Would it be worth it for me to get KHorns in my theater room?

[garyrc]

On 10/26/2016 at 9:54 AM, MetropolisLakeOutfitters said:

 

Just voices alone would mess this up.  If a character walks from one side of the screen to the other, often times the voice will follow so sound comes from right behind them.  If the sound was coming out of the far corner, that would just be weird.  

Very, very rarely happens.  Our Khorns are about 14 feet apart, tweeter center to tweeter center.  We have a 130" wide 2.35:1 projection screen, and view it from about 12 feet away.  Modern movies almost always have the voices centered, unless the character moves completely off-screen, and then the voice is appropriately off-screen.  Some multichannel movies of the '50s, especially those intended for 70 mm, have the voices pinpointed over 5 channels behind the screen, and one surround, originally switchable from LS to RS.  Blu-ray or DVD transfer engineers fool around with this a little.  Around the World in 80 Days (1956) works fairly well, with everybody's voice coming more or less from their mouth, with just a few intentionally off-screen voices,  With Ben-Hur (1959) the disk people seemed to strike a compromise by having almost all the voices from the center channel, and also from at least one of the front side channels, with the volume in the side channel varying in accordance with where the character was on the screen.  It worked O.K.

 

The music imaging ranges from good to great, FWIW. 

 

I don't think the OP should wait too long.  I bought 1982 Khorns new in1982, then watched Klipsch make about 4 changes in the Khorn in the ensuing years.  I eventually, in 2004, I bought new K401 mid horns, and AK4 upgrade kits.  Later, when the AK5s came in, Klipsch graciously told me the one minor xover circuit change I would need to make to transform my AK4s into AK5s, plus a different wall seal configuration.  People on this forum convinced me that the AK4s might be more to my liking, and since I was going to Audyssey to smooth out the frequency response anyway, I stayed with the AK4.

 

As long as Klipsh offers upgrades (a tradition that goes back to at least the '60s), a Khorn can always be made up to date.  I buy the argument that Klipsch has the revolving door, corner containing, otherwise anechoic chamber, and the other upgraders don't, so I stayed with stock, resolving to research other upgrades if I was not satisfied with the sound.  Since, with Audyssey, I was satisfied, I stopped with stock.

[Paducah Home Theater]

22 minutes ago, garyrc said:

Very, very rarely happens.

 

I can think of some modern scenes off the top of my head.  Transformers 4 does it quite a bit.  Consider the boat scene where they are hunting Ratchet.  A dragonfly type of drone flies to one side of the screen to another and is centered behind the drone.  Optimus's voice flies all over the place.  Rockets pan everywhere.  Lots of stuff going on.  My RF-7ii's on each side of the screen is enough to mess up the dragonfly drone.  

[Max2]

20 hours ago, AaronB123 said:

Alright I've come to the conclusion when I find a decent pair at a good price locally I am gonna pull the trigger and give it a shot. I just have one question for you all. Now,  am going to go the route of building the falls walls onto the back of the speaker instead of trying to block the pipe in any way. Now do you guys think I should build the false wall on both of them or just the one that can't sit flush into the corner? 

 

 

You will have to build false walls or enclose them both. One tucked in a corner and one enclosed or false walled will have a different response.  Much more expensive and cumbersome to build false walls as opposed to enclosing them, but false walls will be closer to being completely correct than enclosing them.  

[garyrc]

22 hours ago, MetropolisLakeOutfitters said:

 

I can think of some modern scenes off the top of my head.  Transformers 4 does it quite a bit.  Consider the boat scene where they are hunting Ratchet.  A dragonfly type of drone flies to one side of the screen to another and is centered behind the drone.  Optimus's voice flies all over the place.  Rockets pan everywhere.  Lots of stuff going on.  My RF-7ii's on each side of the screen is enough to mess up the dragonfly drone.  

How far apart are your RF-7iis?  How close to the screen do you sit?  How wide is your screen?  It may be that the sound effects and dialog placement seem better if a screen is almost as wide as the widely spaced L & R front speakers are apart (as is our 130" wide 2.35:1 AT screen; the sides of the screen slightly overlap the Khorn cabinets, but are not in front of a driver).  If the dragonfly drone is at the right hand side of the screen, but there is too much space between the edge of the screen and the right speaker, the sound of the drone may not seem to come from the drone.   If so, perhaps the OP should consider that in making his decision.

 

In my post, I meant that both voices and music sounded like they were in the right places with our very widely spaced LF & RF speakers.  I haven't seen Transformers 4, but sound effects sound well placed in all the movies we have run in our HT (2 or 3 per week for the past 2 years +).  Also, sound effects down the side walls (as in The Grey, for instance) make a sound field that seems continuous with the sound spread across the front.