Forte iii as replacement for Large Advent

[Kalifornian]

Love seeing other peoples listening areas. Makes me feel more normal. I always think my listening area is a huge compromise but its nice to see other have to deal with the same problems 😉

 

Nice Fortes!!!

[K5SS]

Looks like a very nice setup to me! Those are real beauties

[Rivernuggets]

19 hours ago, Steve P said:

I am a bit reluctant to include the photos after seeing all of the very nice listening rooms that have been displayed here.

I also have less than ideal spaces. No worries, very nice room. It won't get in the way of enjoyment.

[ricktate]

Wow those look awesome.....I wished you would have waited a bit and got a price quote from Cory but thats ok. Next time call Cory first. I do think the Fortes need to be moved another inch or two away from the back wall. Maybe nudge the desk over and put woofer on other side of the right speaker to get them spread out a little more. I realize we go to work with what we have . I love the Lambs wool so much I changed my LaScalas and Heresys over to Lambs wool. I want to make another set of grills for my K-horns also some day.

[sheltie dave]

Your bass is a little weakened until you move the speakers out away from the wall a foot. The passives on the back like to breathe, and the bass performance will improve.

 

your sheltie will tell you when you get it right - he will sit on the couch  and tip a jaunty ear. 

 

Beautifyl setup!

[Steve P]

4 hours ago, ricktate said:

Wow those look awesome.....I wished you would have waited a bit and got a price quote from Cory but thats ok. Next time call Cory first. I do think the Fortes need to be moved another inch or two away from the back wall. Maybe nudge the desk over and put woofer on other side of the right speaker to get them spread out a little more. I realize we go to work with what we have . I love the Lambs wool so much I changed my LaScalas and Heresys over to Lambs wool. I want to make another set of grills for my K-horns also some day.

Cory was definitely on my short list. But we have a Heritage dealer here in Charlotte, and I felt that it was appropriate to support a local dealer who maintains demo units on the floor. There are so few of them left anymore compared to the old days.

 

The desk is an immovable object. I had the same idea and tried just what you suggest, but was told to move it back. There is a little flexibility on the right, though moving it much both makes the layout asymmetrical with respect to the screen (aesthetics) and possibly shades the speaker with the couch. I may indeed play with that a bit.

[wuzzzer]

2 hours ago, sheltie dave said:

Your bass is a little weakened until you move the speakers out away from the wall a foot. The passives on the back like to breathe, and the bass performance will improve.

 

your sheltie will tell you when you get it right - he will sit on the couch  and tip a jaunty ear. 

 

Beautifyl setup!

Yep, at least move them forward so they're flush with the front of your component stand.  You'll get way more bass giving the rear passive room to breathe.

[Steve P]

2 hours ago, sheltie dave said:

Your bass is a little weakened until you move the speakers out away from the wall a foot. The passives on the back like to breathe, and the bass performance will improve.

 

your sheltie will tell you when you get it right - he will sit on the couch  and tip a jaunty ear. 

 

I debated a lot about the initial position from the wall. I am starting with what seemed to be in the middle of various thread comments, about 7" from the wall and toed toward the listening position. Another test with them farther out is definitely in the cards. The good news is that the base is quite solid already in this position. Any improvement would, of course, be welcomed. Interestingly, the Forte's seem to couple to the 50 and 100 Hz room resonances more weakly than the sealed Advents did. I am guessing this may have to do with the passive radiator phase. What is important to me is the detail in the bass, not just the magnitude, and the Forte's do not disappoint in that regard. Among other things, I like to listen to organ music, which is quite demanding of both the original recording and the reproduction chain. Nothing in this system will go down to the fundamental of the 32' pipes. But the detail in the voicing of the various 16' ranks is the best I have heard outside of a live performance.

 

Cooper has indeed chosen his preferred listening position on the couch and provides his own commentary. As you well know, Shelties do their own thing for their own reasons and we are sometimes just left to guess.

[Panelhead]

On 10/27/2018 at 9:42 PM, Steve P said:

Since I seem to be on a roll with the photos, here is one showing the "listening room". Actually, this room has to do it all, and it is far from ideal as acoustics go. Half of it is a box with a calculated standing wave at 45-50 Hz; the other

  The coffee table is killing the imaging. My room is the opposite, speakers upstairs in a loft area. With only two walls, K-Horns are out of the question.

[Steve P]

On 10/28/2018 at 11:00 PM, wuzzzer said:

Yep, at least move them forward so they're flush with the front of your component stand.  You'll get way more bass giving the rear passive room to breathe.

