mikebse2a3 Posted October 20, 2015 Share Posted October 20, 2015 Yea Mike. That room with the universals had a low ceiling....basement....k horns on a short wall in a long room. Very good false walls/corners built onto the khorns. Killer bass that I attribute to the room. The airy mids maybe from the network...not sure. Great system. The detail and seperation more noted on the ESN system. To my liking....some may not. All other times I've heard khorns...I'm assuming Klipsch factory. : ...... I also apologize to JW but his network originality/design led into an informative discussion. Too many factors there for me to say that the nets were responsible for listening to the best Khorns I ever heard. Closed backs, wooden trax mid horns with basketball sized Altec drivers, Bi-radial tweets. MC275's..... The room was great with hard corners but I like a little more separation smile tc Hey tc Hope your doing good and thanks for adding more details.... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
IB Slammin Posted October 20, 2015 Share Posted October 20, 2015 Yea Mike. That room with the universals had a low ceiling....basement....k horns on a short wall in a long room. Very good false walls/corners built onto the khorns. Killer bass that I attribute to the room. The airy mids maybe from the network...not sure. Great system. The detail and seperation more noted on the ESN system. To my liking....some may not. All other times I've heard khorns...I'm assuming Klipsch factory. : ...... I also apologize to JW but his network originality/design led into an informative discussion. Too many factors there for me to say that the nets were responsible for listening to the best Khorns I ever heard. Closed backs, wooden trax mid horns with basketball sized Altec drivers, Bi-radial tweets. MC275's..... The room was great with hard corners but I like a little more separation smile tc Hey tc Hope your doing good and thanks for adding more details.... You too Mike. I am pleased to see a little life back in this old place! tc Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Klipsch Employees Chief bonehead Posted October 20, 2015 Klipsch Employees Share Posted October 20, 2015 You asked for this. No proxy.. I am getting mad as hell at what I am hearing on this thread. First off, yes, I was banned from this forum earlier for telling it like it is about a certain vendor who stole my Universal design and is now building knock-off versions saying "change one part and the design is no longer yours". This was the FIRST competitor I foolishly trained. It may be of interest to know that Dean was right there with me even to the point of urging me to PATENT the swamping resistor idea and actually start legal action against him. I knew at that time I had seen the idea used by others. This was long after I had incorporated it into all my networks. I had simply REinvented it. It was Bob Crites (I think) who identified it as a JBL idea. I actually came to the idea independently after talking to my late friend and mentor Max Potter about if shunt resistors do or do not reduce efficiency. They do NOT! It was Max who was the spark for the idea, NOT DJK! AS to the ban: I was NEVER reinstated nor did I ever ask to be. I was "grandfathered" back in when the forum software was upgraded but I swore I would never post again even though I could. I do NOT CARE if I am banned again. I DO care that this thread not be locked. I figured if I limit myself only to posting emoticons and post only through a proxy who will monitor my lack of tact, the chances of this happening again would be eliminated. Amy: if you find my comments out of line, or a person attack, BAND ME AGAIN, but do not lock this thread! Exposing the truth about the poor filter designs that are accepted as gospel throughout the loudspeaker industry is my mission. The crap that passes for crossover networks, include the THING Acoustic Research cooked up for the long dead "LST" speaker would be laughed at by any serious filter designer. It breaks every rule in the book! I have been designing multiplexers (which a crossover is) from audio to 2000 MEGA Hz for nearly 40 years. I know L-C filters! They are my speciality. Letting a loudspeaker designer design a crossover is like allowing the same engineer who designed the engine in your car do the seats and style the body! You won't like the results! NOW: for the SECOND competitor I foolishly trained, Dean Wescott! I spent countless hours on the telephone with him trying to explain the simplest concepts as well as basic filter design and transformer theory. I nearly GAVE HIM a copy of my filter design package (PCFILT) to use for analysis and research. What a mistake that would have been! I also spent time with him unravelling the techno-double-talk often used by a prominent engineer to snow others when he gets pinned down on something, or got something wrong. Then there is my "Universal" network. I gave Dean an opportunity to build my first network design, the Universal, in its high-priced form because I no longer wanted to build it. I did not have to do that and should not have! He bubbled over telling me what an honer it would be to build them! At that time I explained why I no longer wanted to build it. My conscience was