Mallette Posted February 18, 2016 Share Posted February 18, 2016 I've heard my system with 2 watt bottleheads. Awesome. But even the bottlehead freaks that brought them said that pipe organ didn't work at those power levels if you want a realistic level. Of course, only a few of us care about C0 and 1 watt can certainly deliver most of the musical spectrum beautifully. Just make sure it works for your tastes. Dave Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
2Bmusic Posted February 18, 2016 Author Share Posted February 18, 2016 I contacted Mike @ Quicksilver. we talked for a long time ( more than once) . I ordered the Mono block Horn set. IT fits in my budget and seems to be a good place to start. Thanks to RUSS69 who posted/ mentioned this company. I can try these for 10 days and return if I do not like. Win- win no matter how you look at it. I really wanted mono-blocks. I did not know QuickSilver existed. Further more Mike knows his stuff & is willing to back it up. The Horn set is specifically designed for speakers like the Khorns. To be transparent, all the recommendations here have been great. My first love is riding my Bacchetta CA2.0. Once I get the Khorns sorted, more of my free time will be spent staying in good cardio shape. ( 100 miles a weekend tends to do that). During my down time I can listen to my "TUNES" and smile/ loose liquid from my eyes. The khorns have done that to me a few times in this short period of time. Everyone here has been kind and generous. Thank you one and all. I will report back after spending time with the QS horn mono-block amps. It is now Wednesday night. Tomorrow night I am going to a "YANNI" concert. During the day I hope to audition Kevin's Incredible Klipsch collection. AGAIN ...THANKS everyone! 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mallette Posted February 18, 2016 Share Posted February 18, 2016 During my down time I can listen to my "TUNES" and smile/ loose liquid from my eyes. Sir, you are home. I SO relate to that! I so pity men that don't cry for beautiful music... Dave Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
J M O N Posted February 18, 2016 Share Posted February 18, 2016 I've never heard the Quicksilver amps, but I have a feeling you're going to love them. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
2Bmusic Posted February 18, 2016 Author Share Posted February 18, 2016 (edited) As an Licensed Electronics tech and one who had to write his graduation paper on his favorite subject ( audiophile pursuits) I know about our hobby. OTOH, I had never given thought to having the possibility of having 600 watts running at idle most of the time to strive towards fidelity of the highest order. In case there is any doubt, I know full well that the Khorns do not need 600 watts. In fact I know they don't need 100 watts. I was wondering if 600 watt mono blocks could be employed safely. I think they can. Will i do that?....NO!! I found the QS horn mono blocks. As a few have said, one is more likely to harm speakers with a poor quality amp that is always clipping, and similar scenarios. I would have much preferred lower power SS, but they are so expensive. $2,000 is my limit for amplification. There are few and far between amps that fit into that price range. There is also the feeling for me anyway, that the pursuit of great sound does not have cause one to spend over $10,000 to have truly great sound. Thats more than a good used car & thats crazy IMHO. Even if I had money to throw around like that, I would not do it. I did listen to khorns on a 4 watt set amp. I had to turn the volume way up to get them to come alive. They were loud, but the sound was not clear. At lower levels, the bass just did not perform well. We then swapped out the SET tube amp for a 1970's ~ 1980... SS YAMAHA M80 250 WPC. Ran the exact same tests as before. The head room that the SS afforded sounded so much better that it gave rise to thinking about the 600 watt mono blocks ( less than $2k thank you very much). NOW YOU KNOW THE REST OF STORY ( as they say). Edited February 18, 2016 by 2Bmusic 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
2Bmusic Posted February 18, 2016 Author Share Posted February 18, 2016 Renohifi has one used M2 or sale with a 3 year warranty. You will not go wrong with a Firstwatt SS amp and the M2 is really supposed to shine with horns. I am in the process of building an M2 since Nelson has provided a schematic since it is not longer in production. There is also a F3 for sale which is also a good amp for horns. http://www.renohifi.com/FirstUsed/FirstUsedInStock.htm Do you prefer SS over tubes? Why? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
babadono Posted February 18, 2016 Share Posted February 18, 2016 OP, glad to read you settled on your amplification. Now its time to investigate a better midrange horn and driver Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
J M O N Posted February 19, 2016 Share Posted February 19, 2016 (edited) As I have said before there are SS amps that approach the excellency of SET sound but at a much higher price. Which are those SS amps that you are referring to? I certainly haven't heard them all but the best sounding SS amps I have heard (and owned) were from Jeff Rowland. Good vacuum tube amps sounded even better. Edited February 19, 2016 by JMON Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
