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Help! Cornwall IV vs RF7 III for electronic music


RL1

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Hey Everyone!


I am finally on my quest for my dream speakers. I have auditioned a ton of brands and fell for the sound of the Heresy IV (the only Klipsch heritage or RF I can audition nearby in CO). 

I produce electronic music, so lots of sub bass, high end, crisp elements etc, but did love the live sound of the Heresey. 

 

After reading reviews I think it is worth it for me to save up for the Cornwall IV as I don't want to buy another set of speakers anytime soon.

 

However, I was reading some reviews on the RF-7 III and it has me having doubts. Apparently they have a much more 'in your face' punch, which of course much electronic music is known for. They are also a decent amount cheaper.

 

I mix on JBL 305 monitors and so that is 90% of my listening. I am used to and really like how they sound. The other 10% would be on massive club sound systems and walls of Funktion Ones. 

 

So what say you? Cornwall IV or RF7 III for the most in your face listening experience? I will be doing dual subs with EITHER set, 100%.

 

 

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5 hours ago, DJEditor said:

Listen for yourself, you are a critical listener and nobody can tell you how they will sound. It’s personal. Very personal. 

 

Well unless someone has both and wants to invite me over for dinner I am stuck asking.

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Having not heard the RF7, my input may be worthless. But I do own the CW IV and I find it hard to believe you wouldn’t love it with any type of music. This is especially true if you are going to use dual subs, which I do too. Although very good with bass on their own, the subs are the icing on the cake when listening to music that plunges into the low 30s and below.
 

My take is to spend the extra $$ now and get a heritage speaker and you’ll never “wish you had”.......

 

Shakey

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4 hours ago, RL1 said:

 

Well unless someone has both and wants to invite me over for dinner I am stuck asking.

easy , enough , find a klipsch dealer who  has both speakers , in the showroom and bring a few cd's

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Hello !

I have Cornwall IIIs and I listen to music of all kinds and also electronic. For example the XX piece with a lot of bass "Fantasy" is played by Cornwall with great success.

 

FYI the world's most famous legendary nightclub "the Loft" by David Mancuso started out in 1970 with a pair from KlipschHorn and a pair from Cornwall: you can't go wrong man! if you have fallen for the sound of the Heresy IV continue with the HERITAGE, the Cornwall IV are the most extraordinary of all Cornwall :wub:

 

https://daily.redbullmusicacademy.com/2016/11/klipsch-feature

 

https://daily.redbullmusicacademy.com/david-mancuso-collection

 

 

Around 1970, the time when he launched his “rent parties” on a weekly basis, he wanted to cover his 19.5 x 37-foot space with sound, so he bought two Klipsch Cornwalls from yet another sound designer, Alex Rosner, to fill in the sonic gaps and the result he remembers “was very intense. People would visit my loft space and everybody would like the way it would sound. It was extraordinary.”

 

 

 

 

 

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Welcome to the forum.  Where are you located?  Obviously check for a dealer that has both and depending on your location, Cory @Paducah Home Theater I believe has both of them and is a dealer, so I believe you would be best served to speak with him.  He will treat you right and I know he had C4's and RF7's a few months ago. I have RF7's and Cornwall 2's, so that really wouldn't apply to the current models.  

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Quote

FYI the world's most famous legendary nightclub "the Loft" by David Mancuso started out in 1970 with a pair from KlipschHorn 

 

@mustang_flht

 

Funny you should mention that. Last year two ladies who are associated with the re-opening of The Loft drove from Manhattan to Virginia in a van to buy my Klipschorns for that very purpose. They were scouring the east coast for khorns and ultimately wanted 8 pair for the club. 

 

Shakey

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The biggest difference between the CW IV and the RF-7 IIIs is the RF-7 III midrange.  The dual 10" woofers in the RF-7 IIIs create vertical directivity lobing throughout most of their passband from ~300 Hz to ~1.5-2 kHz.  The ensuing lobing in the dual RF-7 III midranges will affect midrange balance and clarity vs. where you listen--either sitting or standing, while the CW IV's by comparison really don't have this issue in the midrange (but they have a treble lobing issue). The CW IV woofer area is even larger than the RF-7 III--about 1/8th larger. 

 

The RF-7 IIIs will likely be a little more like your LSR305's in that they are two-way, but the RF-7 IIIs have a 1.75" tweeters (exit diameter) and a much larger--8x--woofer diaphragm area than your LSR305's, dramatically lowering the AM distortion and lowering the frequency at which vertical directivity is lost. The dual woofer design also has about 1/2 to 1/3 the vertical coverage angle vs. frequency--because of their vertical separation distance of about 12-14 inches (center to center), which actually creates lobing (described above) from the crossover frequency down to about 500 Hz--due to the separation of the woofers themselves vertically. But the dual woofers will hold their combined vertical directivity down to about 300 Hz (vs. your LSR305s-which begin to lose their vertical directivity at ~700 Hz). 

