Jump to content

KLF-10 HEIGHT, STANDS OR TILT?


Recommended Posts

In my listening position my ear is 39" high. The tweeter center of the KLF10 is about 33" high. When I lower my ear to the level of the tweeter center or just below,  the sound really blooms. I need to make up that 6" somehow. I can either build some 6" stands or tilt the speakers back a few degrees to get a 6" height differential to my seating position. 

 

I was hoping other Klipsch tower owners who have dealt with this issue can chime in. I know stands can change bass response, so how did it change in your experience? 

 

Tilting is used to time-align tweeters to woofers and mid-ranges, but with a recessed Klipsch horn I doubt that's even an issue. Will I create an issue should I tilt? 

 

Or is there an option I haven't considered?

 

I guess every solution comes with it's own set of problems...I will be doing some testing but in the meantime, I would like to hear what you've heard.

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

it has been my experience that tilting messes with the perception of the stage because your brain expects sounds to come to you from in front of you at a normal stage height. When you tilt a speaker up then the sound is coming to you unnaturally from below the normal plane from which you would it expect it to. I use stands to raise my speakers so that the centre of the mid horn (in your case the mid/tweeter horn at your seated ear level. Attached is a set of new Forte lll on four post stands to raise the centre of the mid horn to seated ear level. The factory risers have been removed for stability and esthetics.

Klipsch Forte 3 on Skylan Stands.JPG

  • Like 2
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Keep posting that photo and some folks are going to start to think raising floor-standers, especially with a void under them, is a good idea, though I won't be one of them.  At least skirt those stands so all four sides of the cabinet can acoustically couple to the floor, please.  It's painful to look at knowing what it does to the lower registers.

  • Like 2
  • Thanks 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

15 minutes ago, glens said:

Keep posting that photo and some folks are going to start to think raising floor-standers, especially with a void under them, is a good idea, though I won't be one of them.  At least skirt those stands so all four sides of the cabinet can acoustically couple to the floor, please.  It's painful to look at knowing what it does to the lower registers.

 

Every time I have rasied floor standing speakers they lost considerable amounts of bass.  Especially short boxy speakers like fortes etc... KG 4.5 & 5.5 or KLF 10,20,30 are taller & narrower & dont look right raised up on stands IMO. 

 

If you want to get the tweeters closer to ear level I think a slight tilting would be the best option, 1-2" tilt will not mess with perception much if at all.  Heresies have tilted risers & I've never heard anyone say, "my brain expects the sound to come at me from a more normal stage height."  

 

Play with tilting them or maybe change their position or your listening position a bit.

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

2 hours ago, EpicKlipschFan said:

 

Every time I have rasied floor standing speakers they lost considerable amounts of bass.  Especially short boxy speakers like fortes etc... KG 4.5 & 5.5 or KLF 10,20,30 are taller & narrower & dont look right raised up on stands IMO. 

 

If you want to get the tweeters closer to ear level I think a slight tilting would be the best option, 1-2" tilt will not mess with perception much if at all.  Heresies have tilted risers & I've never heard anyone say, "my brain expects the sound to come at me from a more normal stage height."  

 

Play with tilting them or maybe change their position or your listening position a bit.

how many people do you know who have listened to their Heresy up on 20"+ stands? I do and I much prefer that perspective. even a couple of inches tilt bothers me. Each to their own as they say YMMV.

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

1 hour ago, moray james said:

how many people do you know who have listened to their Heresy up on 20"+ stands? I do and I much prefer that perspective. even a couple of inches tilt bothers me. Each to their own as they say YMMV.

 

how many do i know? none.  everyone i know puts their floor speakers, on the floor.   :unsure:   how many have put theirs on stands? probably quite a few.  & theres nothing wrong with that, if they sound good to you.  worth a try to experiment with minor placement changes before committing to building/buying speaker stands.

 

i used to use speaker stands,  when i was in a smaller room & close listening position it did help with the mids/highs, but the allowed listening volume was pretty low so i didnt notice the bass loss.  when i moved too a bigger house/room i was able to sit further back & have the speakers on the floor & the tweeters were still very close to ear level... the bass was a lot better on the floor, you could feel it in the furniture & your body & when on stands a lot of that was lost.  this is mainly at louder listening levels of course.  

 

just stating my experience with stands & floor speakers of this size.  & that klipsch used a slant for the heresy for this reason & its not really a complaint you hear much of.  

