My K-Horns are in a larger room now...

[Greg Oshiro]

I moved my triamped Klipschorns (http://community.klipsch.com/forums/t/156476.aspx) from the short wall of the TV room (12'-6" X 17'-6" X 9' ceiling) to the long wall of the living room (19'-6" X 15'-8" X 10' ceiling). My ears are about 11'-6" from the K-Horn wall, just beyond the intersection of the two speaker axes.

Some program has a bit of a hole in the soundstage, some doesn't. There is a vertical room mode that makes things sound thin when standing just in front of the normal listening position (when I get up from the couch). The low end sounds great when sitting on the couch, and that's a good thing.

More pics below

[Greg Oshiro]

Right side viewed from behind the listening position.

[Greg Oshiro]

Left side viewed from behind the listening position.

[Greg Oshiro]

Here's a close-up of the rack:

Cheesey Sony DVD player (audio only in this room)

JVC CD player

Yamaha DSP

Klark-Teknik stereo parametric EQ (used when using passive crossovers)

Tweeter amp

Custom 6-channel balanced passive attenuator ( -0.5 dB, -6.1 dB, -12.1 dB, -18.1 dB. -26.1 dB, -30.1 dB, -36.1 dB, -42.1 dB) all accurate within .038 dB error band. Normal listening is at -36.1 or -30.1 dB.

Squawker amp

Woofer amp

[Greg Oshiro]

Here's the wiring mod around the passive crosssovers. The white plastic connectors can be patched to select either:

The full-range amp feed (black jacketed cable with violet tape) and AA Xovers are connected to the drivers

*or*

The triamp feeds (three twisted pairs dropping down near the tailboard) are connected to the drivers.

[Greg Oshiro]

A closer view of the mod around the crossover.

[guitarman]

Sweet.

[runninshine]

Looks like a great room to turn up the volume and let those things do work.

[Y]

[Chris A]

Some program has a bit of a hole in the soundstage, some doesn't.

I have found that this is a function of the recording on my Jubs, which are in the corners of a 15.5 feet-wide room.

In fact, I've found that I can now grade the quality of the stereo/multichannel balance on recordings very well: you can hear mixes that are done very sloppily without a proper left-right channel separation (too much center) and too little center phantom channel. I attribute this to too little angular separation in the the mixing room's left-right speakers.

There is a vertical room mode that makes things sound thin when standing just in front of the normal listening position (when I get up from the couch).

Being on a centerline of your listening room's basic dimensions is never attractive in terms of lf performance, if you can avoid it...

The low end sounds great when sitting on the couch, and that's a good thing.

My room dimensions and listening position geometry causes me to have to boost the SPUDs about 7-10 dB over what would be nominal than if I was sitting 2-3 feet off room centerline. I'm referring to sub-20 Hz--40 Hz. If you stand near one wall when playing something like the Yellowjackets, you can sometimes feel a bit disoriented from the overpowering lf response.

I actually found one audiophile disk--Rebecca Pidgeon's The Raven from Chesky Records--has some extreme non-musical lf transients that are still in the distributed SACD/CD. It's gastronomically upsetting if you forget to turn off the SPUDs when playing it and happen to walk toward one of the side walls [+o(].

Chris

[dtel]

Room to breath, bet it sounds great. [H]

[mark1101]

Very resourceful wiring setup. I ike it. Your room looks nice too. Looks like a live sounding room.

You mention a hole sometimes. I had that issue when I had my Khorns. They were about 2 ft. too far apart for the room dimensions I had. I had to add a center channel which was a compromise but helped.

Also, the furniture you have in between the speakers may be affecting things. I'm sure you already know that, but we can't always arrange things optimal for just our audio systems. Other factors involved.

[dtel]

How do you like the Crown-D75's, get any blinking lights ?

I use 2 of them the same way your using them but for a 2 way design, it takes a few Db's to get the lights blinking and crazy loud before I get a flash of a red light which shows it has reached .05% distortion which never happens with even normal loud playing. [Y]

[Chris A]

You mention a hole sometimes. I had that issue when I had my Khorns. They were about 2 ft. too far apart for the room dimensions I had. I had to add a center channel which was a compromise but helped.

Also, the furniture you have in between the speakers may be affecting things. I'm sure you already know that, but we can't always arrange things optimal for just our audio systems. Other factors involved.

See the following for a discussion on that point:

http://forums.klipsch.com/forums/p/154887/1631781.aspx#1631781

http://forums.klipsch.com/forums/p/154887/1631050.aspx#1631050

Chris

[JJkizak]

Bell Labs tested the K-horns with a Cornwall center channel in a 35 x 35 ft room if I remember correctly. And as I recall they liked it a lot.

JJK

[Greg Oshiro]

<snip>How do you like the Crown-D75's, get any blinking lights ?<snip>

I have mixed feelings about the D75's. I had to change the internal grounding to reduce the hum/buzz. Unfortunately, this caused an increase in distortion. So I'm not too confident about the amps right now. I usually get blinking green Lights on woofers and squawkers. Tweeter amps are always dark. I did crank it up to get IOC lights on the woofer amp in the old room, but I was being stupid... I got started on a "really good 5-watt amp" (solid state) awhile ago, but that project languished like so many others...

