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Bi-amping Power for Khorn Bass Bins


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5 hours ago, kevinmi said:

I can run my Decware SE-84 amp at 1/3 volume and get 85db of room filling sound. It's only 1.8 watts and not super easy to clip!

 

But it'd be clipping pretty regularly trying for 105 average, right?

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1 hour ago, boom3 said:

Ummm...why the tape on the level controls? 

 

1 hour ago, boom3 said:

They come with gain/volume controls which can be useful for having maximum rotational resolution on your pre amp volume control.

i think ClaudeJ1 found the level on the power amps that let him use the pre amp voume control most to his liking.

 

https://www.sweetwater.com/insync/gain-staging/

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1 hour ago, glens said:

But it'd be clipping pretty regularly trying for 105 average, right?

I don't know because I've never played it that loud. You would be using 1 watt out of the 1.8 watts available. It would depend on the amount of headroom available and the source music.

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I sure wish that somebody NOWADAYS would come out with an equivalent tube amp to the H/K Citation V!  The originals are so very hard to come by, even more-so than the Citation II (Many of which were robbed for power supplies to use in more recent builds over the last couple of decades or so!)...and even if you find a complete Citation V, it will more than likely often be one of the kit builds which (due to "craftsmanship" issues involved from the original builder) very often require a complete re-build! (even though at initial first look they might seem not to!)...so you end up sinking an additional almost 2 grand into them   This cost is in addition to other things that improve it for use in today's world!  I guess a DREAM find would be one in a well-preserved original unassembled kit format, but just how often does THAT ever occur??  For tube amps, this would be  the route I would most desire to take!...the H/K Citation V!

 

I'm retired now, finally, and am trying to plan out what systems I will have in my retirement home and ensure it is built to contain those particular systems!  The speaker end of things I already have covered but it is the total systems that I need to plan out now!  I have always wanted a Citation V to be involved in at least one of them!  My uncle had one when I was a little kid, and his Julie London records sounded fantastic through it!...as a matter of fact that is how I also became a fan of hers!

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7 hours ago, boom3 said:

Ummm...why the tape on the level controls? 

It's a quick and easy way prevent ignorant people from messing with the realtive gains of my power amps. I do this so the pre amp had to use a higher drive voltage for better Signal to Noise ratio. Jubilees are so efficient at 106 for the bass, and 110 db/watt for the TAD/K403 combo, that it translates back into the entire gain structure. Even put an ordinary receiver  designe for 84 db/watt speakers, where the "normal" volume is a 12 O'clock on dial? Now plug in a Khorn and you can't turn the knob past 8 O'clock without the cops being called after you scare pets and small children. Get it??

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On 5/8/2019 at 3:21 PM, Cut-Throat said:

It's so obvious, all you have to do is listen.

Sometimes, Bull$hit is so obvious, that I don't have to listen. I had big 500 W power amps on my Khorns when I was 23, 42 years ago. Sold them and went down to 75 after I built a custom PEAK power meter to MEASURE those peaks that showed 2 Watt peaks on flat tone controls when the volume was stupid loud only hitting 10 occasionally on dynamic music. Either way, I don't care if anyone puts 10 KILOwatts on a bass bin, it's ignorant. 100 Watts should take care of even the most stupid people.

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On 5/8/2019 at 6:47 PM, babadono said:

Bingo, me too. And depending how dynamic the recording you are playing I could easily see clipping a 45 watt amplifier into a klipschorn. (does 45 SET amplifier mean 45 watts?) Oh jeesh just answered my own question with a little googling. Those amps are only a couple of watts! Therefore super easy to clip into the bass bin of the KHorn.

No one in their right mind would use a 2 watt TUBE amp in bi amp mode on a Khorn  bass bin, which is why I used 6 watts Solid State Chip Amp, as tested by Klipsch engineers in my Quarter Pies. LOL. Saul Marantz (yes THE Saul Marantz) taught me that when I was still a kid. SS on bass, Tubes on Treble.

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7 hours ago, boom3 said:

Ummm...why the tape on the level controls? 

BTW, those little chip amps,. with off board, 19 volt Laptop Power supplies easily do 30 Watt per 4 channels. They are sitting on top of a Class A 10 Watt amplifier that weighs 20 times more than both and will fry your eggs for breakfast.

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4 hours ago, ClaudeJ1 said:

BTW, those little chip amps,. with off board, 19 volt Laptop Power supplies easily do 30 Watt per 4 channels. They are sitting on top of a Class A 10 Watt amplifier that weighs 20 times more than both and will fry your eggs for breakfast.

 

Yeah, but do they sound the same?  Hahaha...

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4 hours ago, ClaudeJ1 said:
11 hours ago, glens said:

Steel tape for scale, cloth tape for making fixed values out of variable?

Correct. Nice to see someone gets it just from the image.

 

Well, I didn't think you were using the steel tape to time-align your drivers and I know how much it sucks when the maid bumps the knobs while cleaning.

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6 hours ago, glens said:

 

Well, I didn't think you were using the steel tape to time-align your drivers and I know how much it sucks when the maid bumps the knobs while cleaning.

Funny about the non existent maid. Mostly it's about "what does this knob do" from a casual visitor when I'm getting him a beer. I know it's practical paranoia on my part, but with about 2 cents worth of tape prevents even ME from accidentally moving those calibrated gain controls. The master gain is on a remote with a digital display on my Yamaha Pre Pro, calibrated to 85 db level at zero setting. Most of the time, I use minus 5 to minus 7. I still wanna hear when I'm 90.

