Khorn sealed but lacking

[dtr20]

I've hooked up my belles and my khorns to an avr and received very lack luster results. They are being driven probably with ease, and can get loud, but they lacked bass and definition.

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[AHall]

Also keep in mind the reason I changed the crossovers is because certain types of music sounded very muffled like a blanket was cast over the horns. Others sounded very good. Since I was on the phone anyway, I grabbed the mid drivers and tweeters. They were fairly inexpensive for the outstanding reviews I read. I didn't buy them to fix my low bass issue at all. I just like to tinker. And have no problem putting the stock units back in. 

 

At this point my avr and music source is a lower quality than the original owner. And the room is "different". The tube amp seemed like a must anyway to really do the khorns justice. It gave a nice smooth top, but gave no positive change to bass. 

 

I have borrowed a friends high end cables and rega CD player. This rules a poor source out. So now once the preamp portion is ruled out, we will know it is the room. 

 

And keep in mind I'm very happy with how these things sound. They are unreal. They just aren't close to the same league as I heard in the demo. The dynamics made those speakers sound 100ft wide and 100ft tall. And have a huge 3 dimensional feel that had the cello sound as tho it was coming from the platform, the violin 5 ft away up front, and various other individual instruments scattered all over this invisible stage. I was truly blown away on the initial listening. Now I have very very loud speakers that are extremely clear and enjoyable, but flat and 2d. And decent bass, but it doesn't punch you in the face or vibrate your pant legs. 

[hsosdrummer]

C'mon, people... Room dimensions, shape and construction are 1000 times more likely to influence a Khorn's bass performance than the amplifier. You can swap electronics for the next 10 years and it won't have anywhere near as much effect on the Khorns' bass performance as would moving the speakers into a different room. That's the difference between what you heard at the seller's house and what you're hearing now, not the amp, not anything else. That's something Khorn lovers have to accept — you're sitting inside of the bass horns, so the room is part of the speaker. Some rooms work better for this than others. Unfortunately, turning a bad Khorn room into a good Khorn room can be expensive and time-consuming, and will almost always involve altering the room's dimensions.

 

Rooms with identical or nearly identical length and width dimensions will produce a large number of bass standing waves and more importantly, bass nulls — which will be made worse if the room's length and width are integer multiples of the room's height. You can solve standing waves with sophisticated measurement and parametric EQ, but you CAN NOT SOLVE BASS NULLS WITH EQ. You'll run out of amp power trying to do so; all that power will simply be turned into heat instead of sound, and the woofers will exhaust their ability to dissipate that excess heat, likely resulting in driver failure. One thing that can help overcome bass nulls is finding a listening position that's outside of all or most of the nulls, but unfortunately, Khorns don't afford such flexibility in listening position, since you can't move the speakers around the room. I know this all from personal experience...

 

I love the sound of Khorns. I bought brand-new Khorns in 1978, and they sounded different in each of 4 different rooms that I had them in over a period of 7 years (various dimensions but all were rectangular), with bass performance ranging from pretty good to astoundingly good. Then I moved into a house with a 16' by 16.5' foot living room (8' ceiling) and they sounded terrible (same electronics). Nothing I did made any difference in bass performance (and because I was renting I couldn't make construction changes in the room), so I replaced the Khorns with Cornwalls, which sounded MUCH better in that room (especially in the bass) because I was able to rearrange the room's layout and place the speakers where they generated few bass standing waves and bass nulls (away from the corners and back wall, contrary to PWK's rule that speakers always sound better in corners). I wound up staying in that house for 16 years, during which I sold the Khorns. After that I bought a house with a living room that has only one natural corner and is too small for Khorns (although it is rectangular) and have been there for another 16 years. I expect to live in that house until I die, so even though I love them, no more Khorns for me.

[AHall]

21 minutes ago, hsosdrummer said:

C'mon, people... Room dimensions, shape and construction are 1000 times more likely to influence a Khorn's bass performance than the amplifier. You can swap electronics for the next 10 years and it won't have anywhere near as much effect on the Khorns' bass performance as would moving the speakers into a different room. That's the difference between what you heard at the seller's house and what you're hearing now, not the amp, not anything else. That's something Khorn lovers have to accept — you're sitting inside of the bass horns, so the room is part of the speaker. Some rooms work better for this than others. Unfortunately, turning a bad Khorn room into a good Khorn room can be expensive and time-consuming, and will almost always involve altering the room's dimensions.

 

Rooms with identical or nearly identical length and width dimensions will produce a large number of bass standing waves and more importantly, bass nulls — which will be made worse if the room's length and width are integer multiples of the room's height. You can solve standing waves with sophisticated measurement and parametric EQ, but you CAN NOT SOLVE BASS NULLS WITH EQ. You'll run out of amp power trying to do so; all that power will simply be turned into heat instead of sound, and the woofers will exhaust their ability to dissipate that excess heat, likely resulting in driver failure. One thing that can help overcome bass nulls is finding a listening position that's outside of all or most of the nulls, but unfortunately, Khorns don't afford such flexibility in listening position, since you can't move the speakers around the room. I know this all from personal experience...

