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Klipschorn False Wall or Enclosure?


pantoramasan

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The newer K-Horns use an enclosed back. The Jubilee does also and it extend up to the front surface. There is a movie theater of the K-Horn which has an enclosed back which extends beyond the grill and up to the front surface. Ergo, it is good.

A long time ago I examined the K-Horn patent and found that the "novelty" was in the initial rapid flare ("rubber thoat -- but that is a technical term and there is no rubber involved) and the use of the walls of the room to form one element of the final flare. I.e. from the back up forward to the back of the grills. There is a bit more to it than that because a previous patent he was probably fighting used all three surfaces of the corner.

The latter issue overall would mean that PWK would not alter the spirit of the patent by making a replacement ancillary corner by means of a substitute wall corner. But putting a back attached to the back of the K-Horn would arguably not be an embodiment of the patent.

For reasons unknown to me PWK kept using the ancillary corner shown in the Dope from Hope long after the patent had expired. Perhaps the pride of an inventor.

There is much to be said for the enclosed back attached to the body of the K-Horn bass bin. It can be noriously difficult to get a good seal against a wall. In a home it is common that the corner is not really square particularly in the days of wet plaster construction. This is called "running away" from a square condition.

In sheet-rock walls there were complaints that the plaster board would flex and concrete walls were better.

Then there are also issues with baseboard trim of the room, should you have one of these classic homes. The K-Horn tailboard had a cut out to accommodate this but I wonder about how effective it was.

Generally, we see the use of gaskets by Klipsch and others to get a good seal. An enclosed back is better naturally.

The closed back does not answer all issues. IIRC, PWK recommended that the walls of the corner extend for about four feet before being interrupted by a window or door to get good performance. That probably not hard and fast. At the Klipsch museum someone took a notch out of a windowsill to allow the K-Horn to fit. The lesson is that it is okay to compromise and adapt to what you have to work with.

Someone here made a nice artificial corner in the form of almost a cabinet extending up to the front surface of the bass bin and, I assume, plenty of gasket material to seal things airtight.

WMcD

Edited by William F. Gil McDermott
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  • 2 weeks later...

Having just done this on my set of Khorns, I can add to the positives of doing this.  My particular living room space has a great many windows and some of these are floor to ceiling panels that swing out sideways.  Getting the bass horn to seal to the corner and dealing with the sills of the windows was impossible.  Enclosing the rear solved this.

 

More to the point, the enclosing of the rear/sides caused the response to smooth out considerably.  This is a very large room, and so I don't have quite the same standing wave problems others have encountered, but the poor sealing caused quite a bit of sharpness.

 

Now I should also mention that I just finished opening the throats to around 6x13, and switched to woofers with much stronger motor strength (about 2-3 dB greater sensitivity, determined by outdoors measurements).  I like the result of these changes quite a bit. 

 

Right now, I am working out the kinks of running a Raspberry pi server (Volumio) that uses a Hifiberry Digi+ TOSlink and SPDIF digital output.  I use this to drive the digital input of a MiniDSP crossover that is used to biamp this rig.  It is a pretty remarkable combination, and has been liberating in terms of music source and overall quality (noise floor has dropped down even further).

 

But, to the point of this thread: yes!  enclose the backs.  Biggest downside is you will lose easy access to the woofer door on the bin, but it is not impossible.

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For reasons unknown to me PWK kept using the ancillary corner shown in the Dope from Hope long after the patent had expired. Perhaps the pride of an inventor.

 

This is what he had in his house in Hope, right next to twin Grand Pianos...........two false corners, just like in the Dope from Hope. since they were away from the back window, he had the best imaging I ever heard in a Khorn, especially from his own spaced twin omni mike recordings of classical music on tape, which is all that he had. 

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On a slightly different but still related topoc: just on the quality of the bass part, how different is a klipschorn with false corners from a Jubilee?

According to Paul W Klispch, the Jubilee is the better bass bin, otherwise he would not have created it with Roy Delgado. I lived with Khorns and false corner and without for 30 years, with mono Center LaScala, just like PWK (Belle in his case). Built the corners, the resistor box, the whole thing. I'd still rather have a Jubilee.

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  • 5 years later...
2 hours ago, Sancho Panza said:

Only have the La Scalas & RW-12d operational, just now...

 

That's hard to beat. Glad u're doing ok. My older son will get my La Scalas, whenever we can make the trip to visit him. I'll miss them, but I have MWMs in the room... just have to get the high end sorted once I have let loose of the LS

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