What crossover settings do you use? .

[Greg Oshiro]

You mention a hole sometimes. I had that issue when I had my Khorns. They were about 2 ft. too far apart for the room dimensions I had. I had to add a center channel which was a compromise but helped.

Also, the furniture you have in between the speakers may be affecting things. I'm sure you already know that, but we can't always arrange things optimal for just our audio systems. Other factors involved.

See the following for a discussion on that point:

http://forums.klipsch.com/forums/p/154887/1631781.aspx#1631781

http://forums.klipsch.com/forums/p/154887/1631050.aspx#1631050

Chris

One of these days I'll clear out the stuff in-between the speakers and listen. But the immediate project is finding a place for some WAF items that got displaced by the audio takeover in the big room.

Regarding the imaging FAQ, are there any polar data on the K-402? One of these days I'll either find a top hat that I can abuse and measure polars, or build an acoustical equivalent and measure polar behavior. I'm not willing to take my WO top hats out to the parking lot to measure them. If you're willing, we can measure your K-402's someday.

I did discover that the position of my head (inches!) makes a huge difference in imaging. This makes me more interested in measuring polars.

[dtel]

<snip>How do you like the Crown-D75's, get any blinking lights ?<snip>

I have mixed feelings about the D75's. I had to change the internal grounding to reduce the hum/buzz. Unfortunately, this caused an increase in distortion. So I'm not too confident about the amps right now. I usually get blinking green Lights on woofers and squawkers. Tweeter amps are always dark. I did crank it up to get IOC lights on the woofer amp in the old room, but I was being stupid... I got started on a "really good 5-watt amp" (solid state) awhile ago, but that project languished like so many others...

What crossover settings do you use? .

I really like them but I did also have a problem with one of them and had to replace it. It was strange, it was a hum also but erratic, it would be fine for weeks and then hum for a couple of days and then stop. Most of the time a couple of days every 3-6 weeks. I have know idea what the problem was, I used that same amp in the workshop and it works fine now ?

It's been a while but I think it was about crossed around 500, it is the 402/K69 horn, MWM bass bins, the EV-DX 38 is used with the settings worked out by Roy Delgado for that combination. Were very happy with the sound and for the most part use the stock settings.

I have only seen the red light flash once or twice just to see what it would take to make that happen. [] The typical dumb reason, some one asked, and I was a little curious also. Don't feel the need to do it regularly, it sounds great but not how we listen by FAR.

There big but the reason we like them is because they sound really big, almost any speaker can get loud but to have that giant live sound at lower volumes is where it's at for us. It's the best sound I have ever had. [Y]

[Chris A]

Regarding the imaging FAQ, are there any polar data on the K-402?

There are several plots available:

Horizontal polar performance:

Vertical polar performance:

Horizontal coverage for the bass bins:

Vertical coverage of bass bins:

If you're willing, we can measure your K-402's someday.

Sure, I haven't tried to measure the polars in-room.

Chris

[Chris A]

I did discover that the position of my head (inches!) makes a huge difference in imaging. This makes me more interested in measuring polars.

Yes - that's largely true for small-room corner horn imaging performance in my experience. In fact, it's been my experience for all speakers in small rooms - even worse for planar speakers which usually cannot be toed-in in small rooms.

The K-402s have a sweet spot of about +/- 1-2 feet laterally with the room's acoustic tiles in place. Without the acoustic tiles, there really isn't a sweet spot in my room.

Chris

[Greg Oshiro]

<snip> There are several plots available <snip>

.

Is the Y-axis degrees, not dB?

What was the measurement setup?

I'm also curious to find out how the "calculated" beamwidth was derived.

If you're willing, we can measure your K-402's someday.

Sure, I haven't tried to measure the polars in-room.

Chris

.

Measuring polars in my world means taking the device under test (DUT) and mounting it on a motorized turntable in the parking lot and making ground-plane measurements. The DUT polar behavior will depend on the size and shape of the baffle in which it's mounted. So an adapter has to be made that somewhat mimics the speaker system in question *and* readily adapts to my turntable. If you are interested in providing something for measurement, let's have a discussion of all the details...

Also, I don't view directional data as polar plots. I view directional data as seen in the attachment.

The horizontal axis is log frequency, the front to back axis is angle (the example data set has on-axis in the center) and the vertical axis is response magnitude in arbitrary dB. My measurement environment limits low-frequency capability, so the data below 200 Hz should be viewed with a raised eyebrow.

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*Beware that real speaker measurement data is ugly, almost all curves seen in reviews, datasheets, etc have been smoothed by the marketing pen*

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A perfectly flat omnidirectional speaker would have flat lines across all the measured angles. The data can also be normalized to the on-axis response so only the directional differences from the on-axis response are displayed.