 

I love the sound of Khorns. I bought brand-new Khorns in 1978, and they sounded different in each of 4 different rooms that I had them in over a period of 7 years (various dimensions but all were rectangular), with bass performance ranging from pretty good to astoundingly good. Then I moved into a house with a 16' by 16.5' foot living room (8' ceiling) and they sounded terrible (same electronics). Nothing I did made any difference in bass performance (and because I was renting I couldn't make construction changes in the room), so I replaced the Khorns with Cornwalls, which sounded MUCH better in that room (especially in the bass) because I was able to rearrange the room's layout and place the speakers where they generated few bass standing waves and bass nulls (away from the corners and back wall, contrary to PWK's rule that speakers always sound better in corners). I wound up staying in that house for 16 years, during which I sold the Khorns. After that I bought a house with a living room that has only one natural corner and is too small for Khorns (although it is rectangular) and have been there for another 16 years. I expect to live in that house until I die, so even though I love them, no more Khorns for me.

This might be the truth I've been scared to hear. 

[JJkizak]

Like I said before that 16 x 18 square dimension is a K-horn killer. HSOSDrummer is right on the money.

JJK

[hsosdrummer]

1 hour ago, AHall said:

This might be the truth I've been scared to hear. 

 

Admitting to myself that my Khorns just weren't going to work in my home was indeed painful for me, especially because I'd had such good luck with them in my previous rooms. (One room in particular — in which I formed what was essentially a natural corner by building a 6-foot long wall the same height as the Khorn using 3/4" drywall over a 2 x 4 frame that was nailed into the floor with double-head nails so that the landlord could remove the whole thing by punching through the drywall and pulling out the double-head nails — was where I converted the system from 2-channel to derived 3-channel by adding a Cornwall, a third amp and building a summing network based on info in the Dope From Hope. The whole system sounded absolutely awesome in there — and I mean awesome. The bass seemed to go down to the center of the Earth.)

 

Once I got over the loss of being able to use my Khorns I was much happier with the results from the Cornwalls. For the year I had the Khorns in the 16 x 16.5 x 8 room we hardly ever listened to music — I was only able to find maybe 8 LPs (out of more than a thousand) that produced decent results in there, and even those had disappointing bass performance. Once we changed to the Cornwall system and rearranged the room we listened to music all the time.

[AHall]

2 hours ago, hsosdrummer said:

 

Admitting to myself that my Khorns just weren't going to work in my home was indeed painful for me, especially because I'd had such good luck with them in my previous rooms. (One room in particular — in which I formed what was essentially a natural corner by building a 6-foot long wall the same height as the Khorn using 3/4" drywall over a 2 x 4 frame that was nailed into the floor with double-head nails so that the landlord could remove the whole thing by punching through the drywall and pulling out the double-head nails — was where I converted the system from 2-channel to derived 3-channel by adding a Cornwall, a third amp and building a summing network based on info in the Dope From Hope. The whole system sounded absolutely awesome in there — and I mean awesome. The bass seemed to go down to the center of the Earth.)

 

Once I got over the loss of being able to use my Khorns I was much happier with the results from the Cornwalls. For the year I had the Khorns in the 16 x 16.5 x 8 room we hardly ever listened to music — I was only able to find maybe 8 LPs (out of more than a thousand) that produced decent results in there, and even those had disappointing bass performance. Once we changed to the Cornwall system and rearranged the room we listened to music all the time.

This isn't acceptable

[garyrc]

7 hours ago, AHall said:

This might be the truth I've been scared to hear. 

You could change one room dimension, so that the room fits in Bolt's polygon (see the Dope from Hope).  Others might recommend other sets of good room proportions.  My wife and I built two rooms especially for Khorns, one small, then we moved to another house and built a big one.  The small one was smaller than yours, but still was satisfactory for a single sweet spot.  The big room has 5 sweet spots. 

 

Another approach would be to move the main listening positions, in case you are sitting in a room null.

[Lost240]

I completely agree about the room placement and dimensions being the problem. However, you also changed your mids, tweeters AND crossovers. Just by doing that there is no way it would sound the same as you heard it. Try going back to stock in your room and see what happens. 

[AHall]

1 hour ago, Lost240 said:

I completely agree about the room placement and dimensions being the problem. However, you also changed your mids, tweeters AND crossovers. Just by doing that there is no way it would sound the same as you heard it. Try going back to stock in your room and see what happens. 

 

I did do a month of listening in stock form before I changed anything. 

[AHall]

I wonder if I half walled or removed the entire brick fireplace wall if it would solve my problem. 

 

Your thoughts? 

[Lost240]

1 hour ago, AHall said:

 

I did do a month of listening in stock form before I changed anything. 

Sorry I didn't think you had done this. I still think it's your room geometry. I don't think removing the fireplace or half walling it will have any effect. 

Check out this paper for the Room Proportions. 

Room Proportions extract from DOPE from HOPE!!!_searchable.pdf

[dtr20]

I know that room dimensions can drastically change the performance of a khorn. For whatever reason, everyone is discarding my several experiences with vintage klipsch speakers and avr receivers. Before he spends a million bucks on acoustic panels, false corners, etc, why not try something simple? If he could feel the bass flapping his pants while standing next to the khorn at the previous owners house, why not at his house? I could be wrong, but even with bad room dimensions and room acoustics, he should still feel the bass while he is close to one khorn. Yes, the bass will be lost at the MLP, but not directly at the exit of the khorn.

