Raw Jubes in da house

[babadono]

2 minutes ago, Coytee said:

Looks nice!

 

Nothing like honky horns.

 

 

 

Not knowing the exact issue....  could it perhaps be the substantial jump in sound from Khorns/LaScalas to the Jubilee's that some folks in the past, refused to believe could exist?

 

 

Yes it could of course be that. Audio memory (at least mine) is so allusive(is that the correct word?) I'm in Roy's demo room in Hope going Wow! those sound really good. Or I'm at Trent's house in Idaho going Wow! those sound really good. Then I'm back home with my KHorns and Lascalas saying Wow! this sounds pretty darn good also. But now I've had Jubes in the same room where my KHorns and Lascalas were/are and they sound better. The K402 of course but I was surprised how much better the bass sounds.

[Coytee]

It's an impressive difference....until you hear them side by side....then it's astounding.

 

 

[Schu]

Someone should do a double blind test... you know, just to be sure... 😁

[Chris A]

4 hours ago, babadono said:

They sound fantastic, the 402 horns are amazing. The stereo soundstage is so wide. And the lower registers from the LF cabinets make me think there is/was something wrong with my KHorns and LaScalas that I need to investigate.

Perhaps the difference is that the Jub bass bins are EQed flatter than the Khorns were.  Also, the 31 Hz PEQ boosting filter makes a large difference in the bass response if the Khorns didn't have the same.

 

Chris

[Travis In Austin]

7 hours ago, babadono said:

They sound fantastic, the 402 horns are amazing. The stereo soundstage is so wide. And the lower registers from the LF cabinets make me think there is/was something wrong with my KHorns and LaScalas that I need to investigate. Like maybe the back chambers for the woofers are leaking or??

I think everyone who has heard them side by side, same room, etc. , notices a remarkable difference.

 

There are a lot of things going on that are quite different between a passive Khorn and an active Jube (apart from the obvious differences in woofer(s) and folded horn design) that cause you to HEAR different base.

 

First, it is time aligned, and so the phasing is different, and the distortion is less, etc.  For most (like with anything else)  but not all,  this is perceived as better sounding bass.  

 

I'm sure there are other factors as well that are way beyond my tech limited brain, like cross over points, 2 way vs. 3 way, etc. and as @Chris A mentioned just above, more flexibility in EQ settings, bass bost, etc. also impact how you perceive the bass. 

 

Travis 

 

 

 

 

[Travis In Austin]

3 hours ago, Schu said:

Someone should do a double blind test... you know, just to be sure... 😁

Haha.  

 

They sound so different to me (not saying.better, just different) it is almost like the difference between highquality headphones and good speakers.  

 

The sound is unmistakeable from Jubes, just as the bass from a Khorn is unmistakeable compared to a lot of other speakers.

[Travis In Austin]

Those look great in that room.

[dtel]

18 minutes ago, dwilawyer said:

The sound is unmistakeable from Jubes, just as the bass from a Khorn is unmistakeable compared to a lot of other speakers.

That's true, I have never heard another speaker that had bass sound like a khorn and the jube but less so than the khorn. Not bad but easy to spot.

17 minutes ago, dwilawyer said:

Those look great in that room.

Yes they do, I love how speakers sound in bigs rooms. 

 

The picture made me think, don't worry it scares me also, BUT later on when you want to experiment just for fun pull them out of the corners and slightly away from the walls and point them a little different.

 

I only say this because kevin keeps his tight in the corners,  everytime Roy is around he pulls them out and a little away from the wall, and a little more pointed in the right position crossing in front of where you sit. Kevin's room is not as big as yours so that is the reason he likes them in the corner, it's a little more out of the way. It did seem to help in his room, either sounded good but a little better after he moved them a little, it's free give it a try one day, well it's free if you don't hurt your back. 

 

Congratulations they look nice, your lucky to have a room like that. 

 

 

[dtel]

Almost forgot an easy way to aim them is to put a string through the center top and bottom hole on the 402 flair and get it kind of tight. This puts a line right in the center and is easy to see compared to the center driver from where you sit, and gives you something to line up to get them just how you want compared to each other. It's an easy start anyway. 

[dtel]

5 hours ago, Coytee said:

Looks nice!

 

Nothing like honky horns.

 

 

 

Not knowing the exact issue....  could it perhaps be the substantial jump in sound from Khorns/LaScalas to the Jubilee's that some folks in the past, refused to believe could exist?

 

 

No way can't be.  It was crazy back then, if you even talked about them you were a target, so many strong opinions from people who had not even heard them, only seen a picture which kind of makes it hard to really judge a speaker usually.

 

Roy designed them but it was you and Mike who started pushing some people's buttons by buying them and just saying you liked them better than the Khorns, that's all it took It was like you two lit a fuse and it seemed to blow up pretty quickly.  

[Chris A]

9 hours ago, dtel said:

Almost forgot an easy way to aim them is to put a string through the center top and bottom hole on the 402 flair and get it kind of tight. This puts a line right in the center and is easy to see compared to the center driver from where you sit, and gives you something to line up to get them just how you want compared to each other. It's an easy start anyway.  

One thing that I've found is that the aiming of the K-402s has two major effects.  Within the coverage angles of the K-402, it really doesn't matter if you're on-axis or not since they are so good at providing uniform coverage vs. frequency within their nominal 90 x 60 coverage sector.  However the following effects are worth paying some attention to:

 

1) Keeping early reflections off the room boundaries as far as you can delay them.  This affects soundstage imaging strongly, and to a much lesser degree, timbre.  It's also the reason why side wall and front wall absorbers just at the K-402 mouth exit are so effective in changing the phantom center imaging.

