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Klipsch vs. Axiom Audio, Fact or Fiction


vasubandu

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The bigger picture i see here for you V is that you quite simply have the fever.  Everybody gets it at times especially early on when discovering there is a whole hidden world of audio quality (and quantity) to be explored.  For some reason I let my bose system hang around way too long and once i got the fever, like many before me, i went through several iterations of different speakers.

 

I would liken speakers to your wine analogy, or beer. There is unquestionably garbage, even though some will drink it or like it for various reasons.  There are average ones then higher end ones.  Then as you say, there is an elite level where in my view, it gets dangerous to go because it gets very expensive but worse....it spoils people where "very good" is no longer good enough.  Like you I think theres a limit past where it becomes detrimental to go....people get spoiled.  Your elite wine drinking friends wont much enjoy a good wine as they know too much and take it too seriously.

 

My best piece of advice is to give any system and setup several weeks so YOU can adjust.  Our ears get very used to anything and it takes time to unwind and truly hear what you have.  at least a few weeks.  

 

My 2nd best piece of advice is to step back and see the larger picture.  Speakers and avrs, outside in open space can be readily compared.  But we dont do that, they are in our living rooms or theaters, or basements.  Systems are limited by the weakest link and in audio it is inevitably the room.  As an example, a certain wallpaper may be able to reduce some high end sound but trust me as someone who has investigated and then built dozens of room treatments....broadband absorbers, acoustic panels and diffusers, I can say from experience:

 

> Nothing limits an audio system more than the room itself.  I can make garbage speakers sound better than fortes and rf7s if the room i use is treated vs those higher end speakers playing in a concrete basement.

 

> Placing and measuring placement of ALL speakers, especially subs and mains, is more important than the quality of the speakers themselves.

 

> THEN the speakers themselves come into play.  I see many if not most people limit their room treatment and placement and focus instead on speakers.  If nothing more can be done to those things then yes, speakers are then the only factor to modify to improve the experience.

 

Food for thought.

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16 hours ago, garyrc said:

This has made me consider a DIY horn loaded subwoofer.  Search the forum, and you will find some info on them.  Horn loaded subs need to be quite large.  Somewhere on the forum there is one almost ceiling height standing in a corner.

I really like this idea but unfortunately don't have the corners or the room.

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5 hours ago, RoboKlipsch said:

Then as you say, there is an elite level where in my view, it gets dangerous to go because it gets very expensive but worse

 

@RoboKlipsch you say a lot of really interesting things in your post.

 

As for wine I find that when I get above $25 a bottle, my ability to tell a difference really diminishes.  But I have had a few wines in a wide price range that blew me away.  I have a crazy client who insisted that we celebrate a victory by opening a special bottle of wine.  So I went to the wine store that did her storage for a tasting. I was a 1946 burgundy from a special vintage, and the bottle was worth $10,000.  I suggested that we sell it and  buy 500 $20 bottle of wine, and she said that this was very special. I don't really like burgundy to begin with, but it really wasn't all that special.  Not something that I would pay $50 for.  However, they also pulled a great vintage Turley Petite Sirah that was one of the best wines I have ever had. It was like $100 or $150.  In sound, I am after the $50 bottle stuff or maybe a little better.  

 

I like the advice about giving it a week.  I have been working on give it 15 minutes, and I see the wisdom of what you say.

 

Your comment about the room really interests me.  This is a decent sized room, and it has linoleum floors and bare walls when we started.  When you made noise, it reverberated.  Very obnoxious.  When we remodeled, we put in bamboo floors and grasscloth wallpaper.  The wallpaper is a  square basket weave of actual grass, so it has a highly irregular surface made of grass.  It looks like this.

Image result for grasscloth wallpaper basket

 

When we installed, it the reverberation went away entirely. and the room is sonically dead. I don't know if you have ever tried it, but it had a big effect for us.  I don't know if I should do more or not.  I am working with a company that makes nice looking panels that they claim are nearly anechoic.  But that is for a speaker idea, not my walls.  I have not paid close attention to placement but will now.

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Ah yes, the fever. Depending on your savings for such things the fever can get out of control. I like looking for pre-owned, versus new for speakers and cars and consider manufacturer refurbished over new for most electronics, especially where extended warranties can be had, it just saves time and money that way. If possible I like to try to time such fevers to major tech changes such as 1080 to 4K where in just about all components need to be upgraded. That gets pricey fast. Small things like Atmos don't faze me much.

I'm a poor man's audiophile, I don't even know anyone who has dreams of 10k bottles of whine...

