on the forum where I accidently stumbled onto hearing my Khorns from about 30 feet away (actually measured). They sounded DISTINCTLY better there than they did while in the same room. (direct line of fire from left Khorn to bottom of stairs, they are in the same "space" there is no room divider)

Once I put my Jubilees in their spots, I quickly went to this same 30' location to hear how much better they sounded. Interestingly, they did not. they did however, sound much better while IN the room, about 10' away as contrasted with the Khorns.

I always attributed this to the steep crossovers I had (Al K's Extreme crossovers) in my Khorns verses the signal aligned of the Jubilee's. Ben cleared me up one day and told me how to test his comments for myself. He said it was not the signal alignment that was making this so coherent over the Khorns but rather, the fact of dropping a 3'rd driver and going to a 2-way. This is my first time ever having a 2-way speaker.

I've had my LaScalas outdoors and again.... 40/50' away they sound like you say....a point source. Up closer and you can hear the different drivers. This is why I want to take my center channel LaScala to a 2-way JubeScala. I would also do it to my other Lascalas (which will become rear channels) however, I've owned them for 31 years and right now, can't bring myself to cutting them up, even if I know they'll sound a lot better.

One of the "ideal" speaker paradigms is a point source. A perfect point source is infinitely SMALL, not infiinitely large. Of course, there are no point source speakers, but there are speakers which attend to this paradigm in some way or another. e.g. full range, electrostatics, coaxials, and so on.

Yep...full agreement here as well. Of course, there are tradeoffs with a genuine pointsource and in that context, I'm personally not interested in the tradeoffs. That said, the Jubilee is the closest thing I've ever heard to a pointsource. Even when in the room with them it's MUCH harder to discern the different horns, especially when compared to my old Khorns.

I am only arguing against the physical hypothesis that "bigger is always better" with speakers. As with so much in life.....IT DEPENDS.

We're still cool with each other! [Y]

Given the experiences I've personally had (and none of them have been with genuine point source or electrostatic or coaxial or full range in my home) nothing I've ever heard at the stores (when they used to exist) ever had the scale of sound of the Khorns (again, I do not refer to loudness)

Today, I have that same scale in the Jubilees but, because they are a signal aligned 2-way, they come much closer to that single coherent wave front than anything I've ever heard.

Something that gave me a kick once... when I first heard the Jubilee's in Hope. There was a crowd in the room. They had a single Jubilee playing mono in the corner. Groups went in, listened...talked...left and the next group went in.

While there, I remember overhearing someone mutter that he didn't much care for the sound of the speaker..."everything sounds like it's coming out of that top horn"

Mike and I talked about this later on as we drove home and Mike made the point that this person wasn't getting it.... that to have the sound seem like it was only coming out of the single horn (the K402) was actually a GOOD thing because in essence, he was describing it as a point source!

[DrWho]

Anyways, posting a link
to something built to a totally different target doesn't demonstrate or
disprove the physics related to the size of speakers. You can't go by
size alone, but something that is larger AND designed to the same
principals should perform better if the designer knew what he was
doing.

But that's not what you said just a few days ago, is it? Here, let me remind you, ok?

From my perspective, the physics of audio clearly shows that bigger is
always better when it comes to accurate reproduction of the source
material...however, that assumes some things about other parts of the
system that may not always be true in every application - and price
point will certainly play a role in that too.

I
knew if I posted the Wilson cone speakers, people would immediately
backtrack on their bigger is always better idea. It shows that you
have to be very careful about attempting to turn vague generalities
into physical axioms.

Well you conveniently only bolded part of that quote, so allow me to point out what you left out:

From my perspective, the physics of audio clearly shows that bigger is
always better when it comes to accurate reproduction of the source
material...however, that assumes some things about other parts of the
system that may not always be true in every application - and price
point will certainly play a role in that too.

Granted,
that's an incredibly vague statement, which is why I qualified my
comments further about needing to stick to the same design approach.

I
actually thought someone would make a comment like yours after I made
the post, but I figured it would lead to some discussion to flesh out
the rest of the thought completely.

Somtimes bigger is better and sometimes it isn't.

I'll
grant you that, but I'll also argue that it is a rather meaningless
statement. I might as well just go put a 0.5" tweeter mounted to the
side of my house and call it a very crappy full range system using a
huge cabinet.

I
think Don's comment hits the nail on the head...comparing the smaller
Wilson speakers to the bigger Wilson speakers using the same design
philosophy is the only honest way to judge the merits of speaker size
being a limiting factor on performance.

Btw, I just wanted to add that when talking theory, you need to assume everything else is ideal, otherwise it's just a meaningless exercise in rhetoric.

For example, listening to a thousand driver 100 cubic foot cabinet inside a closet is not a meaningful scenario.

[artarama]

At the end of the day, you gotta look at everything from a total system perspective...and I really think the first place to start is with the source material and listening habits of the listener since that will pretty much dictate what everything else needs to do.

I like this statement!

Everyone's system is only as good as their weekest link and most times with this group that "link" is going to be the source material.

[DrWho]

In all speaker alignments, the efficiency of the transducer is
inversely related to the volume. This would include the volume of the
rear chamber as well as the size of the horn, etc...Hoffman's Iron Law
describes the behavior for your direct radiators and then classic horn
theory explains the horns.

