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New Volti Rival


EmilC

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7 hours ago, Arash said:

...It's about a guy who collected all the data from "Klipsch community" and concocted a commercial products and never mentioned anything about "Klipsch community" in his interview but also advertised in his website that  "I grew up with Klipsch speakers and now I've now grown up to appreciate higher sound quality...". It's totally stepping on PWK's head to go up.

 

Perception is reality. 

 

It could be that the situation is just as you have indicated.  I have a small amount of information from another source that says that the story is a little more complicated than you indicate.  I think that the benefit of the doubt should go to the "accused". 

 

It's easy to say that he ripped off ideas and dissed the company that he apparently said was the source of his inspiration.  I personally believe that no one creates anything new because they are satisfied with the present situation or products.  Greg was dissatisfied, even to the point of rejecting the Jubilees that he bought.  That should give you a clue to his nature and viewpoints on loudspeaker design.

 

Greg has good woodworking skills--not the best that I've seen, but quite good nevertheless. He also has picked up the other pieces of the puzzle...designing and building a complete loudspeaker from scratch, selecting the drivers, horns, and crossover components, marketing it and apparently successfully making it into a business. None of that is in itself bad or even mediocre.  He decided to go in the direction that he did with his products: I wouldn't have gone in his direction because the compromises that he makes are too great...in my opinion.  I also objected to his "beautification approach" that puts physical looks over performance--something that got Al K. upset...and me, too.  As an engineer, it's like watching the Eiffel tower being constructed by a bunch of carpenters.  Nothing against carpenters, but when they are unable to understand the engineering behind the design, the result looks like a joke (and it was in that particular case).  There was a thread today whereby no one asked about the audible performance of the loudspeaker, but only "how it looks".  Perhaps someone should go into business making veneered wood boxes that "look great" that can be placed strategically around the house.  Apparently, they'd make money.  :D

 

I believe that Jubilees, well set up and dialed in with TAD 4002 drivers, are the best sounding commercially available loudspeakers that I've heard, and that any owner that is unable to coax that magnificent sound out of them--or even to understand how magnificent that sound really is--probably should own something different and sell their Jubs to someone else that can appreciate them.  I think that there is at least one Klipsch engineer whose views on this situation are probably similar (...two guesses who that is, and the first guess doesn't count...). 

 

I was also dissatisfied with that design--but for totally different reasons having to do with its dimensions in-room (and you can read about what that dissatisfaction actually was that caused another design to be created in the K-402-MEH thread ). That design worked out much better than expected, and its performance continues to delight my ears.  I assume that's due in part to Beranek's law.  Perhaps that's partially true...but maybe not to the degree as you might think.  

 

The point is that there are no prophets in their own land and familiarity breeds contempt--especially of late, it seems.  It is apparently especially distasteful when "one of the guys" decides to do something productive with his time and turns out to be successful (financially).  I personally can see many issues with his loudspeaker designs that I wouldn't pay money to own.  You would probably say the same to me about the K-402-MEH design (...or perhaps not...;)).  We don't know the stories on the Peavey FH-1 design and the people involved, and their skills, knowledge, and experience.  We don't know their story.  Same thing for the Khorn clones, Crites Cornscalas (sorry Bob...I have to mention you in context because of the relative success of your products), and other "apparently Klipsch inspired" loudspeakers.  If you were to delve into the home theater loudspeaker world, I'd bet you'd find similar patterns of one person at one enterprise borrowing (wholesale) from ideas of someone else at another enterprise.  That's the way that innovation occurs.  To believe that successful products are mostly dreamt up totally independently of any other existing product is itself a myth.  We borrow good ideas from wherever they exist and put them together (as long as the IP isn't patented) to create better products.  For me, I believe that 20 years for a patent is too long.  It really needs to be more like 10 years or less.  Copyrights (especially on music) are obscenely too long in duration (...effectively, the duration of the copyrights are forever now). 

 

To try to curtail these type of conversations in this thread on this web site I think actually does a great disservice to PWK's memory, because that's how we learn, understand the genius of PWK's designs, improve ourselves personally in this subject area , and improve the loudspeakers themselves.  But note: to mess around with the designs of PWK without learning what you actually need to know first is itself a disservice.  I believe that we should share our ideas on loudspeaker design improvements, and if that helps Klipsch, then we all benefit. 

 

If that means that someone goes off and creates their own enterprise designing, testing, building and selling loudspeakers that Klipsch doesn't currently sell (and has indicated that they have no intention of going in that direction) then I believe that's alright, too.  But you need to know your stuff first, including the math, physics, know how to test properly, and have access to the testing capabilities to do the job correctly.  Greg came up a little short in these areas in my estimation.  Perhaps he's gone to night school and filled in the holes in the mean time--or pays someone else to do those parts for him...like a big enterprise does.

