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Lascalas: king of imaging in the heritage line?


jwgorman

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While perusing through some comments recently I noted that someone said matter-of-factly that the Lascals imaged the best of the heritage line. 

As I pondered that I recalled my khorns, heresies, belles and lascalas and their ability to not only establish a solid center image but to create an off center image as well. In the rooms I've had my speakers in, it's not even close. My lascalas are king. I owned belles before I understood the importance of early reflection elimination etc. so, man, I wish I still had my belles :) 

Anyway, just wondered, if those of you who have heritage speaks have had similar experiences. 

 

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I think that you need to consider whether or not all the loudspeaker types were in the same room and with the same placement in-room.  Then you can make an assessment about that room and those loudspeaker placements.  But it would not be prudent to try to generalize that observation in my experience. 

 

Note that the midrange and tweeter of the La Scala is exactly the same as the Khorn, so observations that differ between them in terms of imaging will be traceable to the room acoustics and room placement, and not so much the loudspeakers themselves.  If you haven't placed sufficient absorption around the Khorn side walls and front wall at the midrange horn mouth, as well as sufficient carpet on the floor and top-of-the-top-hat absorption, you're not comparing apples to apples.

 

In my listening room with K-402 Jubs, if I take out the absorption around the Jub mouth exits, the imaging will disappear--in my room.  With that absorption present, I have not heard a pair of loudspeakers that image like they do presently.

 

Chris

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I don't personally have an apples to apples comparison for the whole Heritage line. I do for heresies, khorns and lascalas (had them all in my current room). But I bet some members here do.

While the drivers for the Khorns and the Lascalas may the same, they sound very different, due in no small part to the flexibility the lascala offer in terms of placement, but even jammed into the corner, very different from the Khorns. 

No doubt your Jubes are awesome but they aren't Heritage. That's what I was asking about. 

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Full disclosure: I consider imaging fairly low in importance, compared to dynamics, low distortion, instruments that sound like themselves, etc.

 

That being said, imaging varies with the recording, to a degree.  Microphone technique makes a difference.

 

The Stereophile reviewer said La Scala II imaging was great, and rated them in the highest category for speakers that don't have bass extension that reaches all the way down..

 

At best, my Khorns, with a center Belle with mid/tweet at the same height as the Khorns, and absorbers on the side and front walls at the same level as the Khorns' midrange and tweeter horn mouths, wall to wall carpet, and Audyssey, plus some absorption and diffusion in the room, I get 7 distinct loci in the front sound field, with a good recording.  With some recordings, the imaging is significantly worse.  It is true that "depth" beyond the wall the Khorns are on is usually minimal, except when it is recorded to emphasize it, as in several recordings of La Bohème.

 

I have heard La Scalas many times over the past 40 years, and don't recall ever being impressed by the imaging.  I was impressed by the imaging of Khorns, however (but not much "depth"). In one store, built like a  warehouse, I heard  La Scalas and Khorns, and the Khorns beat, in every way, including imaging, all of the other 8 or 9 speaker pairs that were along the same wall; of course, since the Khorns were in the corners, they were spread about 60 feet apart ...  The "serpent" in Terpsichore seemed suspended in space in front of us, and all the rest of the instruments were spread out nicely across the sound stage.

 

A note on depth: the sound system for music listening and viewing movies are one and the same at our house.  For movies, the depth is in front of the main speakers, rather than behind.  We have the aforementioned  Khorns and Belle across the front, and 2 Heresy IIs as surrounds, to the side and a little behind the listening positions.  The front depth can be tremendous, once again, depending on the recording.  For the movie The Grey something happens near the beginning that puts sound sources all over, including down the side walls in about 5, maybe 6 locations on each side wall, and behind, with a little depth beyond the front wall.  Most surprisingly, with no height speakers and no atmos, there is a distinct sense of up and down.  Don't ask me how that works, but Chesky included up and down on one of their two channel test discs, and it worked for me with that disc.   I'd say that I clearly hear up and down in about 5% of the movies I see in my HT.

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Very interesting. I have never run a middle channel with my Khorns. I've heard a set-up like that a couple times (back in the days when Klipsch dealers actually did things like that). 