 

I had my belles for over a year without hearing how great they could sound. My father and I hooked them up to my Harmon kardon avr, his onkyo avr, and his integra avr, with lackluster results. When a friend of mine brought over a Sony integrated amp from the 70s, the belles came alive. I asked this forum why this occurred, and I was told by the forum members here that the problem was in fact the avr. When I got my khorns, I hooked them up temporarily to my surround sound setup with a denon avr, and they didn't sound good at all, hooked up a vintage stereo receiver and there was a smile on my face.

 

Again, I'm not saying that there can't be any improvements made for the room, but start troubleshooting with simple things first. What changed? The speakers are the same, the electronics behind it are different. To me, swapping receivers for a test is a lot easier than room treatments. Just a thought

[AHall]

7 minutes ago, dtr20 said:

I know that room dimensions can drastically change the performance of a khorn. For whatever reason, everyone is discarding my several experiences with vintage klipsch speakers and avr receivers. Before he spends a million bucks on acoustic panels, false corners, etc, why not try something simple? If he could feel the bass flapping his pants while standing next to the khorn at the previous owners house, why not at his house? I could be wrong, but even with bad room dimensions and room acoustics, he should still feel the bass while he is close to one khorn. Yes, the bass will be lost at the MLP, but not directly at the exit of the khorn.

 

I had my belles for over a year without hearing how great they could sound. My father and I hooked them up to my Harmon kardon avr, his onkyo avr, and his integra avr, with lackluster results. When a friend of mine brought over a Sony integrated amp from the 70s, the belles came alive. I asked this forum why this occurred, and I was told by the forum members here that the problem was in fact the avr. When I got my khorns, I hooked them up temporarily to my surround sound setup with a denon avr, and they didn't sound good at all, hooked up a vintage stereo receiver and there was a smile on my face.

 

Again, I'm not saying that there can't be any improvements made for the room, but start troubleshooting with simple things first. What changed? The speakers are the same, the electronics behind it are different. To me, swapping receivers for a test is a lot easier than room treatments. Just a thought

I appreciate everyone going back and forth on this for me. I'll be back home Tuesday, and my new krell preamp will be waiting for me. I have read this preamp is highly regarded in certain areas of my liking. So I'll feed my bob latino st70 with it and hope for better results. 

 

Also before I get too crazy I'll move that piano and allow the sound to travel deep into the dining room and kitchen. 

 

Where the fireplace is, only makes up half of my "back" wall. As everyone can see from the pictures, the house is now wide open, so I'm not sure I am still totally restricted in calling it a 16x18x9 room. Unless the sound sees the half walls no different than full walls. In which I'm doomed. If moving the piano doesn't make any changes and the preamp doesn't make enough change, I'll move them in different places in the house that might be more ideal dimensions. Although they won't stay there permanently. At least I'll know they have the potential to sound decent. 

[dtr20]

Sounds like a great plan

[jimjimbo]

Move the couches out of the room and see what happens.

[TomR]

My son is DTR20 and when he got his Belles we tried everything and they sounded like crap. They had half way decent highs and mids but the bass sounded like a transister radio. No matter what we tried they sounded like crap.We tried 4 or 5 AVRs. I was so upset that my Onkyo 717 with 110 watts per channel couldn't get them to play good. After that I tried talking my son into selling the Belles that everything we heard about them wasn't true or that there was something wrong with them even after he rebuilt the crossovers. Then his friend came over with an old Sony and they came alive. My son bought the Sony on the spot.

[ricktate]

Good idea to try the st-70 since you already have it. I still say its the AVR.....A 24 watt 1970s HK430 should not trounce all over 110 watt INTEGRA  AVR.....Set the equalizer on your avr manually and I bet it will help.....

 I think that's the reason a lot of times people don't like heritage line......If you can hear a pair of HERITAGE on a HK430,630,730 you will be amazed I think

[garyrc]

My Khorns sound great with a Luxman integrated amp.  They sound almost as good with a Yamaha power amp.  Ditto with a NAD power amp.  They sound very much alike with any of the three, with, perhaps, the Luxman sounding just a bit better. 

 

You are not using an AVR accidentally set to SMALL are you?  Or set with a crossover engaged, and set for subwoofer "Yes" ... it's a long shot, but that would seriously cut back the bass.

 

 

[AHall]

9 hours ago, garyrc said:

My Khorns sound great with a Luxman integrated amp.  They sound almost as good with a Yamaha power amp.  Ditto with a NAD power amp.  They sound very much alike with any of the three, with, perhaps, the Luxman sounding just a bit better. 

 

You are not using an AVR accidentally set to SMALL are you?  Or set with a crossover engaged, and set for subwoofer "Yes" ... it's a long shot, but that would seriously cut back the bass.

 

 

I try all different combos with and without. When set to large and pure/direct, it sends everything to the mains anyway. Also removed any room corrective dsp etc.