 

Sent from my Pixel 2 XL using Tapatalk

 

 

 

 

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@Joe01880 I am a cheapskate wannabe audiophile.  Then again, I am generally a cheapskate.  I am the guy who would have a TV drop shipped from China. I buy used and refurbished all the time and never have any problems. I guess I would rather be lucky than good. And I am careful.  I cross check things and verify before I go.  So I have not yet had the TV drop shipped from China because I cannot validate them, but where else can you find a 110 inch 4K Samsung for under $5,000?

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[mention=61891]Joe01880[/mention] I am a cheapskate wannabe audiophile.  Then again, I am generally a cheapskate.  I am the guy who would have a TV drop shipped from China. I buy used and refurbished all the time and never have any problems. I guess I would rather be lucky than good. And I am careful.  I cross check things and verify before I go.  So I have not yet had the TV drop shipped from China because I cannot validate them, but where else can you find a 110 inch 4K Samsung for under $5,000?
I wouldn't buy a tv from China unless I wanted a Chinese tv.
Personally I really like my Korean made OLED.

Sent from my Pixel 2 XL using Tapatalk

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2 hours ago, vasubandu said:

 

@RoboKlipsch you say a lot of really interesting things in your post.

 

As for wine I find that when I get above $25 a bottle, my ability to tell a difference really diminishes.  But I have had a few wines in a wide price range that blew me away.  I have a crazy client who insisted that we celebrate a victory by opening a special bottle of wine.  So I went to the wine store that did her storage for a tasting. I was a 1946 burgundy from a special vintage, and the bottle was worth $10,000.  I suggested that we sell it and  buy 500 $20 bottle of wine, and she said that this was very special. I don't really like burgundy to begin with, but it really wasn't all that special.  Not something that I would pay $50 for.  However, they also pulled a great vintage Turley Petite Sirah that was one of the best wines I have ever had. It was like $100 or $150.  In sound, I am after the $50 bottle stuff or maybe a little better.  

 

I like the advice about giving it a week.  I have been working on give it 15 minutes, and I see the wisdom of what you say.

 

Your comment about the room really interests me.  This is a decent sized room, and it has linoleum floors and bare walls when we started.  When you made noise, it reverberated.  Very obnoxious.  When we remodeled, we put in bamboo floors and grasscloth wallpaper.  The wallpaper is a  square basket weave of actual grass, so it has a highly irregular surface made of grass.  It looks like this.

Image result for grasscloth wallpaper basket

 

When we installed, it the reverberation went away entirely. and the room is sonically dead. I don't know if you have ever tried it, but it had a big effect for us.  I don't know if I should do more or not.  I am working with a company that makes nice looking panels that they claim are nearly anechoic.  But that is for a speaker idea, not my walls.  I have not paid close attention to placement but will now.

i have no doubt your ears are not lying...it may sound much better.  you get some good diffusion too with that pattern

 

with that said the hardest part of taming a room is the low end...nothing can dampen the low end that is under 2" thick, and really 4" is where it becomes what is known as broadband...covering most of the spectrum.  u may have more than enough high end dampening which is a great start.  the key from there is bass traps...really broadband absorption.  4" thick roxul 60 wrapped in fabric, placed ideally in corners but anywhere a wall meets another wall or floor.  what treatment is doing is reducing the decay times.  it may sound crazy to "reduce bass" but really it is reducing how long it plays, sometimes called ringing.  

 

to see it visually requires a $90 umik, free REW software and lots of time to measure.  

 

i saw the new star wars last week in a great theater. my basement theater is imo no doubt superior! 

theaters roll off at 25hz and i could tell.  theaters are well treated but you can match it at home inexpensively with some diy effort.

my living room theater has several 6" traps but no treatment at first reflection points.  its night and day and not nearly as good as a theater, but sounds great with music.

 

i never got into wine, but the older i get the more i appreciate it over beer with meals

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@Joe01880 I wold really like an OLED TV, but they are expensive and it is hard to get around that, and they only go to 65 inches unless you want to spend crazy money.  I can get an 86 inch LG with a good but not great picture for $2,400 delivered, and the kids will be more excited about big than great colors.  A 65 inch i=TV is 57x32.  An 86 inch TV is 75x42.  That is 72% more area.  

 

Think of it in our terms.  Would you rather have a really excellent bookshelf speaker or an OK 6-foot tall tower?  Oh, wait, bad question.  Ignore that.

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4 minutes ago, RoboKlipsch said:

i have no doubt your ears are not lying...it may sound much better.  you get some good diffusion too with that pattern

 

I am not even saying that it sounds better.  I just noticed that the room echo went away and was not sure how much that effect had.  For all I know, a rug would do the same.  But I don't know so I thought I would ask.  

 

If you are really into sound absorption,  do me a favor and check out soundply.com.  They claim that their "LR Series provides near anechoic-grade sound absorption."  The company checks out but I don't have any product yet.