I think Chesky has magic potions, that's pretty cool. 

As a guy who's owned 4 pair of Maggies and always came back to klipsch (pre-kids) I really was amazed by their capability to convince me that there was a solo violinist or vocalist in my room. But I totally understand about the dynamics/distortion/naturalness of instrument voicing etc. That's where the maggies left me flat. I've owned Klipsch exclusively for the last 20 some years. 

I'm sure a huge factor is the room and it sounds as though you have the reflections pretty well rung out!

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While the mid and tweeter of Khorns and La Scalas are the same, I imagine that most do not have them positioned the same in their rooms. My La Scalas imaged very, very well, and the last Khorns I heard was over 35 years ago and I wasn't really paying a lot of attention to the imaging on them.

 

Bruce

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As is usually the case, the perceived performance of any system is highly dependent on many factors, type of music, recording quality, room, etc, etc, etc......  What I will briefly say though, is that for live music performances, the La Scala's can't be beat for making those come to life.  Overall, however, for everything else, and just slightly behind the La Scala are my Khorns.  Cornwalls, Chorus II's, Forte II's can't hold a candle to either one.  All of them sound....I use the word "congested" , in comparison.  Sure, they can "thump", but that's not what I'm after.

As a sidenote, easily the very best La Scala's I own are LSI splits, with the top hat raised up off the bass bin approximately 18 inches.  Michael Colter suggested that to me years ago, and I still thank him for that.

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^^^^^

Agree, plus this - you must hear what I hear when comparing LS to Corns and Forte, never owned or heard Chorus but imagine owning Forte can be a stand in. You use the word congested, I use slow and recessed = congested?

And your topic comparing LS1 and 2 where you now state LS splits are your favorite flavor. With that in mind might the split cabs of the LS2 be that much more appealing to you, other than the price difference?

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^^^^^








Agree, plus this - you must hear what I hear when comparing LS to Corns and Forte, never owned or heard Chorus but imagine owning Forte can be a stand in. You use the word congested, I use slow and recessed = congested?








And your topic comparing LS1 and 2 where you now state LS splits are your favorite flavor. With that in mind might the split cabs of the LS2 be that much more appealing to you, other than the price difference?




Yes, congested to me means veiled or dull or just not dynamic. This is obviously just my opinion and this is to say nothing to those who own and enjoy Cornwall's, chorus, forte. I don't know how far you can raise the top hat of the La Scala II and make it still elegantly presentable within its intended design. I'm sure I've probably said this before on the forum, but I have had people over to my home and have listened to all of my systems and virtually all of my speakers and almost every single one of them has said how much more they enjoy the LS splits than any of the others. And, the funny thing is is that they are almost completely stock other than some Dayton capacitors that have been replaced in the crossovers. Stock K 77 tweeters stock K 55 mid range and of course the stock K 43 woofer in the base bins.. looking forward to eventually installing the Crites CT 120 tweeters and the A55G mid range drivers in those bad boys…
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20 hours ago, Chris A said:

..................

 

In my listening room with K-402 Jubs, if I take out the absorption around the Jub mouth exits, the imaging will disappear--in my room.  With that absorption present, I have not heard a pair of loudspeakers that image like they do presently.

 

Chris

 

Chris, can you post a picture of what you put around your K-402 mouths? 

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A discussion and a picture on this subject can be found here (a prior system configuration):

 

To make the Belle or La Scala really image and open up in timbre (i.e., to become neutral sounding), I went down the following path and found the annotated sonic results at each step.  Note that if you want to really hear how any loudspeaker images, listen to it in mono...

 

My path, in summary:

 

1) I plugged in a stock Belle/La Scala using passive crossovers (a terrible timbre match with the two Jub corner horns, even with absorption placed as I described above).

2) EQed much flatter using active crossover, still mono-amping (still a big timbre shift with respect to the corner horns, but not as pronounced.)

3) Bypass the passive crossover and tri-amp, EQing flat but not correcting the time delays for the bass, midrange, and tweeter (still a significant timbre shift and lower clarity, but not so much as the prior configuration).

