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Will porting LS decrease efficiency?


Arash

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I have four LaScalas, and I'm going to port all of them. I'm really excited. I don't care one bit about resale value on any of them, since I am never selling them. But even if I were going to sell them, the (reversible) mod would likely increase sales value. It's not about collecting and preserving them as museum pieces, it's about listening to them.

I would only skip the mod if there were already a pair of horn subs available. If for no other reason, the (reversible) mod is worth doing to get the squawker and tweeter at a more optimal height (in my opinion).

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Guest David H

I think you will love the Lascala port mod, I wouln't own another pair of Lascala's without it.

Before and after shot. These are bottom ported, and opened to the upper chamber. Even this port mod was removable, and certainly didn't hurt the value. Then again they had no value when I got them.

Dave

post-24405-13819684610818_thumb.jpg

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Hi Arash,

Yes, those are my babies & to answer your question......I doubt whether you'll hear any difference in efficiency....I certainly didn't.

Maybe if you measured there might be a difference, but not enough to be able to hear it.

Once you've heard this mod you'll never go back to the standard setup again, it totally changes the sound of the LS. Don't forget to reinforce the side panels to remove the resonances. Mine have an extra 18mm layer on both sides, as well as the back, as well as the braces. This too changes the sound so much for the better.

Good luck,

John

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Guest Anonymous

For those that have the mod, how much deeper does the LS go, ie in hz, original LS dont go down much deeper than about 50Hz, maybe 45Hz, anything lower than that is none existant.

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My experience is that a decrease in efficiency, if any, is negligible. The most useful information (which seems to be almost universal) is that those who have tried it would not go back. As others have said, any La Scala I own will get this easily reversible modification.

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From the Graph posted by djk, it appears to gain an additional 20+Hz.

I placed traces near the -10db points.

I concur........in comparison with other speakers you'll find that it goes easily down into the low 30's. I still use a sub though, to round out the bottom end.

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The most useful information (which seems to be almost universal) is that those who have tried it would not go back.

I think you'll find more people here that use an EQ and/or powered sub with an active crossover than not. Porting the deisgn modifies the La Scala's transfer function. A frequency response plot alone doesn't show everything that's going on. You need MLS measurements to see what really happens to the phase response, then inspect what happens in the crossover region.

I happen to have done everything but modify the speakers and have seamless, concert-quality bass that I can feel half a block away at war volume with my doors closed. To each their own of course, but the La Scala's native response is not it's flaw IMHO, it makes an incredible foundation to a very powerful, great sounding system (4-way) if you use the right tools and methods.

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The problem here is that the predicted response is nothing like the actual response of the real system.

I heard that the engineers at Klipsch measured this mod, which showed a suckout above the tuning frequency. In addition, you lose control over cone-excursion below the tuning frequency, and you also lose some of the benefits to the reactance annulling of the sealed chamber - both of which end up increasing the overall distortion of the system.

It gets better with a peaking highpass filter, but if you're going to go that far, then I would just suggest going to a 15" 2-way instead and enjoy much better sound. Or if you want to keep the lascala, then just supplement the low-end with a quality subwoofer system (not some cheesy home theater boom boom thing).

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