Moderators dtel Posted February 26, 2014 Moderators Share Posted February 26, 2014 Klipsch's best horn is the K402, which took me 4 years to find on the used market.Is a price of approximately $1000 for a pair of (NOS) K402's (painted) seem about right today? That's an approximate price for a single K402, not painted, original black finish, With the K69 driver. Last I heard. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Schu Posted February 26, 2014 Share Posted February 26, 2014 to me... this is just about perfect (maybe a three way) 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
garyrc Posted February 27, 2014 Share Posted February 27, 2014 (edited) My K'horns have now been in three very different rooms. So far, the only requirement for first class sound and imaging seems to be corners. Dave Mine have been in 4 rooms, always pressed into a corner seal. They did, in fact, sound highly similar in all those environments, but the big room with the high ceiling and big carpet does sound a bit better. The odd thing is that I am often not completely satisfied when playing CDs through them, but virtually all modern movies through the Khorns with a Belle Klipsch center sound great! Yes, with movies, I also use a sub, but the mid and highs in movies sound better than those in many CDs. The CDs do sound good, but not as good. Do the movie people just take more time and spend more money in making their recordings, or what? Edited February 27, 2014 by Garyrc Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ClaudeJ1 Posted February 27, 2014 Share Posted February 27, 2014 Is a price of approximately $1000 for a pair of (NOS) K402's (painted) seem about right today? It depends on whether you get just those or a whole batch of other stuff with it. You usually get a better deal when you have a motivated seller who wants to get rid of other stuff too, so you offer a "How much if I take it all off your hands." Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jason str Posted February 28, 2014 Share Posted February 28, 2014 Maybe Santa will bring me a set of 402's this year, i have been very good. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
001 Posted February 28, 2014 Share Posted February 28, 2014 On 2/27/2014 at 4:12 PM, Garyrc said: On 2/26/2014 at 10:52 AM, Mallette said: My K'horns have now been in three very different rooms. So far, the only requirement for first class sound and imaging seems to be corners. Dave Mine have been in 4 rooms, always pressed into a corner seal. They did, in fact, sound highly similar in all those environments, but the big room with the high ceiling and big carpet does sound a bit better. The odd thing is that I am often not completely satisfied when playing CDs through them, but virtually all modern movies through the Khorns with a Belle Klipsch center sound great! Yes, with movies, I also use a sub, but the mid and highs in movies sound better than those in many CDs. The CDs do sound good, but not as good. Do the movie people just take more time and spend more money in making their recordings, or what? probably due to compression of cd's vs uncompressed dvd's or especially blu-rays. & the whole bit rate thing. most modern movies do ghet much better production values than cd's & being on dvd format the music track doesnt have to be as compressed as most cd's. try SACD or DVD-audio & you will notice the same differences. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Islander Posted February 28, 2014 Share Posted February 28, 2014 My K'horns have now been in three very different rooms. So far, the only requirement for first class sound and imaging seems to be corners. Dave Mine have been in 4 rooms, always pressed into a corner seal. They did, in fact, sound highly similar in all those environments, but the big room with the high ceiling and big carpet does sound a bit better. The odd thing is that I am often not completely satisfied when playing CDs through them, but virtually all modern movies through the Khorns with a Belle Klipsch center sound great! Yes, with movies, I also use a sub, but the mid and highs in movies sound better than those in many CDs. The CDs do sound good, but not as good. Do the movie people just take more time and spend more money in making their recordings, or what? In my experience and opinion, among physical media, CDs sound good, LPs sound better, and DVDs sound best. I haven't heard Blu-Rays yet. The time and skill spend in the studio and mixing room should be factors as well, but top bands and musicians don't usually cut corners in either department. Movie companies have huge budgets, so it could be comparable. It's hard to know for sure what difference all the factors play, but in general, DVDs do sound best among the three media I mentioned. DVDs have much more information on them than CDs (4.7 gigabyte versus 700 megabyte), which can be retrieved due to their higher-frequency (blue) laser. It amuses and pleases me that you can often get the DVD for $2-5 with a $20-25 CD if you buy the Deluxe or Limited Edition CD, because the DVD sounds so much better. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Boxx Posted February 28, 2014 Share Posted February 28, 2014 Is a price of approximately $1000 for a pair of (NOS) K402's (painted) seem about right today? It depends on whether you get just those or a whole batch of other stuff with it. You usually get a better deal when you have a motivated seller who wants to get rid of other stuff too, so you offer a "How much if I take it all off your hands." Excellent points well taken.... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Boxx Posted February 28, 2014 Share Posted February 28, 2014 Maybe Santa will bring me a set of 402's this year, i have been very good. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
