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A K-402-Based Full-Range Multiple-Entry Horn


Chris A

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On 5/15/2020 at 12:38 PM, rickmcinnis said:

an someone say, or show, what the throat looks like in the K402?  

 

From what I can see it's a square throat with a 2" hole. No filler to transition from round to square.

I'm in the same boat trying to make one but I might start smaller/simpler for experience...

K402 Throat.png

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On 5/13/2020 at 9:38 AM, Jesal said:

I have a small room, 13'x15' feet that is open to the left (see attached)

So you have Twin OThorns (I have one) and is that an Skhorn in the center? What about the rear of your room? Surrounds? I'm a AtamosHT/Stereo combo Canadian American who is curious about the rest of your system not posted in pictures or text.

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2 hours ago, ClaudeJ1 said:

And move the center subwoofer to the rear.

 

I don't have room for a Sub this BIG at the back. I'm planning on taking the 2 drivers in it though and make two smaller subs for the rear.

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2 hours ago, ClaudeJ1 said:

So you have Twin OThorns (I have one) and is that an Skhorn in the center? What about the rear of your room? Surrounds? I'm a AtamosHT/Stereo combo Canadian American who is curious about the rest of your system not posted in pictures or text.

Hi Claude,

The left and right subs are Ricci's SKrams, yes the center is a SKhorn.

I'm 80% music and 20% movies right now. I actually just got seriously in to HT last year.

So I have no surrounds/Atmos or any of high tech HT setup.

I have enough speakers on hand though to do 5.4 setup.

But I don't know how much joy that would bring to an HT newbie :) 

 

I should try it though, I have a Lambda Unity horn or B&C 15HCX76 coaxials I can try for rear speaker duty. 

I've never tried it, is there a big benefit to listening to your full HT setup with surrounds for music listening?

 

For music, do you listen to your full setup or just the 2 front channels?

Edited by Jesal
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5 hours ago, Jesal said:

I've never tried it, is there a big benefit to listening to your full HT setup with surrounds for music listening?

 

For music, do you listen to your full setup or just the 2 front channels?

It depends on source. Sometimes play around with different settings.......so many Hall Acoustic Effects to choose for music. But there is more detail with more speakers when done right. Mostly I listen to 2 channels with a without subs, mostly WITH subs in 2 ch. always with subs in 11 channel.

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On 5/16/2020 at 4:00 PM, Jesal said:

From what I can see it's a square throat with a 2" hole. No filler to transition from round to square.

I'll wager a very well respected man about these parts would say "it don't make a dimes worth of difference".

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When you look at the first generation of K-402 horns (the ones with a metal throat and flat back horn walls that crack), I think you'll see that there was a smoother transition from the entrance into the rest of the horn.  With the second generation K-402s (the 25-pound shiny black versions), you'll see that iconic Klipsch immediate transition from round to square with the little angled triangles in the four corners.  No explanation for the change from Roy, et al.

 

If you look at the normalized polar sonogram that I posted at the top of this thread, the effects of that transition at the throat calculate out at about 0.4-0.6 inch from the horn--driver throat entrance and/or phase plug of the compression driver.  There is a little polar disturbance there, but at those frequencies, very mild as compared to trying to transition from a midrange horn mouth to a separate tweeter horn mouth--which is actually pretty terrible by comparison.  The frequencies above 10 kHz are basically all controlled by the compression driver phase plug and throat exit, not really the horn (assuming flat-sided horn wall beyond that point--which the K-402 has) so if you change out the compression driver with something else, those polars above 10 kHz are going to change): 

 

K-402-MEH horizonal normalized sonogram.jpg

 

You can try filling in those corners using modeling clay--the non-hardening stuff that artists use, then taking polar measurements using REW and a calibrated microphone at 10-15 degree offsets.  I usually take them at 10 degree offsets, like the polar sonogram that you see just above, and the individual measurements that you see below (the horn is good to 45 degrees from centerline, which is its designed coverage angle horizontally):

 

K-402-MEH Normalized Off-Axis FR 10-60 deg.png

 

Chris

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13 hours ago, Jesal said:

I've never tried it, is there a big benefit to listening to your full HT setup with surrounds for music listening?  For music, do you listen to your full setup or just the 2 front channels?

Have you got something to hear... 

 

I've been collecting multichannel SACDs, DVD-As, and music BDs for about 10 years now, and with increased interest recently.  There is no comparison to stereo--even on the same disc.  Most multichannel music discs are hybrid, meaning that there are usually stereo DSD and/or PCM layers that can be switched to--to compare. 

 

When you do switch back to 5.1 from stereo, the effect is generally like the difference between listening to a recording, and being in the room with the musicians--no kidding.  It's amazing.  I suppose it doesn't hurt to have a K-402 L, C, R, and dialed in surrounds and horn loaded subs, but I'd wager that the effect is quite audible even with garden variety direct-radiating 5.1 arrays. 

 

This is generally not true for synthesized (i.e., AVP and AVR modes) surround, which generally doesn't work very well.  If the recording was recorded in 5.1, the difference is very great indeed from stereo only.

 

Chris

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1 hour ago, Chris A said:

When you do switch back to 5.1 from stereo, the effect is generally like the difference between listening to a recording, and being in the room with the musicians--no kidding.  It's amazing. 

Ok this is great news! Exciting enough to try...

I don't have any SACD or DVD=A music, any disc recommendations to really show off this multichannel feature?

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What are your tastes in terms of music genres? 

