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Stereophile review of Klipschorn


Arkytype

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8 hours ago, WMcD said:

 

To me this was a weird reply.  ..From the outset it was odd.  No "Thank you for the Review..." which seems to precede nearly every reply found in the Manufacturer's Response section?

 

Why on earth didn't Roy speak (write) to the specifics of the review.  The struck me a s strange reply and a sorely missed opportunity to provide some balance to what strikes most of us as a poor review.

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I thought he handled it rather well.  It did read a little like so much marketing blurb but he got after them in an offhand way by stating they're designed to be in close proximity of a corner.  The statement is definitely not lost on anyone who'd read the review.  And whoever had read it and was alarmed at the placement for both listening and measuring, of course new this already.  Anyone else gets the "why" of the performance from Roy's statement - if they're able to put 2 and 2 together.

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garyrc wrote, I believe there were 8 principles when PWK first stated them.  I searched for them, but couldn't find them.

 

 

Looks like Zim. just posted the link to one source. Here's one that Gil posted a few years ago.

 

https://community.klipsch.com/index.php?/topic/46835-article-eight-cardinal-points-by-pwk/

 

Note that these are the "Eight Cardinal Points in Loudspeakers for Sound Reproduction" (emphasis mine)---not the top 8 loudspeaker design goals.

 

I think PWK wrote this IRE Transactions on Audio paper in 1961 to complement the audio research of Bell Laboratory, William B. Snow's ground-breaking 1953 paper, Basic Principles of Stereophonic Sound and others allied in the field of sound reproduction. 

 


 

 

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It's disappointing to me about the corners still being a requirement.  I can't put them in corners-this quote from the Klipsch website got my hopes up. 

eliminates the need for the loudspeakers to be positioned tightly in the corner of a listening room

Edited by tipatina
typo
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On 8/25/2019 at 4:45 PM, garyrc said:

I believe there were 8 principles when PWK first stated them.  I searched for them, but couldn't find them.

 

 

Those are not design principles,  that was a handout PWK on how to get best sound out of your set up.  It includea toe-in and other things as I recall.

 

Edit:  see above post about 8 Cardinal Points

 

Travis

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On 8/25/2019 at 5:39 PM, Arkytype said:

Thought I posted this version of the 8 cardinal points from a 1976 full-line Klipsch brochure.

 

 

Lee

 

 

8 points brochure.docx 1.52 MB · 13 downloads

Didn't see that, those are them, the 8 cardinal points tie in his 4 Core Design principles,  but they are seperate and apart from them.

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On 8/26/2019 at 4:44 PM, garyrc said:

So, in a sense, the two sets of points enable one another.  

 

Um I think he picked the 8 Cardinal Points to accentuate the uniqueness of his designs.

 

It was a marketing tool, it focuses primarily on things only Klipsch had.

 

They seem engrained into the long time fans here, and you see them paraphrased, combined, or restated constantly here on the forum. I believe it shows the universal truth in his underling principles, they are as true today as they were back then.

 

Travis

 

 

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On 8/27/2019 at 7:31 PM, tipatina said:

It's disappointing to me about the corners still being a requirement.  I can't put them in corners-this quote from the Klipsch website got my hopes up. 

eliminates the need for the loudspeakers to be positioned tightly in the corner of a listening room

Corners are required for lower bass.  No way to get that bass extension with a smaller horn (compared to wave length).  The corner provides the size.  The closer to it, the more likely you provide an extension of the horn mouth.

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19 hours ago, pzannucci said:

Corners are required for lower bass.  No way to get that bass extension with a smaller horn (compared to wave length).  The corner provides the size.  The closer to it, the more likely you provide an extension of the horn mouth.

 

Also, has putting backs on the Klipschorn eliminated the 250 Hz to 500 Hz dip in response when open backed Klipschorns are not sealed into a corner?  This was reported by PWK in a Dope from Hope on November 10, 1961.  He started advocating rubber gaskets to seal the Khorn into a slightly uneven corner -- and almost all corners are slightly uneven.

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6 hours ago, garyrc said:

and almost all corners are slightly uneven.

 

Even of those I've built (quite a few).  It's time-consuming to try very hard to find 2-bys which start and stay straight from the time that bunk has its bands cut.  They all look perfect before you go and do that.  And corner horns can be less picky than countertops or cabinetry, or at least "more accommodative." 

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I too, was very disappointed in the STEREOPHILE review of the new Klipschorn; both in the listening review by AD and in JA's measurements.  AD's room was really not k-horn friendly and JA ran head-long into the difficulties of measuring a horn loaded loudspeaker designed for corner placement and relating those measurements to how the speaker is actually going to be used.  But I think that maybe the most surprising thing about the review, to me, was the low, reactive impedance graph.  Factor that into many user's preference to power their klipschorns with tubes and I have way more questions than I have answers.  When I had k-horns ('98-'03), I last powered them with the same Pioneer Elite VSX-55TXi a/v receiver I'm still using.  I don't know (but I doubt) that the combination caused any of the extreme frequency response variations I encountered, but now I wonder.  At the time I blamed it all on the room.

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