garyrc Posted February 28, 2014 Share Posted February 28, 2014 My K'horns have now been in three very different rooms. So far, the only requirement for first class sound and imaging seems to be corners. Dave Mine have been in 4 rooms, always pressed into a corner seal. They did, in fact, sound highly similar in all those environments, but the big room with the high ceiling and big carpet does sound a bit better. The odd thing is that I am often not completely satisfied when playing CDs through them, but virtually all modern movies through the Khorns with a Belle Klipsch center sound great! Yes, with movies, I also use a sub, but the mid and highs in movies sound better than those in many CDs. The CDs do sound good, but not as good. Do the movie people just take more time and spend more money in making their recordings, or what? In my experience and opinion, among physical media, CDs sound good, LPs sound better, and DVDs sound best. I haven't heard Blu-Rays yet. The Blu-ray situation is a mixed bag. Most new Blu-rays sound fantastic, better than DVD -- or any other medium, IMO, I would strongly recommend going over to Blu-ray. BUT, it is not necessarily true that when you replace a DVD with the new Blu-ray version of the same movie that the sound is better -- or as good. Sometimes the sound is actually worse. I haven't tracked down the reason. The masters may be inferior, in some cases. It may simply be a lack of caring on the part of the company putting out the disks. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
etc6849 Posted March 1, 2014 Share Posted March 1, 2014 5.1 DVD-A (mlp) was an awesome format. Too bad it flopped. I was still in college and didn't even have a surround system when it came out. Now all you can get on blu-ray are live concerts with folks cheering in the background. Who wants to pay $20+ and still not have studio quality recording? I agree that a lot of LPs have a bigger dynamic range than their CD counterparts. However, this is not the formats fault, but the studios. Technically, the dynamic range of a CD is superior to an LP right? For most CD's: who wants to hear $%^ that's compressed like that?!? Don't audio engineers know it doesn't sound as good when all sounds have the same loudness? I'm sick of having to go buy used CD's from before the mid 90's to have some dynamic range. This is a handy site by the way for figuring out which album version to buy: http://dr.loudness-war.info/ My K'horns have now been in three very different rooms. So far, the only requirement for first class sound and imaging seems to be corners. Dave Mine have been in 4 rooms, always pressed into a corner seal. They did, in fact, sound highly similar in all those environments, but the big room with the high ceiling and big carpet does sound a bit better. The odd thing is that I am often not completely satisfied when playing CDs through them, but virtually all modern movies through the Khorns with a Belle Klipsch center sound great! Yes, with movies, I also use a sub, but the mid and highs in movies sound better than those in many CDs. The CDs do sound good, but not as good. Do the movie people just take more time and spend more money in making their recordings, or what? In my experience and opinion, among physical media, CDs sound good, LPs sound better, and DVDs sound best. I haven't heard Blu-Rays yet. The time and skill spend in the studio and mixing room should be factors as well, but top bands and musicians don't usually cut corners in either department. Movie companies have huge budgets, so it could be comparable. It's hard to know for sure what difference all the factors play, but in general, DVDs do sound best among the three media I mentioned. DVDs have much more information on them than CDs (4.7 gigabyte versus 700 megabyte), which can be retrieved due to their higher-frequency (blue) laser. It amuses and pleases me that you can often get the DVD for $2-5 with a $20-25 CD if you buy the Deluxe or Limited Edition CD, because the DVD sounds so much better. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
russ69 Posted March 1, 2014 Share Posted March 1, 2014 There are a wide range of choices, even at the very top of high-end loudspeaker design. Each design consists of a long list of engineering comprimises that determine how that system will sound. IMHO there is no one design that one could call as the best sound reproducer. I have my own individual likes and dislikes but there are many systems that I would be totally happy with. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