 

Chris

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6 hours ago, NOSValves said:

.the point was that Volti Audio's customer based are high end, high dollar audiophiles not the normal Klipsch customer base so they are not competing for the most part. 

Well it's a good thing he is good at woodworking and had some smart people designing for him, without alot of help he could not have gone from beginner to high end designer in less than 2 years with no formal training.  

 

I did find the old threads to prove this, they were not all lost after all. If I were to bring them back up, I was advised to lock them so they could not be edited or deleted.  

 

I really don't care what he builds or sells, I can copy, and get people with these engineering skills to design and test horns for me. But I would not ignore any acknowledgments to these people or even give them credit for helping.  What kind of BS is that, just use them and move on, ungrateful. But then if you're going to be "high end" you are expected to know a little something, I guess it would be bad for business if you're working knowledge is someone's else's ?

 

NOSValves, from reading your post for years it's obvious you have the training for what you work on, and do well at it, people can ask almost any question and you could answer it, you have done it and know it.

This does not apply to people dependant on others for answers, what aggravates some people is when these people claim to be better than who they copied with little to no real working knowledge.   

 

Woodworker yes, salesman yes, speaker/designer engineer no.      So why talk bad about the people who spent most of their life studying and working at it keeping a company open for over 70 years,...... what was that ? a few year of help by others and now you're better at designing speakers , well that's ok not everyone knows the truth. 

 

To me it's the person NOT what he's selling, and I have kept my mouth shut as to not cause trouble for him, no reason to really. But whoever thinks he's "all that" is either working with him or they have no clue of how it went down, or the same.

 

When people help you, you acknowledge it, if you take their idea at least give them credit, it's not cool to put them down after you claim to know it all.

 

And to think I wanted to stay out of this hoping it would just die off and he could just go off into the sunset selling his speakers, but noooo 

 

Thanks to all who remembered everything and spent the time searching.

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On 6/9/2017 at 6:33 PM, dtel said:

I guess it would be bad for business if you're working knowledge is someone's else's ?

 

I got a kick out of this comment.

 

My wife is working for a female contractor who does some remodeling.

 

They had a tile guy come to do a job.  My wife was talking to him and "OMG!!! he said all the right things"

 

She was totally floored at his comment on how he did something or another (I have no idea of the conversation)

 

Then, the next week....his first week actually BEING on the job, he shows up with his buddy.  His buddy was pointing to this & that, telling him things....

 

My wife found this curious (I'm leaving some story out since I forget)

 

Long story short, the "tile guy" didn't know squat....was a big talker and brought his buddy in to help him since he didn't know what to do.

 

Seems he is a young whipper snapper trying to get started in his career (don't blame him) and is passing himself off as an experienced expert when in fact, he's a beginner.

 

My wife (who turns out knows more than him) "outed" him just by talking to him and finding his answers curious and not to her understanding....and pressing the issue.  Seems he got real quiet all the sudden when his buddy wasn't around to bail him out and he was being pursued with secondary and tertiary questions.

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11 minutes ago, Coytee said:

 Seems he got real quiet all the sudden when his buddy wasn't around to bail him out and he was being pursued with secondary and tertiary questions.

Life is unfair.  I think it's better to get used to it.  All the consumer can do is to demand performance and quality for money.  That's basically it...and "audiophiles" typically don't do even that--they pay outrageous prices for $2.50 drivers in a triangular-shaped box with 7/10ths of the drivers pointed the wrong direction and an EQ unit plugged into the tape monitor loop to even out the kinks. 

 

Sound familiar?

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24 minutes ago, Coytee said:

Familiar?

 

I dunno....  I got my Jubilee's facing into the corner to get some extra reflected sound out of them, does that count?

 

:o

 

Now Thats some forward thinking? Or is it backward thinking? Whatever you call it thanks for the tip. Damned if they don't sound better back-assedward. And you might try facing the bass bin to the corner and the 402 shooting straight up. Amazing bass and great dispersion off the ceiling. Learn sumpin' every day ---

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12 hours ago, Edgar said:

Surely nobody believes that PWK invented the horn loudspeaker! Horns were around long before Paul Klipsch was around. Even folded horns were around before Paul Klipsch was around.

I certainly didn't say nor imply that.  PWK did not invent horns, nor loudspeakers, nor electricity, nor the Internet!  But let's not say he was not very instrumental in the development of loudspeakers (and I realize you haven't said that either).  I think everybody here would acknowledge he will always have a prominent place in audio history.  But even he stood on the shoulders of many others.  And there are many that have stood on or are standing on PWK's shoulders.  Everybody, EVERYBODY, stands on the shoulders of others.   It is how society advances as quickly as it does and everyone benefits.  Those that are working on the cutting edge of their fields are at those advanced stages because someone else before them figured out the previous stage(s) and they did not have to repeat those discoveries on their own.