4) Dialed in the correct time delays for the midrange and tweeter (suddenly the timbre corrects itself to sound just like the Jubs, and the clarity takes a leap upward).

5) Flattened the FR further (even better timbre matching).

6) Replace the midrange horn/driver with a time-aligned K-510 horn with K-69-A driver, and EQed flat (much better seamless integration between Jubs).

7) Replaced the tweeter with Beyma CP25 (much smoother and much better HF integration between Jubs, with only the "apparent source width" (ASW) on the center loudspeaker being significantly narrower than the Jubs.  This performance is what I used for about a year and a half of total service.

 

I finally replaced the tri-amped JuBelle with bi-amped time-aligned K-402-MEH (seamless integration with Jubs across the full width of the room--walking from side wall to the other side wall, with center clarity and imaging exceed the corner horns).

 

Chris A's Main Setup.jpg

 

Chris

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I've had Klipschorns and La Scalas. Currently have Belles.

 

With good recordings (especially Classical and Jazz), I managed to get all of them to image quite nicely with an image that extends outside and behind the speakers with a solid center and good specificity throughout the soundstage.

 

Just my opinion. In my room. With my gear. Etc.

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Well, I don't want to oversell.  The K-77s have low harmonic distortion across their FR band, but I found that they are quite harsh sounding below about 4 kHz (as well as the K-55+K-600 midrange driver/horn above about the same frequency).  So even though the Beyma exhibits slightly higher HD, it was preferred because I could run the crossover point down to 2-2.5 kHz without the tweeter sounding harsh. 

 

I think that this is a systemic thing with the Heritage series, i.e., Khorn, La Scala, Belle, Cornwall, Heresy.  Depending on the exact implementation of the crossover filters and their center points, you get different levels of smoothness vs. harshness in the upper midrange/lower treble, which is the place where the human hearing system is the most sensitive.  Using a DSP-based crossover will help you to hear those differences and the narrowness of the crossover interference band between these two drivers/horns.  Having a tweeter that can cross over at a lower frequency smoothly will help the overall presentation greatly.

 

With the JuBelle configuration (i.e., K-510 horn with K-69-A 2" compression driver),  the Beyma CP-25 tweeter helped out above 8 kHz crossover point so that the chattering of the K-69-A driver could be avoided at 14.5 kHz.  Otherwise there was little reason to mount the Beyma tweeter.  With a smoother 2" compression driver--like the K-691 or the Faital Pro HF20AT, there is no real need for a separate tweeter.

 

Chris

 

 

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18 hours ago, Marvel said:

While the mid and tweeter of Khorns and La Scalas are the same, I imagine that most do not have them positioned the same in their rooms. My La Scalas imaged very, very well, and the last Khorns I heard was over 35 years ago and I wasn't really paying a lot of attention to the imaging on them.

 

Bruce

 

About 35 years ago I had LaScalas and Khorns in the same room. The  Khorns would go louder and lower while the LaScalas would image better. Being able to place the Lascalas in the room where they sounded best was the key.

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Please note that if you use false corners or full-sized enclosed backs with wings with Khorns (as PWK did in his own home) then you can place them anywhere you wish.  Same thing for La Scalas and Belles...if you place them in false corners or attach wings to get lower effective Fc out of them.

 

The notion that Khorns are automatically going to image less well than La Scalas is (once again) dependent on where you place them in-room, and the acoustic treatments used to integrate them well.  The fact that La Scalas have their tweeter and midrange horn mouths closer to the floor isn't an advantage in this respect--especially if you do nothing to integrate them well. 

 

What I see is a lot of instances where the owners are doing basically nothing in terms of acoustic treatments and more optimal room placement to get good performance out of them.  I suppose part of this is due to the fact that there is no real user manual for these loudspeakers that would tell the customer how to use them more effectively.  That's why (at least for corner horns) I invested my time writing the corner horn imaging FAQ 6 years ago...to enlighten corner horn owners on how to more effectively use their corner horns to get better sound.  Some of the techniques described in that thread are also applicable to horn-loaded loudspeakers that aren't being used in room corners.

 

Chris

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