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4 hours ago, ClaudeJ1 said:

upwardFunny about the non existent maid. Mostly it's about "what does this knob do" from a casual visitor when I'm getting him a beer. I know it's practical paranoia on my part, but with about 2 cents worth of tape prevents even ME from accidentally moving those calibrated gain controls. The master gain is on a remote with a digital display on my Yamaha Pre Pro, calibrated to 85 db level at zero setting. Most of the time, I use minus 5 to minus 7. I still wanna hear when I'm 90.

Wouldn't it be nice to have a "lockable" rotary pot or something like that, on equipment?  If that has NOT already been done, then I am sure that it COULD be very simply done with something as simple as a nylon-cam-lobed washer-type "thingy" under the knob which could be locked in place when set by using a lever or something like that...providing tension to the under-side of the knob itself to keep it more or less locked in place, until you decide to move it again!...just "thinking out loud" here....maybe somebody here who is a "maker" can give that idea a try and get rich from it??...of course the knob-body itself would need to have a "shaft set screw" on it to keep it from popping off the shaft when the lever was set!

 

Back in "the old days" of 1975, when I bought my first Sound-Craftsman 20-12A  equalizer (It was much less expensive than SAE....just much LARGER, and performed just as well!  I bought a second one a few weeks later for quad use!) , it included "memory" CARDS (about a dozen of them with instructions for ordering more...at only the shipping cost!) to cut out for where all the slide controls were set for different uses!  You could have one for room equalization, and others for use in equalization for recording Reel2Reel tapes from albums and such!  Too Cool!  You just dropped all the slide-controls down, slipped on the card and adjusted each of the slide controls to their specific notches cut into the card...again...TOO COOL!...and TOO EASY!

 

BTW, FYI:  Radio Shack had the patent for the slide control pots, so everybody who used them had to pay a royalty to them to do so...such as SAE, Sound-Craftsman, and JVC (which had been using them on band equalizers on amps, receivers, and such!) and a very few other manufacturers.  Very few other manufacturers were willing to pay the royalties to Radio Shack...so it wasn't until the Radio Shack patent timed-out that slide control pots showed up on virtually EVERYTHING made, almost over-nite!  My memory fails me on exactly when the patent timed-out...but if you have access to things like the "annual review and equipment catalogs" for all the items being made each year...you will easily see when it happened!

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When using true biamping (crossover ahead of two amplifiers) passive crossover losses are eliminated. As a result, 45 watts on the bass and 25 watts on the high frequencies sounds louder than the 70 watts total amplifier power would suggest. This also applies to triamped and quadamped configurations.

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On 5/8/2019 at 12:57 PM, Cut-Throat said:

 

 

Sure there is a Big Benefit to Bi-amping. I use a 45 SET tube Amplifier on the Mid Range and Tweeters and have  500 watt per channel amp on my Khorn Bass BIn. Without Bi-amping I would not have enough Oomph for my Bass and my Amplifier would clip... Choosing a less pleasing amplifier for my Oris Horns is not an option I would like to take,  So, the Bi-amping has a HUGE Benefit for me.

OK, so on another site, I see that you are using a Hypex amp on your Khorns. I take back all the bad things I said about your amp being overkill. Mine is too, HOWEVER, the main reason you hear a sonic improvement on a Khorn BASS bin is that the Hypex technology applies feedback from the speaker into the amp AND the fact this it rivals class A during the First Watt part of the sound. I'm a fan of Hypex and horn bass, so the 500 Watts aspect of your comment is the part that is the LEAST important in the sonic performance of your combination. Again, my apologies, but didn't say what KIND of 500 watts you were using.

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Claude,

 

On 5/12/2019 at 8:31 PM, ClaudeJ1 said:

OK, so on another site, I see that you are using a Hypex amp on your Khorns. I take back all the bad things I said about your amp being overkill. Mine is too, HOWEVER, the main reason you hear a sonic improvement on a Khorn BASS bin is that the Hypex technology applies feedback from the speaker into the amp AND the fact this it rivals class A during the First Watt part of the sound. I'm a fan of Hypex and horn bass, so the 500 Watts aspect of your comment is the part that is the LEAST important in the sonic performance of your combination. Again, my apologies, but didn't say what KIND of 500 watts you were using.

 

The Hypex PCS2.400 is bridged to 500 watts and running unbridged they are 400 watts each.  Do you think the extra power is a detriment or do you think it would be cleaner running unbridged?

 

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39 minutes ago, Audiophile53 said:

The Hypex PCS2.400 is bridged to 500 watts and running unbridged they are 400 watts each.

If you're ever in the mood to upgrade the newer Hypex Fusion 122 uses the ncore amp modules, which are the state of the art in Class D and rival all but the most expensive Class A amps.

Alternatively you could go all in on active with a pair of FA123s and tri amp each Khorn.

 

That being said your current setup is completely enviable and overkill.

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4 hours ago, Audiophile53 said:

Claude,

 

 

The Hypex PCS2.400 is bridged to 500 watts and running unbridged they are 400 watts each.  Do you think the extra power is a detriment or do you think it would be cleaner running unbridged?

 

It's cleaner running unbridged, but for which speakers?

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4 hours ago, MenloBob said:

If you're ever in the mood to upgrade the newer Hypex Fusion 122 uses the ncore amp modules, which are the state of the art in Class D and rival all but the most expensive Class A amps.

Alternatively you could go all in on active with a pair of FA123s and tri amp each Khorn.

 

That being said your current setup is completely enviable and overkill.

I agree with this notion.

 

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