 

 

  • Like 3
Link to comment
Share on other sites

I had the CF-3's for awhile (miss them) and, sure, maybe there was some loss of HF but if the seating position is farther back at the right distance, they were great.  IF they were to have been un-coupled from the floor, they would have sounded awful.  But how many people sit 4 feet from their large speakers, anyway?  I tilted the fronts of the speakers with round felt pads and I could hear enough noticeable difference.  I was NOT going to put 100lb CF-3's on stands and for darn sure not like those pictured above with the Forte III's.  Small bookshelf speakers are made to go on speaker stands because they are (wait for it) small and that gets them closer to ear level.  Big speakers were just not designed to go on large stands just to get their mid "up to ear level"; it's just a sacrifice.  I couldn't imagine putting my Belle clones on  top of stands just to accomplish something like that....it would look completely stupid.  If PWK wanted them at ear level, why didn't he just put them there in the first place?  And the same goes with every other speaker manufacturer out there.

 

My fix for big speakers not being at ear level?  Use a shorter chair.     😎  Or buy one that fits along with ones speakers so they perform how they were designed....which was NOT sitting on open bottom stands.

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

7 hours ago, moray james said:

it has been my experience that tilting messes with the perception of the stage because your brain expects sounds to come to you from in front of you at a normal stage height. When you tilt a speaker up then the sound is coming to you unnaturally from below the normal plane from which you would it expect it to. I use stands to raise my speakers so that the centre of the mid horn (in your case the mid/tweeter horn at your seated ear level. Attached is a set of new Forte lll on four post stands to raise the centre of the mid horn to seated ear level. The factory risers have been removed for stability and esthetics.

Klipsch Forte 3 on Skylan Stands.JPG

Thank you for your response. I like the way those stands look, they look like a part of the speaker. They actually make me think of the concessions speaker builders make to meet price and aesthetic demands. It wouldn't be hard to determine a range of seating heights and build speakers accordingly, but how many wives would say "no" to an even taller speaker?!

 

But please tell me how it has affected bass response. And could you tell me the height of those stands? They look about 8" tall, and the forte being 36" tall, that tells me that your sitting height is about the same as mine (39") because those stands would put the spot between the tweeter and the mid at about 38"-39" (from my visual guestimation).

 

I desperately need these KLF10's at that height, the sound difference is night-and-day. I have a sub woofer (synergy sub12), and am trying to get a second one, so I can overcome the loss in the lower end, but the klf's are putting out such a good bass response in the mid-lower to mid-upper bass region that I would hate to lose it.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

5 hours ago, glens said:

Keep posting that photo and some folks are going to start to think raising floor-standers, especially with a void under them, is a good idea, though I won't be one of them.  At least skirt those stands so all four sides of the cabinet can acoustically couple to the floor, please.  It's painful to look at knowing what it does to the lower registers.

So if I were to build 6" tall "boxes" under the klf's (like the risers on fortes or chorus'), do you think I would not lose bass?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

5 hours ago, EpicKlipschFan said:

 

Every time I have rasied floor standing speakers they lost considerable amounts of bass.  Especially short boxy speakers like fortes etc... KG 4.5 & 5.5 or KLF 10,20,30 are taller & narrower & dont look right raised up on stands IMO. 

 

If you want to get the tweeters closer to ear level I think a slight tilting would be the best option, 1-2" tilt will not mess with perception much if at all.  Heresies have tilted risers & I've never heard anyone say, "my brain expects the sound to come at me from a more normal stage height."  

 

Play with tilting them or maybe change their position or your listening position a bit.

I will definitely experiment with tilting before committing to purchasing and building any type of stand. 

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

2 minutes ago, MechEngVic said:

Thank you for your response. I like the way those stands look, they look like a part of the speaker. They actually make me think of the concessions speaker builders make to meet price and aesthetic demands. It wouldn't be hard to determine a range of seating heights and build speakers accordingly, but how many wives would say "no" to an even taller speaker?!

 

But please tell me how it has affected bass response. And could you tell me the height of those stands? They look about 8" tall, and the forte being 36" tall, that tells me that your sitting height is about the same as mine (39") because those stands would put the spot between the tweeter and the mid at about 38"-39" (from my visual guestimation).

 

I desperately need these KLF10's at that height, the sound difference is night-and-day. I have a sub woofer (synergy sub12), and am trying to get a second one, so I can overcome the loss in the lower end, but the klf's are putting out such a good bass response in the mid-lower to mid-upper bass region that I would hate to lose it.