J M O N Posted February 19, 2016 Share Posted February 19, 2016 There is also the feeling for me anyway, that the pursuit of great sound does not have cause one to spend over $10,000 to have truly great sound. You are absolutely correct on that. You just have to chose wisely. You are well on your way with your selection of Klipschorns. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ClaudeJ1 Posted February 19, 2016 Share Posted February 19, 2016 (edited) Paul Klipsch himself had a BGW 100 and 1/2 Crown D-60 (one channel only) in his home on his Khorns and Belle. He referred to 100 W amplifiers as "stoves." He once said 35 W is "a helluva lot of power." ONE acoustic watt from a speaker is between 100-120 db, depending on where you put the microphone. Add 3 db for stereo, more for HT. Saw and heard it for myself. I used to use big Dynacos in my bass reflex setup. Once I got Khorns, I noticed that in a large living room I was hitting 10 W PEAKS when cranking up the rock and jazz. So I sold the big amps and got little amps. Probably some of the best sound was from a Marantz 8B, which was a tube type 35W/ch. Anything more than this on Khorns is ridiculous, unless you play "stupid loud" and you will cause hearing damage. I want to enjoy music until I die so I never go over 80-90 db, as measured in my sweet spot with a Radio Shack meter on C Weighting/Slow. The louder end only for demos. My subs, however have 800 W/channel x3 channels and only the stupid loud effects from movies ever get then anywhere near that (actually, only the beginning part of the Edge of Tomorrow). Edited February 19, 2016 by ClaudeJ1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
juniper Posted February 19, 2016 Share Posted February 19, 2016 The Marantz 8B is legendary, I have what some consider the "poor man's version" the Pilot sa 260 with the 210 preamp. I have tried dozens of combos of well regarded SS and nothing has touched it. I have only used it on model 19's and not khorns, but I am sure it would be a great fit.... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
WMcD Posted February 21, 2016 Share Posted February 21, 2016 (edited) More from PWK https://community.klipsch.com/dope/Dope_800702_v19n2.pdf There is a good explanation of dB based on gnats hitting a drum head. The dB scale is always a ratio. So we have to start the dB scale with one gnat rather than zero gnats. This is because the ratio of, say, 5 / 0 (or 5:0) is mathematically meaningless because it is division by zero. You can’t divide anything into zero pieces. Looking at it another way, if you start with a pie of zero grams (nothing) and multiply it by five you still have a pie of zero grams, or nothing. The ratio thing doesn't work. At the end of the DfH, PWK does go into the unsafe effect of powerful amplifiers – which was the question. Suppose you start with an amplifier which will put out 50 watts at peaks. Then you replace it by a 100 watt amplifier. You gain only 3 dB of sound pressure, which is not very audible. You may have to play with an RS sound pressure meter to believe this. On the other hand, a voice coil in a speaker is dissipating twice as much power because you bought a bigger amp. As he says this doubling of power can melt the voice coil, and there is little perception of increased acoustic power. So it is not worth it as far as safety. Much less going to 600 watts. Generally, it takes a10 dB or 10 times power increase for us to perceive a doubling of sound level. This may seem odd. But it means that our hearing is logarithmic and this allows us to perceive a broad range of power without overload. (We can hear 1 gnat, or 1,000,000 gnats without discomfort. It is a bit of a rough analogy with gnats, but in our study of perceived sound, the least amount of sound power we can hear is 1 gnat, or 0 dB.) OT, but this dB stuff is from Alexander Graham Bell. His unit of the ratio of power was called the “Bell.” That is 10 deci-Bells. “Deci” is 1/10th. Or, 10 dB is 1 B. But we always use dB. (The B is capitalized because it is guy's name. Like mA is a milli-Ampere for Mr. Ampere who described electrical current.) One problem for me is that the DfH seems to say that 100 degrees C is 180 degrees F. Huh? WMcD Edited February 21, 2016 by WMcD 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
2Bmusic Posted February 21, 2016 Author Share Posted February 21, 2016 (edited) any quick silver amps being used out there? http://www.quicksilveraudio.com/products/index.html Edited February 21, 2016 by 2Bmusic Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Montego Posted February 21, 2016 Share Posted February 21, 2016 "stupid loud" I call it 'chest thumping' loud Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jcmusic Posted February 21, 2016 Share Posted February 21, 2016 FIRST A FEW FACTS, so you can better understand my question. I have been a Lascala Owner for about 2 yrs. I was afforded the high honor of listening to Khorns being driven by Yamaha M80 Vintage amp, ( ~ 260watts) I NOW WANT KHORNS!!!! >>Anyway, I AM WONDERING ABOUT POWER & HOW MUCH IS SAFE VS WHAT MAKES FOR BETTER SOUND. With my back ground in electronics I understand that any device will only pull the amount of power it was designed to pull. I also understand that you can turn up the power to insane amounts ( for that particular ) device and burn/ruin it. I see Khorns are rated to use 100 watts continuos and 400 peak. ( not that one would ever listen at that level for sure) I also think that when the woofer needs power to move that air, it needs a great deal more than more mid and tweeter. 1. Does it work that way? 2. If one were to connect a pair of 600 watt mono blocks ( in search of that holy grail of ultimate sound) , would that give more headroom than a 200W amp? ............ As long as the 600w mono blocks were not turned up to far, would it be safe to use on Khorns? My thinking is during peak passages where the mid and tweeter were needing 5~10 watts ( to reproduce their frequency range) ..... the Tympani hit would need 100 ~ 200 watts for that brief split second to reproduce the music faithfully. SO.... If the 600 mono blocks were not being pushed, the almost limitless headroom the speaker electronics were demanding could result in great fidelity and so on and so forth. I ran my Khorns forever with a Marantz DC 300 @ 152 wpc, never had any issues never turned it up more than needed!!! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
2Bmusic Posted February 22, 2016 Author Share Posted February 22, 2016 (edited) http://s35.photobucket.com/user/Racegun/KHORNS%20CROSSOVERS/story WHAT KIND of crossover is this? It is in my khorns! ( racegun is a former handle for comp. pistol shooting ) Edited February 22, 2016 by 2Bmusic Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
2Bmusic Posted February 22, 2016 Author Share Posted February 22, 2016 (edited) i am trying to make where pic shows Edited February 22, 2016 by 2Bmusic Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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