 

On 10/28/2018 at 8:36 PM, sheltie dave said:

Your bass is a little weakened until you move the speakers out away from the wall a foot. The passives on the back like to breathe, and the bass performance will improve.

 

Never one to ignore experienced advice, I finally found some time to adjust the speaker-to-wall spacing. I turned off the room correction and disconnected the sub so that I was just looking at the speakers themselves and tried them in their current position (~7in) and again at ~13inch. I do not have good measurement equipment for this at the moment, so the comparison is strictly listening subjective. I used both test tones from 30Hz to 60 Hz and some organ (Jean Guillou's excellent transcription of Pictures at an Exhibition). As expected from the specs, the Forte's were quite audible but struggled at 30Hz regardless of spacing. In general, it appeared that there was a little more strength in the bass at the larger spacing, but the difference was hardly dramatic. Increasing the spacing further made no difference that I could discern, and spacing that was large compared to the cabinet dimensions actually seemed to reduce the bass. I should note that the speakers are toed in, so their rears do not directly face the back wall. All in all, the speakers seem quite tolerant of placement to me and produce excellent sound. 

 

Now that I have had them for a while, I am still amazed at the clarity of their reproduction. At one time I have played both the low end (string bass in orchestra and dance band) and the high end (flute and piccolo in orchestra, chamber trio) and can now find myself recognizing some of the detail technique on these instruments that was not discernible before.

[sheltie dave]

Steve, you will always be fighting the battle dictate by the room dimensions, unless you have the speakers throwing onto the long dimension, and the long dimension  can handle a full wave length of the lowest frequency generated by the speakers. 

 

You otherwise are fighting nodes of standing waves, and also the constrained passive that I mentioned. Getting the bottom anchored as best you can helps create the proper balance for everything else.

[ODS123]

On 10/28/2018 at 10:57 PM, Steve P said:

Cory was definitely on my short list. But we have a Heritage dealer here in Charlotte, and I felt that it was appropriate to support a local dealer who maintains demo units on the floor. There are so few of them left anymore compared to the old days.

 

Very commendable - I agree wholeheartedly.  

[Moosee1955]

I was looking at the height dimensions of your new forte 3's and was thinking to clean up both the bass and lower midrange, you might want to put them on 5-6 inch wood stands. Even though Klipsch makes them solid to be floor mounted, a well made wood or heavy steel stand could only help. Also I'd play around with placement of that 10 inch Klipsch sub. If you can pay someone to come into your home with microphones for optimum speaker and sound deadening treatment. It can make a big difference in sound. The speakers are only good down to 39 hz which is respectable, but getting that sub, or maybe a bigger 12 or 15 inch one, down to 28hz or below is a sound that the wife will say hello, I like your Stereo!

Sent from my N9131 using Tapatalk

[Steve P]

11 hours ago, sheltie dave said:

Steve, you will always be fighting the battle dictate by the room dimensions, unless you have the speakers throwing onto the long dimension, and the long dimension  can handle a full wave length of the lowest frequency generated by the speakers. 

 

You otherwise are fighting nodes of standing waves, and also the constrained passive that I mentioned. Getting the bottom anchored as best you can helps create the proper balance for everything else.

Exactly! With "only speakers," there is a clear bump at about 45-50Hz, just where you would calculate that first standing wave. And it is accompanied by an audible (though not particularly unpleasant) "boominess". The little bit of added shaping provided by the room correction flattens this out and gives a pretty well-defined mid-bass. For the little bit of musical content below the Forte cutoff, the little sub seems capable of filling in smoothly at the volumes at which I listen. I will probably keep playing with the placement and height as suggested by others, but I am not sure that I will detect a whole lot of additional change. I don't think that my ears are quite as trained and cultured as y'all's. What I can tell is that the weak link in the system has shifted from the speakers back to the source material. This is making me take a much more critical look at my collection.

 

What is still a bit of a mystery to me is the source of the greatly improved clarity (particularly in the midrange). It is clearly audible, but not apparent in the spectral response compared to the old Advents (except, perhaps above 12K where the Advents start flagging and the Forte's do not). I have some theories, but no hard core measurements for support:

1) spectral response is actually different at the levels I listen, but not at the test levels (unlikely)

2) while spectral response is only a bit better in the Forte's, they have a much more linear phase

3) lower intermodulation distortion (likely, and one of PWK's frequent contentions as a design goal)

4) directionality of the horns result in less wall interaction in the less-than-ideal room and therefore less phase ambiguity

 

Whatever the reason, I am glad of it. Now to start working with the 45 year old turntable I just finished rebuilding.