I am nor sure of the exact height of these stands I could find out for you as I know the manufacturer. If you measure your seated ear height and then the height from the base of the speaker to the centre of the mid/tweeter horn then you can easily calculate how high the stand needs to be. The stands are manufactured by Skylan Stands and they will easily take the weight of a 200 LB man on them with no problem. See Skylanstands.com if you want to contact the owner Noel Nolan.

you can raise your KLF10 up to the appropriate height on what ever you have at hand and have a listen to see what you think of the sound. Open stands generally impact the lower bass. As I said it should be easy for you to evaluate the impact yourself simply raise your speakers on some oil cans or the like to simulate an open stand. You can build your own stands or you can purchase a set. I agree the right height makes all the difference.

  • Like 2
Link to comment
Share on other sites

9 minutes ago, MechEngVic said:

So if I were to build 6" tall "boxes" under the klf's (like the risers on fortes or chorus'), do you think I would not lose bass?

if you have the ability to build a simple box of the appropriate height then why not try and see what you think? That way you will know.

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

13 hours ago, MechEngVic said:

In my listening position my ear is 39" high. The tweeter center of the KLF10 is about 33" high. When I lower my ear to the level of the tweeter center or just below,  the sound really blooms. I need to make up that 6" somehow. I can either build some 6" stands or tilt the speakers back a few degrees to get a 6" height differential to my seating position. 

 

Haha ... get some "lower" chairs.  Think you're a Mechanical Engineer, so you know there are multiple ways to solve the problem :D 

In my case (CF-3's with the horn between the woofers) I got some Ikea Poang chairs - think ear level is about 33 inches :)  Have them in my (separate) stereo room ... wife never goes there. Pic below ... pic from sellers house; got them cheap for $110; yes, leather :) 

https://photos.offerup.com/sD8vXiM8rIcHAlRG4xoD2GqwGJM=/600x1066/9ce7/9ce7de1c11de41e1b4c2d9ab3d5982a4.jpg

 

Oops ... BTW, welcome to the forum :D 

  • Like 3
Link to comment
Share on other sites

19 minutes ago, avguytx said:

I had the CF-3's for awhile (miss them) and, sure, maybe there was some loss of HF but if the seating position is farther back at the right distance, they were great.  IF they were to have been un-coupled from the floor, they would have sounded awful.  But how many people sit 4 feet from their large speakers, anyway?  I tilted the fronts of the speakers with round felt pads and I could hear enough noticeable difference.  I was NOT going to put 100lb CF-3's on stands and for darn sure not like those pictured above with the Forte III's.  Small bookshelf speakers are made to go on speaker stands because they are (wait for it) small and that gets them closer to ear level.  Big speakers were just not designed to go on large stands just to get their mid "up to ear level"; it's just a sacrifice.  I couldn't imagine putting my Belle clones on  top of stands just to accomplish something like that....it would look completely stupid.  If PWK wanted them at ear level, why didn't he just put them there in the first place?  And the same goes with every other speaker manufacturer out there.

 

My fix for big speakers not being at ear level?  Use a shorter chair.     😎  Or buy one that fits along with ones speakers so they perform how they were designed....which was NOT sitting on open bottom stands.

Thanks for your comment. I think we should remember that almost every time a speaker-builder designs and makes a speaker, it is not a cost-is-no-object endeavour, and they are mostly building under cost and design constraints. That means that in many cases the speakers they built could have sounded better. How much more would it have cost PWK to make the Belles taller? Why not just make the best speaker he possibly could every time. It wasn't because they sounded the best the way he made them, but rather that was the best sound for the use he envisioned for them, combined with cost he was willing to take on and the price he thought he could get for them.

 

I wish I could afford taller horn driven speakers, or I could use a shorter chair, but it would have to be a chair about 10" off the ground. Plus my listening space is my home-theater/office/studio. It's a small room and most of the time I'm in my office chair just a few feet from the speakers, so height is crucial.

 

I like your idea of using felt pads to tilt, I think I have some felt pads hiding somewhere. I can imagine the height of the CF-3's really being an issue at a close distance. Did you keep the felt pads under the CF-3's even when your sitting position was further back? Also, I'd like to see pictures of your Belle clones.

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

42 minutes ago, Emile said:

Haha ... get some "lower" chairs.  Think you're a Mechanical Engineer, so you know there are multiple ways to solve the problem :D 

In my case (CF-3's with the horn between the woofers) I got some Ikea Poang chairs - think ear level is about 33 inches :)  Have them in my (separate) stereo room ... wife never goes there. Pic below ... pic from sellers house; got them cheap for $110; yes, leather :) 

https://photos.offerup.com/sD8vXiM8rIcHAlRG4xoD2GqwGJM=/600x1066/9ce7/9ce7de1c11de41e1b4c2d9ab3d5982a4.jpg

 

Oops ... BTW, welcome to the forum :D 

Beautiful  chairs! Man, now you got me going to Ikea!