bothering me. With the introduction of the "AP" and Extreme-slope" series networks, it had become my "entry level" design. It lacked a tweeter shelving adjustment and no longer warranted the high cost parts. The Universal was initially modelled after the Klipsch "AA" network. It didn't need a tweeter attenuator because its "constant K" tweeter filter was so lossy! How could I justify adding a tweeter attenuator after all this time? Then there was the high cost of fancy parts like Hovland Musicaps. Having evolved into an entry level design it needed to be scaled back, not expand to even higher cost parts as Dean finally did. Not only did I give him the license to build them, I completely revamped the layout and built the first set FOR HIM taking pictures of the procedure, step by step, to show him how it was to be done! I would not accept splicing parts tougher and hanging them in mid-air like he always does. We busted our collective buts to trying to balance his prices with mine. We tried to make this work! The bottom line here is that nobody was at fault. It was a joint venture that SIMPLY FAILED! At that time I was offering the scaled down Universal as the CornScallWall with a 600 Hz crossover. It was not interned for the Klipschorn. That was to be Dean's product. Only when Dean decided to give up and blame me for the failure did I start making the 400 Hz version and changed the name to the "CSW Universal economy". I have since built 77 sets to only a few of the high-priced version built by Dean. Then there is his "super X", alias the "ALK Junior", alias the "Super AA", which I designed and GAVE HIM. It has the autotransformer and swamping resistor at the termination end just like my Universal network. It is, IN FACT, my Universal with one less inductor and computer optimized to compensate and maintain nearly constant impedance. Dean, the next time you build one of these at your exorbitant price, remember who designed it and gave it to you for free and why. One of the things I try to do is not introduce fads an sucker people into swallowing foolish things like battery biased capacitors. If Dean was so keen on offering a biased capacitor network, it could be done WITHOUT A BATTERY! I challenge him to figure out how to do that! Now, there is that HUGE wax dipped autotransformer that he is dazzling his customer with. All it does is run his cost and the customers price up. The original 3619 I used for years is already oversized. It will handle 50W of power all day and has a DCR of about 0.35 Ohms. I have one here that has had half the outer covering chewed off my a rat. It still works fine! BTW: I am nearly 69 years old and my hands are beginning to shake. I can hardly use a glue gun. Dean was being groomed to totally take over my entire product line when I retired. I will never train another person to become a competitor. Now I will train only an assembler when I retire. My designs will be burred with me when I go! Another VERY important point.. The entire audio industry is built on what I call "audio placebos". Our only source of reality is the "computer model" created inside our brain to understand reality. The fact is, a person will hear what he expects to hear, NOT reality. This means good science requires instrument measurement and evaluation of every stage of any complex system scientifically, including a loudspeaker. To measure only the acoustic output and not examine the crossover as a separate entity and as a single cog in the works is not "what engineers do"! Anyone who depends solely on his ears to eventuate a speaker is kidding himself. This also goes for people who claim they can hear the difference between brands of capacitors. It's TOTAL B.S.! Even if you could, the difference is trivial compared to the long list of cumulative boners found in poorly designed filters. If this were not true the point would not be so controversial. Anyone who thinks the AK-3 sounds better than any of my networks either has it set up wrong or does not know what he is listening to! The AK-3 also has an extreme-slope tweeter filter. It has been erroneously called an "Elliptic filter". It, like all the poor designs I see, was simply grafted in! My Universal is not recommend to replace the AK, AK-2 or AK-3, only the AA. The correct replacement for the AK-3 is my AP12-AK3 and ES5800. It will walk all over the Universal or the AK-3 and does not even require the installer to open the Klipschorn woofer hatch! In conclusion, anyone here who decides to call me arrogant may do so. I believe there is a place for arrogance, IF YOU'RE RIGHT. Was PWK arrogant? YES, and he had good reason to be! If this gets me banned again, nobody will question why I need a proxy! If, after all this crap, you might like to see the acoustic output of a speaker using a correctly designed network with transformers and a swamping resistors at the termination end of the filters, look here: http://www.alkeng.com/shelving.jpg It's the ES500 + ES5800. Al K. yAaaaaawwwwwwnnnn..... 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