 

2) If you happen to find yourself sitting exactly on-axis of the K-402s, you'll hear a dull sound overall.  This is the psychoacoustic effect known as "the fundamental flaw of stereo" (Floyd Toole, et al.) that is actually formed in the listener's ears due to their separation on either side of the head.  This effect is significantly heightened using K-402s due to their ability to control their polar coverage down to a low frequency (...below 100 Hz as it turns out).  A figure from Toole's book describing this effect using a mannequin head with microphones in its ears ("KEMAR mannequin"):

 

 

If you sit off-axis very slightly and/or you have enough reflections in-room, this effect collapses to something like that seen in figure (e).  This effect is also wrapped up with the "B&W dip" described in other literature.

 

Chris

[babadono]

11 hours ago, dtel said:

Congratulations they look nice, your lucky you're blessed to  have a room like that. 

I'm the thread starter so I fixed it for you. There is no such thing as luck excepting maybe in card games and Futbol(oh sorry, soccer)

Thanks everyone for all the compliments and suggestions. I know I still have to get these better dialed in. More will be revealed as they say.

[dtel]

6 hours ago, Chris A said:

One thing that I've found is that the aiming of the K-402s has two major effects.  Within the coverage angles of the K-402, it really doesn't matter if you're on-axis or not since they are so good at providing uniform coverage vs. frequency within their nominal 90 x 60 coverage sector. 

One of the first things I noticed about the 402 was the first time I heard them in the lab listening room was how wide the coverage was.

There were probably 20 or so of us in there and many people were interested in buying so I sat along one of the side walls 3/4 of the way to the back so others could sit closer to the center. It sounded great to me but switching to a smaller horn (500 I think) it lost most of the sound, it was gone from where I was sitting, I got up and walked to the center and it was fine. When we tried the 402 again I got up and went to the center and there was very little difference in sound. 

 

Now I notice this at home, it sounds fine anywhere in the room which is 24' wide, I can walk up to the Tv in the center and be almost be between the speakers and the sound still sounds like it coming from the center. It's pretty amazing how wide the 402 makes the sound.

[YK Thom]

I have yet to hear a pair Jubes and look forward to the day I do. An utterly spectacular looking speaker. Might have, no would have a hard time selling the wife on a pair of these in the living room. With any luck when we retire and relocate south, our future abode will afford me a separate music room. The clock is ticking and we will be leaving Yellowknife in seven years.

[babadono]

On 5/3/2018 at 4:51 PM, babadono said:

I don't know if you saw this post of mine in different thread:

"Finally got around to putting the Xilica back on the bench. With -10dBV (consumer gear) ref level unbalanced input I was able to get the input meters(in XConsole app) up to +5 dB out of a possible +21. This was with the gain of the input channels all the way up to +15. There is still another 15 db of gain in the outputs available. Curiously it looks like the front panel input meters show the input level WITHOUT the gain you add with the input gain control. But the meters in the XConsole app shows input level with gain added.

Well I'm still trying to wrap my head around what the front panel meters are showing because now I have a balanced signal at +4dBu going in and the meters show "signal" but the -12 led is not even lit."

 

Well I am still trying to wrap my brain around this. I feed a balanced signal out of my mixer to the Xilica and yea if it is at ear bleed level the bottom "signal" led MIGHT be on on the input meters. Nada on the output meters. I will figure this out even if I have to call Kent at Xilica for some help/explanation.

I finally figured out what the heck the meters on the front panel of the Xilica unit are indicating. They are calibrated as minus dB from 0dBFS. And 0dBFS for them is +20 dBu. I could not find this anywhere in their documentation. The meters in the XConsole GUI are clearly labeled as reading in dBu.

And BTW Kent is no longer with Xilica. I hope it has nothing to do with the info he provided me.

[Travis In Austin]

On 6/26/2018 at 3:23 PM, babadono said:

Yes Sir room treatments, check. I am certainly not finished but at least to the point where when time is available I can start taking measurements. I am using some preliminary settings I got from ChrisA for the Jubes with TADs. I've got a new laptop, the UMIK, REW and the Xilica app.

They sound fantastic, the 402 horns are amazing. The stereo soundstage is so wide. And the lower registers from the LF cabinets make me think there is/was something wrong with my KHorns and LaScalas that I need to investigate. Like maybe the back chambers for the woofers are leaking or??

So this thread crossed my path when looking up Clean Box Pro that @dtel used to solve an issue.

 

But what I really want to know is if @babadono misses the pellet stove?

[babadono]

Nope. Probably had it lit like twice in the 12 years I've been in the house. It is now uninstalled, thinking of selling it or moving it to the garage for those cold California winter nights...it is low on the priority list.

 One of the Jubes is now in or close to the corner that it once occupied

[dtel]

6 hours ago, Travis In Austin said:

Clean Box Pro

I got one years ago to adjust live voltage between consumer and pro gear. The DX 38 did not match up with consumer gear. NO lights would light on the DX with that low of a signal the Clean Box Pro fixed it, it is exactly what it is designed for.

 

When Roy was looking for something to volume match tubes and SS for the Klipsch listening room I told him about it, he read about it and overnighted one to the plant to use for a plant tour. Mine is still working fine after years.

[Marvel]

@babadono The room looks nice with all the treaments.  You know, you really could have put MWMs in that room. Wish I had mine back. With the medical bills this past year it's slow going on the JWC's snails.

 

I'll send a pm to fill in on the plans (being in the Philippines, I have certain times I'm just staying in out of the heat. The heat and humidity are about the same... high!)

 

[babadono]

18 hours ago, Marvel said:

You know, you really could have put MWMs in that room.

Yes but there is only so far one can push one's better half...even if it is MY mancave.