garyrc Posted March 1, 2014 Share Posted March 1, 2014 (edited) "Don't audio engineers know it doesn't sound as good when all sounds have the same loudness?" .I've heard that they are just following orders of the corporation managers. Too bad they don't follow Paul Goodman's view that part of being a professional is to stand up against the front office when your special training and experience indicates that management is wrong. Some probably do. IMO classical and jazz discs have less dynamic range compression than pop, etc. And Blue-ray movies seem to be fine, for the most part. Edited March 1, 2014 by Garyrc Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Quiet_Hollow Posted March 2, 2014 Share Posted March 2, 2014 (edited) The odd thing is that I am often not completely satisfied when playing CDs through them, but virtually all modern movies through the Khorns with a Belle Klipsch center sound great! Yes, with movies, I also use a sub, but the mid and highs in movies sound better than those in many CDs. The CDs do sound good, but not as good. Do the movie people just take more time and spend more money in making their recordings, or what? I've investigated this on my system too. Through empirical trials I've managed to pin it down to two major contributing factors: Digital clipping CD audio dynamic range spans from approximately -90 dB FS all the way up to -0 dB FS. When the signal hits -0 or goes over, it gets lopped off and the DAC ends up crapping out a bunch of high frequency hash in addition to compressing the signal. When the red lights on my dB FS meter flicker, sure enough it sounds like crap...most notably at mid to high playback levels (70-85 dB SPL) with the mids and highs suffering the lion's share of the the debauchery. Sampling rate My ears tell me that although 44.1 KHz is absolutely fine for playback, it misses the mark by just a touch for use in recording (ie. in the ADC). 48 KHz and above sound better (smoother) in that application IME. I can down sample it just fine, but for whatever reason, if that first stage is using below 48 KHz, it can sound gritty depending on what's being mic'd. Naturally, unless I'm hardware limited, I'd use 96 KHz every time. I would not be surprised if some studios were using 44.1 Khz in their recording gear under the seemingly logical premise that it would also be the playback rate, so why use anything higher without taking into consideration what the low-pass filter associated with 44.1Khz is doing to the phase response up there near the Nyquist frequency. Edited March 3, 2014 by Quiet_Hollow Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JJkizak Posted March 2, 2014 Share Posted March 2, 2014 That even sounded good on my computer Klipsch 4.1 speakers. JJK Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
thebes Posted March 3, 2014 Share Posted March 3, 2014 Nyquist frequency. How come every time I turn around, somebody comes up with a new technical thing-a-bob that I've never heard of. Then they casually drop it into the conversation like we should all nod our heads and know they are talking about. I'm a simple soul with simple needs, a simple brain, and I need to do things simply so I can get some simple music out of a simple sound system? Is that too much to ask? T'aint fair I tell ya! 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Boxx Posted March 3, 2014 Share Posted March 3, 2014 It may simply be a lack of caring on the part of the company putting out the disks. Haven't we seen that with the era of CD's to the present.... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Boxx Posted March 3, 2014 Share Posted March 3, 2014 I'm a simple soul with simple needs, a simple brain, and I need to do things simply so I can get some simple music out of a simple sound system? Is that too much to ask? T'aint fair I tell ya! Sounds like it is time to put on some early Beatles and relax.... lol... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
garyrc Posted March 3, 2014 Share Posted March 3, 2014 It may simply be a lack of caring on the part of the company putting out the disks.Haven't we seen that with the era of CD's to the present.... Yes, in spades. Hard to find a disk (music or movie) company with pride in their work. Maybe Chesky. I'll bet the artists don't get to pass on the finished product. In the case of the classic movies of the magnetic era that I collect, I believe that almost all of the filmmakers are now dead. If the corporations need someone to pass on QC, I'm available. A newish hardware company that has pride in their products is OPPO. They have had problems, but there almost always is a quick fix. People who are not the artists are sometimes a problem. A management dictim to constrict dynamic range, for instance (the loudness wars). Or, yes, someone who doesn't care. I remember being impressed at having to go through a wind tunnel to blow the dust off of my clothing before entering the old multiplane camera room at Disney. When I later toured a Lp disk cutting room at a major record company, I thought, "I'll bet they run us through a wind tunnel first." Ha. The guy operating the disk cutter was working in a dirty room, with about 1/4 " of ashes hanging off his cigarette. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Deang Posted March 3, 2014 Share Posted March 3, 2014 In my opinion, Maggies are excellent speakers, but woud not replace Klipsch Heritage. The limits of Maggies, as with all planar speakers, are the small sweet spot, due to beamy highs, and weak bass. Uh, I thought that was "controlled directivity". The larger Maggies, pushed with a sufficient amout of clean power, can be amazing. I came from Magnepan to Klipsch, and I felt it was more of a lateral than an upgrade. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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