 

You may not have completely read my post as I clearly stated I really didn’t have much of an issue with the speakers being based on Klipsch designs.  To claim they are not would be to ignore the facts that he admitted to having years of experience enjoying Klipsch sound, not to mention the years he spent restoring Klipsch speakers and then building Klipsch “upgrade” kits.  I don’t believe I have seen Volti Audio offer upgrade kits for any other brand.  And if that doesn’t convince you then just look at the cosmetic styling – you can’t say that the styling of the Vittoras come from anywhere other than Klipsch Heritage, right down to the type of grill cloth used.

 

To repeat my comments above, it’s not that Volti is a derivative of Klipsch which bothers me, it is about that one statement I mentioned in my above post.  I find that unethical.  PWK may have stood on the shoulders of others, but I don’t think he disparaged any of them.

 

Again, the Volti Vittoras sound wonderful and have fantastic workmanship.  Kudos to all those that had any level of involvement in bringing the product to realization -- from the cabinet builder(s), technical designer(s), financier(s), and yes, even PWK.

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21 minutes ago, JMON said:

I certainly didn't say nor imply that.

 

That is how I interpreted what you did say. If I was in error, then I apologize.

 

Quote

But let's not say he was not very instrumental in the development of loudspeakers (and I realize you haven't said that either).  I think everybody here would acknowledge he will always have a prominent place in audio history.

 

I want to make it perfectly clear that I agree with your statement.

 

Quote

You may not have completely read my post as I clearly stated I really didn’t have much of an issue with the speakers being based on Klipsch designs.  To claim they are not would be to ignore the facts that he admitted to having years of experience enjoying Klipsch sound, not to mention the years he spent restoring Klipsch speakers and then building Klipsch “upgrade” kits.  ...  And if that doesn’t convince you then just look at the cosmetic styling – you can’t say that the styling of the Vittoras come from anywhere other than Klipsch Heritage, right down to the type of grill cloth used.

 

To be derivative in styling and to be derivative in design are two different things. (I am reminded of the old "Granada" "Mercedes" ads that Ford ran in the 1970s, but that's probably too far back for most forum members to remember.)

 

That said, I mentioned in another thread that I was personally involved in Greg's endeavor at a very early stage, when he was genuinely pursuing the development of a corner horn. That early design definitely was derivative of the KHorn; I know this for certain because I designed it. But the important thing is that Greg abandoned that design because relegating the enclosures to the corners compromised the performance of the midrange and tweeter horns.

 

Ultimately I had nothing to do with the eventual  Vittoria and other products from Volti. Nothing.

 

But my point is that Greg may not know a lot about the specifics of horn design, but he knows how to listen and he learns very fast.

 

Quote

To repeat my comments above, it’s not that Volti is a derivative of Klipsch which bothers me, it is about that one statement I mentioned.  I find that unethical.  PWK may have stood on the shoulders of others, but I don’t think he disparaged any of them.

 

OK, well I cannot refute, deny, or argue with that. Greg has his share of faults, just like any of us, and that may be one of them.

 

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57 minutes ago, Edgar said:

But the important thing is that Greg abandoned that design because relegating the enclosures to the corners compromised the performance of the midrange and tweeter horns.

It this your position, or Greg R's? 

 

In my experience, corner horn acoustic integration into the room is really easy to do and takes no more effort than integrating freestanding loudspeakers.  Nearfield midrange absorption in a corner horn is easy.  However, a freestanding loudspeaker must be supported by expensive bass augmentation below 60-80 Hz due to the rapid rise in bass modulation distortion if not supported by boundary gain and/or horn loading.  Otherwise, you'll be listening to bass distortion--or you'll have no real deep bass. 

 

Chris

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9 hours ago, Chris A said:

It this your position, or Greg R's? 

 

In my experience, corner horn acoustic integration into the room is really easy to do and takes no more effort than integrating freestanding loudspeakers.  Nearfield midrange absorption in a corner horn is easy.  However, a freestanding loudspeaker must be supported by expensive bass augmentation below 60-80 Hz due to the rapid rise in bass modulation distortion if not supported by boundary gain and/or horn loading.  Otherwise, you'll be listening to bass distortion--or you'll have no real deep bass. 

 

Chris

In general with commercial speakers, yes.  There are several ways to skin that cat though.... You can throw enough drivers at it and some other trickery in the crossover design or electronics.  The cost is efficiency.  Can't be Klipsch and doesn't have to be much more expensive then room treatments.

 

Unless you have a dedicated listening room (more people don't now a days), many people can't get a room right to keep problems out of the mid/treble when putting speakers in the corner.  Many just live with the problems one way or the other.

 

OK everyone, go back to the infighting and bashing :huh:  Let's see how long it takes to get this thread locked.