 

About 35% of my 1700+ disc collection is classical, and that's where I'd point to for the best recordings.  But there are other genres that benefit greatly from the added fidelity of multichannel recordings, such as jazz, ambient, world, and movie music soundtracks.  If you look at my profile, you'll see a file that lists my SACDs and another file that lists all of my other ripped digital discs (including some DVD-As and music BDs).  I haven't included a separate list of my multichannel DVD-As and music BDs yet. 

 

It seems that rock and its offspring genres often suffer from the fidelity-robbing aspects of multi-track recording practices--which totally scramble the phase response of the resulting recordings, and thus the hi-fi quality of the recordings themselves.  But there are notable exceptions.  Look for unamplified instrumentation albums recorded live in good acoustic venues (i.e., NOT arenas and honky tonks).  That's where you'll find recordings of better quality that preserve their high fidelity nature. A good web site to find multichannel discs:  https://www.sa-cd.net/titles/1/0/date/100/1

 

I recommend avoiding most older "classic rock" recordings that have been re-issued in 5.1 format: these typically don't have the fidelity that I referred to above.  They may be enjoyable to listen to, but lack the real hi-fi qualities that make all the difference...

 

Chris

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Thanks for the list and links Chris.

I'm into Jazz/Blues/Rock, looking to experience a jaw dropping multichannel demo disk.

Do you have your top recommendations in this genre? I just want to know what I've been missing all these years :)

 

 

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4 hours ago, Chris A said:

The frequencies above 10 kHz are basically all controlled by the compression driver phase plug and throat exit, not really the horn (assuming flat-sided horn wall beyond that point--which the K-402 has) so if you change out the compression driver with something else, those polars above 10 kHz are going to change): 

This is the best argument for the use of a super tweeter........................dispersion angles being one.

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3 hours ago, Jesal said:

Thanks for the list and links Chris.

I'm into Jazz/Blues/Rock, looking to experience a jaw dropping multichannel demo disk.

Do you have your top recommendations in this genre? I just want to know what I've been missing all these years :)

 

 

I'd say Pink Floyd's "Dark Side of the Moon" should be enough to get you hooked. I also just got a "Kind of Blue" Hybrid from Japan that is more subtle, but the atmosphere, defininion (especially on the Acoustic Bass) is a cut above the Stereo Remaster on the dual CD/DVD I have, which is great for the Historical Video, but now that I have both kinds of discs (technically 3), I won't be listening to the CD side of the CD/DVD anymore. LOL.

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2 hours ago, ClaudeJ1 said:

I'd say Pink Floyd's "Dark Side of the Moon" should be enough to get you hooked

Ummmm...I wouldn't, necessarily. In fact, that multichannel SACD is kind of "ho hum" compared to the following.  The problem with the recording is that it was made in the early 1970s on analog tape recorders. 

 

The following recordings were made within the last 20 years, where the recording technology is much better (i.e., SNR and bass extension, freedom from other forms of distortion, etc.). The best jazz multichannel albums that I've got (and among the best recordings that I own) are the Yellowjackets Time Squared, Altered State, and Lifecycle multichannel SACDs, along with Xiomara's La Voz multichannel SACD.

 

R-8523103-1463325148-8318.jpeg.jpg

 

R-8845224-1469975387-1179.jpeg.jpg

 

61ANAtyCURL._SL1200_.jpg

 

51qwJcP7q5L.jpg

 

Rebecca Pidgeon's multichannel The Raven SACD is not bad (i.e., folk genre)...

 

R-4500328-1412079928-9644.jpeg.jpg

 

Chris

 

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On the prog rock side of things, Steven Wilson's multichannel mixing of his own work both with Porcupine Tree and solo is impressive musically, and technologically.  Try "Shallow" or "Open Car" from PT's Deadwing,  or "Octane Twisted" from their 2009 The Incident (nominated for an Immersive Audio Grammy)

 

img.discogs.com/hVaCHgo-4xGxpTtWd0VwgR7SQqI=/fi...

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One of the issues I had with Porcupine Tree's Fear of a Blank Planet (DTS 5.1 surround) was that it had ~3 dB of clipping (I believe it was 2.8 dB average across the album...IIRC).

 

I undid that clipping using Clip Fix within Audacity to reconstruct the peaks thus eliminating the hard odd-order distortion harmonics on most of the peaks during the louder sections of each track. (But this technique is unable to recover the higher frequency content clipped off with those peaks during mastering "limiting".)  Once that one operation (Clip Fix) was done to each track, the edginess and stridency of each track in the entire album was basically eliminated.  I was quite amazed in fact that there was no other demastering required beyond that.

 

The point is...if we are talking about modern subgenres of rock (like Porcupine Tree's progressive rock), the current recording and mastering culture seems to always include:

  1. multitrack recordings taken from studio booths layered on top of each other instead of simultaneous recording of all voices by a few microphones in an acoustically competent place, and
  2. amplified instrumentation instead of acoustic-only instruments

Both of these factors significantly reduce the fidelity of the recording results in terms of what I was referring to above for the best multichannel recordings where the phase fidelity of the original performance is also captured and more or less faithfully transferred to disc.

 

Perhaps we should move these discussions to a dedicated multichannel recording thread...? [I've found other multichannel recordings that had the same issues with clipping, and the same technique of using Clip Fix eliminated the arbitrary harshness of the recording, put there during mastering (by the mastering people) simply to make the disc sound louder, but significantly degrading the fidelity of the recording in the process.]

 

Chris

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Chris, I am not being argumentative, but how can one "undo clipping".

Once the damage is done, it is done. I understand there are approximations, but are they reliable? This is new territory for me.

I have a number of old recordings that are clipped and would benefit from a good fix. 

-Tom

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