Paducah Home Theater Posted May 13, 2015 Share Posted May 13, 2015 Watching the phantom of the opera. Certain things really stand out. Masquerade in particular. Frigging incredible. My goodness. Why exactly do the horns sound so good with Klipsch? This isnt an isolated incident, they always sound badass with material like this. https://youtu.be/8PxEvj_tvGQ 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Moderators dtel Posted May 13, 2015 Moderators Share Posted May 13, 2015 Horns played by horns OK I have no idea, just my best guess 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LarryC Posted May 13, 2015 Share Posted May 13, 2015 (edited) Horns played by horns Maybe no one speaker type can replicate the entire range of sonic character, i.e. (to oversimplify), hard-toned, might do better on replicating brass or oboes, vs. soft-toned, which conceivably might do better on strings. Going back to the 1960's or 1970's, I recall thinking that AR speakers produced a very nice, soft, utterly recognizable violin sound, but sounded too tame and withdrawn on brass. Edited May 14, 2015 by LarryC 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tromprof Posted May 13, 2015 Share Posted May 13, 2015 One reason I think horns reproduce brass so well is that brass are able to achieve a higher dynamic contrast than most other acoustic instruments, and horn speakers reproduce that well too. 3 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
The History Kid Posted May 13, 2015 Share Posted May 13, 2015 For an answer, see avatar... 3 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Paducah Home Theater Posted May 14, 2015 Author Share Posted May 14, 2015 (edited) I thought maybe the cerametallic woofers had something to do with it more than the horn. Even a smaller higher pitched horn like a trumpet has a frequency range whose root notes stops at 1 khz. Trombones only go up to 600 hz which is over a full octave lower than the RF-7ii's crossover point of 1,200 hz. Pretty much all root notes from all brass seems to be within woofer territory, with some holdover bleeding through plus harmonics going higher I'm sure. http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/jan99/articles/brass778.htm That says even a trombone can produce strong harmonics up to 10 kHz when played hard though. Yeah the horns would make sense. Edited May 14, 2015 by MetropolisLakeOutfitters 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LarryC Posted May 14, 2015 Share Posted May 14, 2015 (edited) I thought maybe the cerametallic woofers had something to do with it more than the horn. Even a smaller higher pitched horn like a trumpet has a frequency range whose root notes stops at 1 khz. Trombones only go up to 600 hz which is over a full octave lower than the RF-7ii's crossover point of 1,200 hz. Pretty much all root notes from all brass seems to be within woofer territory, with some holdover bleeding through plus harmonics going higher I'm sure. http://www.soundonso...es/brass778.htm That says even a trombone can produce strong harmonics up to 10 kHz when played hard though. Yeah the horns would make sense. Yeah, the harmonics are a big part of loudness, so you can't only deal with the fundamentals like the 600 Hz you mentioned. Take away the overtones and you lose the timbre that defines the instrument. For example, disconnect the woofer at the crossover (easy to do on K-horns, LaScala's) to see how much of the musical definitional quality is lost. That said, the fundamental tones are primarily delivered by the bass drivers in many systems including Klipsch. Edited May 14, 2015 by LarryC 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RT FAN Posted May 14, 2015 Share Posted May 14, 2015 To my ears, jazz, particularly saxophones sound the best on my various systems. Classical massed strings the most strident. 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chris A Posted May 14, 2015 Share Posted May 14, 2015 (edited) Classical massed strings the most strident. BTW...I've found something that answers that mystery. Put your classical tracks into Audacity and bring up a spectrum plot. You'll see why the strings sound so poor in almost all classical recordings. The good thing is that you can actually correct most of that stridency put in by the MEs so that the tracks sound natural again--and it's pretty straightforward to accomplish. We're basically talking ALL two channel recordings of orchestras. One reason I think horns reproduce brass so well is that brass are able to achieve a higher dynamic contrast than most other acoustic instruments, and horn speakers reproduce that well too. I believe that this comes very close to answering your question. I believe that it's not so much about why horns (the musical instruments) sound good on horns (the loudspeakers) so much as it's why horns sound so poor on direct radiating drivers. Chris Edited May 14, 2015 by Chris A 3 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
twk123 Posted May 14, 2015 Share Posted May 14, 2015 To my ears, jazz, particularly saxophones sound the best on my various systems. Classical massed strings the most strident. I second that. I love my Klipsch speakers for all music but for some reason Saxaphone just blows me away every time by how good it sounds. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Paducah Home Theater Posted May 14, 2015 Author Share Posted May 14, 2015 (edited) One reason I think horns reproduce brass so well is that brass are able to achieve a higher dynamic contrast than most other acoustic instruments, and horn speakers reproduce that well too. I believe that this comes very close to answering your question. I believe that it's not so much about why horns (the musical instruments) sound good on horns (the loudspeakers) so much as it's why horns sound so poor on direct radiating drivers. Chris I can play this same track through my old speakers with soft dome tweets and yeah I can tell it is horns but there is nothing exciting. I can play it through my RF-7ii's and when the horns kick in it just sounds majestic and airy, there's lots of details that really bring out the shrill that you hear with brass instruments in person plus they don't just fade into the mix, it's like they are layered well on top of all the other musical junk going on if that makes any sense, almost like there's a separate source that they are coming from, it just really pops and is separated. When I notice it, it is during those crescendos where they are really blasting the trumpets and probably producing harmonics. Edited May 14, 2015 by MetropolisLakeOutfitters Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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