The reason efficiency matters is
because the heating of the voice coil is one of the many forms of
distortion in a speaker. Also, in order to increase the power handling
of a driver, larger gauge wire needs to be used which in turn increases
the weight of the moving mass for the driver. Another option is to use
a large diameter voice coil. The extra moving mass then requires more
windings on the voice coil, which increases its inductance. Both the
mass and inductance are going to cause the high frequencies to roll
off. The roll off really isn't an issue since its minimum phase except
for the fact that it now requires more power for the same SPL. Another
disadvantage to increasing the inductance of the driver is that the
inductance changes as the diaphragm moves, which causes the HF corner
to slide around with excursion and creates distortion from the
inductance modulation.

If you need less power to achieve the
same SPL (by making the cabinet/horn larger), then you can take weight
and inductance out of the driver. If you already had enough bandwidth,
then this would free you up to add some weight to the diaphragm to
reduce cone breakup issues.

The polar response is another area
where increasing the size of the system results in
improvements...especially when it comes to horns. When the speaker is
smaller than the wavelength it is reproducing, then it will have no
control over the polar response. Increasing the driver diamater isn't
always a good thing because you run into cone breakup issues earlier,
and it increases the mass and all that mess, but running multiple
drivers or increasing the size of the horn mouth are two ways to extend
pattern control to lower frequencies. At only 80Hz you're talking a
wavelength of ~14ft....a 15" driver is only good for controlling polars
to about 900Hz (yikes).

Another advantage to a more efficient speaker is that it requires
less gain inside the amplifier, which can in turn allow for greater
dynamic range throughout the entire system. Less gain in an amplifier
is always a good thing from so many different perspectives, but since
that's not specifically speakers I'm not going to get too specific
there other than to point out that a better speaker makes better
amplifiers possible.

The bigger the horn, the better your acoustic loading at lower
frequencies, which in turn results in lower intermodulation distortion
when multiple frequencies are being played at the same time.

Should I keep going? There's mountains of research on this subject.

The
argument you're saying sounds a lot like someone trying to claim that a
bigger pipe can't pass more water just because it's connected to a dry
stream in the middle of the desert when compared against a smaller pipe
being fed by the Mississippi river. No engineer that understands fluid
dynamics would ever claim the larger pipe couldn't pass more water.
There are other factors limiting the performance of products in the
market (like price, time to market, brand preservation, etc...) so to
reference any two random speakers and compare their size and draw a
conclusion based only on the size isn't looking at the whole picture.

[Don Richard]

Now so far, nothing I have described in any way relies on the size of the speaker - nothing. It doesn't rely on bigness of anything. Quite to the contrary, certain very, very small speakers do this "soundfield thing" extraordinarily well.

Let's look at musical instruments, the very thing that we are trying to reproduce the sound of. Tubas are bigger than coronets, and they create sounds that are lower notes than a coronet can create. Bassoons are larger than flutes, and will similarly go lower than the flute can. Look at a pipe organ, the longer pipes are for the lower notes, the smaller pipes are for the higher ones.

And such is the case with loudspeakers. It is physically impossible for a 1' tweeter to approach the low note on a pipe organ, and an 18' woofer isn't going to reproduce a flute very well either. That's just the way it is with sound.

And so it goes with woofer cabinets, the bigger the cabinet, the lower it will go. The laws of physics are immutable, and one's lack of understanding on that point does not change the law.

Yes, an infinitely small point source is a good way to get "holographic" imaging, but using processing that includes signal delays has the capability to delay the reproduced sounds to one virtual point source. And that point is stable and exact for the alignment position (sweet spot) and close for other room positions, if properly done.

So yes, we have the capability to shrink a large system, but we still cannot enlarge a 1' tweeter so that it can reproduce the low pipe on an organ.

[Coytee]

Now everyone is in perfect agreement that "bigger is not always better." That's all that was under discussion Mike. Whether or not size could be an axiomatic element of speaker quality

Uh.... I'd suggest that was not the intended spirit of the thread. The real question of the thread was

I'm wondering.... if you had enough cash in pocket to make a SINGLE purchase to futher yourself towards your sonic goal, would you recommend to yourself:

1. Keeping the same electronics you have and make your purchase a pair of Klipschorns or LaScalas/Belle's

2. Keep your existing speakers and upgrade your (Brand X) preamp/amp to perhaps a tube preamp/amp?

So the real INTENT of the thread was to see if more people felt that an upgrade in speaker hardware verses electronic hardware would give you a larger step towards a sonic goal (however defined by the end user)

Let's also not forget that the scenario was ALSO predicated on already owning "decent" electronics.

Let's also presume that you have "decent" electronics

That is the real intent of this thread, not necessarily that the bigger speaker is better HOWEVER, with that said, in the world of Klipsch and horns, I do think that is a reasonable line of logic unless of course, you would rather suggest that in the world of horns and Klipsch that the smaller speakers are in general better sounding than the larger ones. If that were the case then I would think a pair of their Custom 3 earphones instead of box speakers would give you some excellent point source sound [6]