John Warren Posted October 20, 2015 Author Share Posted October 20, 2015 (edited) Dean, You wrote: "It has always been an unspoken rule that you don't enter another vendor's thread unless you have something positive to contribute. The proxy posts and idiotic emoticons were clearly an attempt to pollute John's thread." So, if a competitor to Klipsch Group, Inc. is hawking a questionable "upgrade" to one of their premier products, the Klipschorn, we as good forum members should either falsely praise the product with huzzahs or remain silent. Not gonna happen. Questionable upgrade? For those of you reading this ALK sock-puppet posts please note that I publish plots for the very sake of exposing every possible parameter I can. I publish everything. Even when the sock-puppet requested plots, I provided them. How many vendors do that? Everything discussed here has been discussed years ago, it's all old news. The mod functions as intended and sounds far better than the stock unit. Some forum members have made significant upgrades all across the Klipsch product spectrum. Dave Harris in particular has developed well over a dozen improvements, the most notable (at least to me) being the Eliptrac 400, a huge improvement over the K-400 horn. I like Dave's big horn, I bet is makes good sound and would like to make nets for it. Dean, as you wrote, "I'm allowed to have my opinions." Hey, the more you reply the more you reveal--so keep it up!! Goes both ways.... Edited October 20, 2015 by John Warren Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
John Warren Posted October 20, 2015 Author Share Posted October 20, 2015 Dean, I'd want more than a verbal assurance that the "anomaly" is not going to detract from my listening enjoyment. Lee Folks- I offer returns on everything except custom nets and builds. For these, I'll be glad to take the units back from the customer if, after some time listening to them, they prefer something else. Just can't screw them into the top-section of the Klipschorn or damage in anyway. jw Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
John Warren Posted October 20, 2015 Author Share Posted October 20, 2015 It would be nice to see the "brains" get over themselves and actually have a technical discussion without all of the off-forum drama bleeding in.. The quotes are mine and fair enough (please note that I was not the one attempting to turn this thread into a "pity-party") Here's a power plot using pink noise of the B&C + Selenium mid and Klipschorn bass unit as a function of amplifier Voltage. Couple things to take from this plot. A Klipschorn bass unit with 10W of pink noise running thru it is f*****g loud and a mechanical test for the K33E. I had rms meters for both current and voltage on each driver and the power amp. Also need to wear hearing protection. So putting about 1/2W into the B&C unit means about 10W into the Klipschorn. That also means that the bulk of the power provided by the amplifier is going to the bass horn which means that the impedance of the bass drivers will dictate whatever amplifier stability concerns one has when one couples the amp to the loudspeaker system. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Arkytype Posted October 20, 2015 Share Posted October 20, 2015 John, You wrote: "...please note that I publish plots for the very sake of exposing every possible parameter I can. I publish everything." We've seen acoustic plots of your stuff. Now how about publishing some electrical plots of your network showing the filter slopes and maybe one showing the complex impedance; Zo vs. phase will do nicely. For completeness, how about a set with passive driver loads and then a set with the actual drivers (your choice of tweeter). Lee Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mark1101 Posted October 20, 2015 Share Posted October 20, 2015 Mike, Here is a picture of the ESNs I'm referencing. These were done in 12/2006. I built these myself and had around $1500 in just parts (due to the caps). Not cheap for 2006. ALK built the ES5800s and I recapped them before I ever used them. The mid and tweeter sections are all hand matched pairs of Auricaps. The rest of the parts are same as ALK always uses. Very "Impressive" work my friend... Mike, Thanks. Of particular importance is the date. 12/2006. I really had the system I've discussed fine tuned at the time and felt it was at a peak. However, shorlty thereafter in mid 2007 there was a trip to the Klipsch factory where some comparisons were done involving current production Khorns. What I can say is that the second I heard those Khorns.......the very second.....I thought they were honestly the very worst Khorns I had ever heard. Dry and dull and lifeless..........just terrible IMHO. Mine sounded a ton better, GOOD LORD and honestly I was shocked. I couldn't believe that was the situation (either Klipsch putting those out for people to hear as bad as they were, or mine being so much better), but it sure was. I believe they had AK-4 networks in them. Later in that trip certain comparisons were made and of course everyone felt the exact same way rather quickly............I'm sure you remember. It's just something I'll always remember................I had some darn TOP END Khorns with the ALK ESNs in them. There no other mods that I had made. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Al Klappenberger Posted October 20, 2015 Share Posted October 20, 2015 Even when the sock-puppet requested plots, I provided them Ok... The sock-pupet formally requests the fillowing plots on your network: * Complex impedance in R magnitude and polar phase seen my the amplifier using real driver loads. I can accept R +-jX too if you like. * Group delay and insertion Phase through the mid-range port. * Absolute insertion loss of the midrange channel. (no shelving) * Absolute loss through the tweeter filter. (No problem here - yours doen't provide shelving). BTW: I already gave these plots to Lee a day or so ago in case this came up.. Maybe he will post them for me after you post yours. Al K. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jim Naseum Posted October 20, 2015 Share Posted October 20, 2015 The most interesting read on the forum by a country mile! 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CECAA850 Posted October 20, 2015 Share Posted October 20, 2015 The most interesting read on the forum by a country mile! What crossovers and speakers do you run? 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BigStewMan Posted October 20, 2015 Share Posted October 20, 2015 (edited) The most interesting read on the forum by a country mile! have you read the thread crapping thread? hope you're having a good tuesday jo56steph74. Edited October 20, 2015 by BigStewMan Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AllenTacey Posted October 20, 2015 Share Posted October 20, 2015 Ok. After how many years? A new autotransformer? And why? For those of you that are in to this sort of thing, I've decided to design and source a new autotransformer. This is uglier than the ones offered by my friends but it is no less capable. It was a design job for a customer and decided to work it into a new network (I own the design and sourced the supplier). There are some advantages over resistor pads but that's another topic for discussion. It's bi-filiar wound and pretty stout. Link to page. http://www.northreadingeng.com/baffle_insert/R2_Klipschorn_baffle_insert.html Looks like Coyote poop! In my profile picture you can see Coyote pee BTW! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Schu Posted October 20, 2015 Share Posted October 20, 2015 All of you... back to your work shops and start building Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mikebse2a3 Posted October 20, 2015 Share Posted October 20, 2015 What I can say is that the second I heard those Khorns.......the very second.....I thought they were honestly the very worst Khorns I had ever heard. Dry and dull and lifeless..........just terrible IMHO. Mine sounded a ton better, GOOD LORD and honestly I was shocked. I couldn't believe that was the situation (either Klipsch putting those out for people to hear as bad as they were, or mine being so much better), but it sure was. I believe they had AK-4 networks in them. Later in that trip certain comparisons were made and of course everyone felt the exact same way rather quickly............I'm sure you remember. It's just something I'll always remember................I had some darn TOP END Khorns with the ALK ESNs in them. There no other mods that I had made. Hey Mark ....I don't know? My experience says way to many variables (ie: room, setup, equipment.....etc) to declare the crossovers as the reasons for the performance difference you heard. All it takes is to move Klipschorns (like all loudspeakers) from one wall to another to hear huge performance changes let alone totally different rooms, equipment/setup,....etc. I actually installed the Klipschorn upgrade kit(Included AK-4 and new K55) from Klipsch in another friends Klipschorns which were models with AK-3 networks. The results was very impressive with improvements in clarity and dynamic impact observed especially from good recordings with drums. Anyway as always interesting to hear other's opinions and it really helps to understand how we all are forming those opinions. miketn Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mark1101 Posted October 20, 2015 Share Posted October 20, 2015 Yeah.............musta been my room. Nevermind. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mikebse2a3 Posted October 20, 2015 Share Posted October 20, 2015 Yeah.............musta been my room. Nevermind. Sorry if my post upset you Mark,,, sure wasn't my intent. Take Care, miketn Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mark1101 Posted October 21, 2015 Share Posted October 21, 2015 Nope, just a laugh and wink. I wouldn't get mad over this stuff. You also bring up some good points..But I still to this day remember some others's comments about those Khorns, and what I heard. It's OK if you don't want to admit it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Deang Posted October 21, 2015 Share Posted October 21, 2015 Are you talking about the pair that Roy sabotaged at the Jubilee get together - the ones he ran out of phase with the blown tweeters? "There's something wrong with those Klipschorns..." - Bobby Crites Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jwc Posted October 21, 2015 Share Posted October 21, 2015 (edited) Say it isn't so? My opinions derived are tarnished. Edited October 21, 2015 by jwc Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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