  • Haha 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

 

 

 

I think we should remember that almost every time a speaker-builder designs and makes a speaker, it is not a cost-is-no-object endeavour, and they are mostly building under cost and design constraints. That means that in many cases the speakers they built could have sounded better.

 

Yeah, instead of the Klipsch poster saying 'Pissing off the nighbors since 1942'..... there should be small print explaining the reason the neighbors are pissed is because the speakers could've sounded better.[emoji39]

 

 

 

Sent from my SM-G950U using Tapatalk

 

 

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

2 minutes ago, SWL said:


 

 


Yeah, instead of the Klipsch poster saying 'Pissing off the nighbors since 1942'..... there should be small print explaining the reason the neighbors are pissed is because the speakers aren't performing at their full potential. emoji39.png



Sent from my SM-G950U using Tapatalk
 

 

HA! I was thinking more like Kenwood or Sony speakers... Every member of this forum knows that Klipsch hits closer to the mark than any other big producer. But even then... I just put in Bob's titanium tweeters and my klipsch speakers are even more "klipschy". I mostly piss off my wife and kids!

  • Like 1
  • Haha 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

2 hours ago, MechEngVic said:

Thanks for your comment. I think we should remember that almost every time a speaker-builder designs and makes a speaker, it is not a cost-is-no-object endeavour, and they are mostly building under cost and design constraints. That means that in many cases the speakers they built could have sounded better. How much more would it have cost PWK to make the Belles taller? Why not just make the best speaker he possibly could every time. It wasn't because they sounded the best the way he made them, but rather that was the best sound for the use he envisioned for them, combined with cost he was willing to take on and the price he thought he could get for them.

 

I wish I could afford taller horn driven speakers, or I could use a shorter chair, but it would have to be a chair about 10" off the ground. Plus my listening space is my home-theater/office/studio. It's a small room and most of the time I'm in my office chair just a few feet from the speakers, so height is crucial.

 

I like your idea of using felt pads to tilt, I think I have some felt pads hiding somewhere. I can imagine the height of the CF-3's really being an issue at a close distance. Did you keep the felt pads under the CF-3's even when your sitting position was further back? Also, I'd like to see pictures of your Belle clones.

 

Oh, I agree with you whole heartedly. I spent almost 30 years in the home A/V industry (and car audio) in all facets...installation, retail sales,  management, store owner, and 9 years of that 30 as a manufacturers rep for many lines. There's sacrifice in all that they R&D for whatever given price points.  The bean counters have a lot to say in it! Haha

 

There should be a link to my build in my signature. If not, let me know. 

 

Definitely try the felt pads for poops and grins. It didn't take a lot of "lift" to get them where they were better.  I sat maybe 14 feet back. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

1 hour ago, avguytx said:

 

Oh, I agree with you whole heartedly. I spent almost 30 years in the home A/V industry (and car audio) in all facets...installation, retail sales,  management, store owner, and 9 years of that 30 as a manufacturers rep for many lines. There's sacrifice in all that they R&D for whatever given price points.  The bean counters have a lot to say in it! Haha

 

There should be a link to my build in my signature. If not, let me know. 

 

Definitely try the felt pads for poops and grins. It didn't take a lot of "lift" to get them where they were better.  I sat maybe 14 feet back. 

WOW. I thought you owned Belle clones, but you built them. I think you picked the perfect finish for them too. I wish I had the time and workspace/tools for woodworking, but I work on industrial machines so all I have are mechanic's tools. 

 

I noticed you used Russian PIO's then switched to Audyn MKP to improve the HF rolloff. I plan on using a combination of those very same PIO's plus an MKP on the KFL10 tweeter crossover to try to get a combination of PIO warmth and MKP HF.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

5 hours ago, MechEngVic said:

So if I were to build 6" tall "boxes" under the klf's (like the risers on fortes or chorus'), do you think I would not lose bass?

 

The character of the bass will change, but not nearly for the worse as with open stands.

 

Get an 8' or 10' (whatever's appropriate) 1x6 and some 1-3/4 coarse-thread drywall screws.  It'll only take a few minutes to whip up a pair to try.

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.
Note: Your post will require moderator approval before it will be visible.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

×
×
  • Create New...