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And while we are comparing alternatives, how about a speaker made of air?  Literally.  

 

OK I never watch or show videos, and this one is not the best, but it explains the idea.

 

The company is waveion.net.

 

I sent a request for information and this is what they said.

 

Hello, Matthew.

 

Ionic loudspeaker, located in the upper part of the acoustic system provides the pulsation of the air column, thus generating axially symmetric sound waves propagating with one phase at 360 degrees. It also has a pronounced vertical orientation.

The higher the emitter height, and the higher the signal frequency = the higher directivity.

The sound pressure level of one loudspeaker is 40cm in height and at a distance of 1m at a frequency of 1kHz - 93dB.

In some laboratory prototypes, we managed to develop the volume in 110 dB.

The non-scalable parameter is the interelectrode distance in a few centimeters. A loudspeaker formed by a system of electrodes, can have any shape and accordingly radiation direction.

Let me ask you, what is the reason for your interest, because our team does not have enough time to personal answers.

With the information you are interested you can read on our website.

 

Sincerely,  Chief Engineer Maksym Chyzhov.

 

So basically take a hike, but it was interesting.

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Just jumping around reading and found this, I know nothing about what they are doing. But looking at the video I have to call :pwk_bs:  on some of what they say.

Traditional speakers have the 3, low mid and high frequencies sections and they don't overlap very well. :o The overall sound is distorted and dull and out of  time except directly right in front of the speaker.

Well that would suck, I'm glad they are fixing the problem.. 

 

 

I thought they had something like this 60 years ago (the tweeter part at least) it was to add a super tweeter to you speaker, exhibit#1

 

museum_first_forty-001_(88).JPG

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@CECAA850 I looked at GIK. They sell off the shelf products.  Not things like microperforations, which are pretty much the forefront of the technology.   The standard for sound absorption is NCU ASTM C423.  As I understand it states the percentage of csond absorbed in decimal format. So .5 would be 50% and 1 would be 100%.  Here is the info for the SoundPly products

 

dc19_v3.svg scp19_v3.svg scp25_v3.svg lrm25_v3.svg lrm51_v3.svg rfm19_v3.svg rfm25_v3.svg rfm38_v3.svg rfm51_v3.svg
ACOUSTICS (LEGACY
PRODUCT)
               

NRC
AST

M-C423

.40

.50 .55 .80 .95 .70 .90 .95 1.00
CAC
ASTM-E1414
n/a n/a n/a 39 39+ 43 46 46+ 46+
STC
ASTM-E336
n/a n/a n/a n/a n/a n/a 37 37+ 37+
STRUCTURE                  
Linear Expansion
ASTM-D1037
+/-0.7% +/-0.4% +/-0.4% +/-0.4% +/-0.4% +/-0.4% +/-0.4% +/-0.4% +/- 0.4%
Span Strength
deflection over 2440mm
122mm 52mm 37mm 13mm 13mm 13mm 3mm 2mm 2mm
Max. Panel Size 5'x12' 5'x12' 5'x12' 5'x12' 4'x8' 5'x12' 5'x12' 5'x12' 5'x12'
Impact Resistance Poor Good Good Excellent Excellent Excellent Excellent Excellent Excellent
Moisture Resistance Poor Good Good Excellent Excellent Fair Fair Fair Fair

 

That would mean that LR M-51 absorbs 95% of sound.  Not your garden variety off the shelf stuff.

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8 minutes ago, vasubandu said:

 

I will find out, but calling BS is premature.

Well then I'll retract my BS and reserve the right to call it back at an undetermined point in time in the future.

 

I'd be interested to find out how that panel can absorb something the size of a 20hz wave.

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Vanu dont get taken by marketing b.s.

 

There are two separate concepts.  Soundproofing and sound absorption.

 

Gik is one of the best and most economical companies and sells the right products.

 

I mentioned earlier that roxul 60 is the best sound absorption product.  There are other products that in some cases do better at certain frequencies but i stand by my statement as 100% correct.

 

Now a company like gik not only knows this but also knows that when too much high end absorption occurs they add scatter plates.  And they sell tuned membrane traps for very low frequencies.

 

There is no magic here.  703 owens corning is popular but not as good as roxul 60.  Ive never heard of any setup with too many bass traps.  That is the issue imo.  I have i think 13 in my main theater and another 20 or so absorption panels.  Placed properly its the real magic.  Consistent fast decay = an amazing room imo.

 

Foam and fancy panels do something but cannot overcome the science.  You can build panels and traps for 20 to 40 each that match a pro version.  You cannot buy a panel, anywhere that absorbs 20hz completely or close.  It would be several feet thcik to accomplish something close.

 

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