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16 minutes ago, pzannucci said:

Unless you have a dedicated listening room (more people don't nowadays), many people can't get a room right to keep problems out of the mid/treble when putting speakers in the corner.  Many just live with the problems one way or the other.

 

This is I believe that real reason why Greg might have abandoned a corner horn design--not acoustics of midrange horns in corners, which is easy to fix.  It's fear of not having big enough sales by the builder(s).  Using a pair of corner horns with false corners is physically large in-room.  My experience is that it's not really acoustic performance that typically leads people away from corner horns...but factors other than how they sound.

 

Chris

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9 hours ago, Chris A said:

It this your position, or Greg R's?

 

It is my simplification of Greg R's. As I recall, it had to do with the need to locate the listening position on the horn axis, instead of being able to point the horn axis toward the listening position. This all took place many years ago, so my recollection may be flawed. If you want specifics, Greg himself would be the one to ask.

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Okay, so you were doing an open-back design, just like the Khorn. That's also easy to fix using a closed back design like the Jub bass bin.

 

The Khorn bass bin design is a "coupled design" (per Nam P. Suh's definition, see slide 50ff) when you include the midrange and tweeter top hat aiming requirements at the listener(s).  Decoupling the bass bin from having to be symmetrically arranged at 45 degrees in a corner is actually an improvement.  However, IIRC the effective fc of the bass bin in corner effect rises by a few Hz when you do this.  The bass bin actually likes leakage around the collar, as has been discussed (like most everything else in this thread).

 

Chris

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1 hour ago, Chris A said:

 

This is I believe that real reason why Greg might have abandoned a corner horn design--not acoustics of midrange horns in corners, which is easy to fix.  It's fear of not having big enough sales by the builder(s).  Using a pair of corner horns with false corners is physically large in-room.  My experience is that it's not really acoustic performance that typically leads people away from corner horns...but factors other than how they sound.

 

Chris

Corner speakers have very high acceptance in many respects because I know most people don't like their speakers out in the middle of the floor.  

Everyone that came in my house when I had k-horns barely noticed as they were neatly tucked away in the corners.  I guess it could be said that there are not a lot of houses that have a set of corners though.

I'm not sure big enough sales is it judging on the price he is charging for his speakers.  He could demand much higher margins on lower sales as is the typical model for an audiophile target audience. 

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Interesting discussion. I'm a huge PWK fan myself, but I for one wish Klipsch would take a new crack at the top section of he Klipschorn. Yes, there are pros and cons to that, but just my personal feeling. Meanwhile, many of us, including myself have no problem using alternatives produced by Roberts and others. However, in my experience, integrating a midrange horn/driver change for real improvement to a Klipschorn, both measured and heard, is not as simple or easy as it looks. While I do own Volti midrange horns, have measured, listened and custom integrated those successfully to the Klipschorn, (I have a thread "Klipschorn Woofer polarity challenge"  touching on this in the technical section), I have never owned Volti speakers, nor measured or listened to them to give an opinion on performance efficacy. For that matter, I've never taken the Volti "drop in" complete Klipschorn "upgrade" package for a test run either. In any event, I have always respected and valued invention, while admiring any and all efforts toward real improvement. 

 

As an aside, I've owned a lot of speakers including presently most Klipsch heritage models - and I'll go with the Klipschorn everyday of the week. However, as we all know, they do present some challenges, and consequently, I'm not surprised at the direction Volti went. 

 

 

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30 minutes ago, BeFuddledinMn said:

Interesting discussion. I'm a huge PWK fan myself, but I for one wish Klipsch would take a new crack at the top section of he Klipschorn. Yes, there are pros and cons to that, but just my personal feeling. 

 

They have made changes, and what came out of it was such an improvement they decided to call it something different. This was PWK's idea, at first it was going to be called the Klipschorn ll, but PWK then decided since it was close to the 50 year anniversary of the Khorn so he wanted it called the Jubilee .

 

Since the Khorn has been around over 70 years they let it stand without major changes, some small changes were made for the 70th anniversary edition.

 

Interview with the engineer working with PWK for the new designs, Roy Delgado.

 

 

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BeFuddled - owned modified KHorns (complete Fastlane Elliptrac top hat, ALK extremes) and Jubilees at the same time. Same room, same electronics. The KHorns now reside with another forum member. IMO any type of modified Klipsch horn element compared to a Klipsch designed Pro speaker is not a fair fight. And rightly so. I am also convinced my Fastlane KHorns did not have the live presentation "jump" as do the stock KHorns Ive heard in the Hope sound room. Klipsch horns are designed to replicate a live sound for the home. While live can never be replicated in home hifi the larger factory Klipsch horns, KHorns, LS, Jubilee, 396, come much closer to live than the more hifi sound of aftermarket "upgraded" (read modified), horns.

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