 

All other things being equal, the CW IVs will have lower FM distortion than the RF-7 IIIs above 5 kHz due to their three-way design, but will have more lobing in the 2.5-10 kHz band, due to the vertical separation of the tweeter centerline from the midrange (that's significantly more than a wavelength at the crossover frequency).  Since the CW IV tweeter is at least one wavelength in front of the midrange in terms of time alignment (due to the difference in the depths of their horns), there will be a small disturbance in the soundstage from ~3.5-7.5 kHz.  But the lobing from the midrange to the woofer will be minimal by comparison to the RF-7 IIIs.

 

Both loudspeaker types should be dialed in after placement in-room to get the most out of them, which I assume you already know if you're producing music either for a living or as a part-time or volunteer gig.

 

Chris

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10 hours ago, RL1 said:

For listening

If you're looking to replicate a sound similar to the Funktion Ones the Klipsch are going to be a long way from that. Tony Andrews (actually an old friend) is famous for keeping paper cones in the vocal range & staying out of compression drivers until 5K or above, the Dance Stack 10" drivers go from 227Hz to 5.04K. Conversely, Cornwalls go into the 1st compression driver at 700Hz, the RF7s at 1.2K. Not saying it's bad & in fact, the Klipsch will give you a very punchy, dynamic, aggressive & bright sound. It just won't be smooth like the F1's. And yes, I love the sound of the Heresys too!

 

Another thing to consider for high volume EDM is your choice of amplifier. The genre has forced professional manufacturers like L'Acoustics and d&b to re-engineer some of their products to cope with the extreme high frequency energy demanded of these systems.

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35 minutes ago, philipbarrett said:

...the Dance Stack 10" drivers go from 227Hz to 5.04K...

I believe this is the real difference: the Funktion Ones retain horizontal and vertical directivity to about two octaves below the CW IVs, and not really the midrange diaphragm material.  In fact, the paper diaphragms might actually weigh more than the equivalent compression driver diaphragms, which adversely affect their impulse response, but in both cases--likely well below threshold of audibility.  My tests of compression drivers shows a great deal of variation in impulse response based on the material in the diaphragms (titanium vs. beryllium, for instance) at high enough frequencies.  In the case of 2" compression drivers, this is usually in the 10-20 kHz band where the real audible differences can be found.  This is well above midrange frequencies.

 

If you were to audition the Funktion Ones vs. Klipsch Jubilees (both well set up), the Jubs would likely sound smoother still, losing directivity well below home hi-fi room Schroeder frequency at 100 Hz (free standing)...and actually ~32 Hz if placed well into room corners. 

 

Sometimes people do things differently, attributing the difference in sound quality to some claimed factor when in fact it's due to something else, i.e., lower midrange directivity control frequencies in this case. 

 

Chris

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If you are spending that kind of money might be worth it to you to drive from CO to Nebraska and stop by DTX at 56th and O Streets in Lincoln and demo them. They have all the Heritage stuff (currently Heresy IV and Cornwall IV, but La Scala and Khorn on the way). They currently have the Cornwalls hooked up to a McIntosh MA352. 
 

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9E9688F3-3B77-4B3D-889D-64A92DCAF9B0.jpeg

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Any of the Heritage you will be happy

Each is  a different speaker philosophy with its own trade offs.

 

Cabinet size wasn't a limitation for any of the Heritage designs, it is with all home theater designs.

Basically same cabinet dimensions as Movie theaters, where sound is everything.

 

Read the threads on the Forte 2 and 3s and you tube reviews, little placement sensitive but the best sleepers on the market. F3 appears to have been well received by critics and users in the market, who had forgotten one of the great designs.

 

If you can score a pair of LaScalas you will never look back.

Run great with a low power Class A amp, 20 watts is plenty

.2 watts is loud listening, .5 watts screaming, 2 watts hearing loss.

Best for vocals compared to any speaker.

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I believe that the La Scala and Khorn could still use midrange horns whose mouth dimension is about 2x-3x taller vertically (like the Cornwall IV) to avoid the polar-flipping effect (loss of vertical directivity below ~2 kHz).  The design of the Forte III and Cornwall IV midrange horn prevents the polar flipping effect, but as I mentioned above, the Cornwall IV controls its vertical polars to about an octave lower than the RF-7 III, which means you'll have significantly more clarity. 

 

If you want even more clarity, I'd recommend a loudspeaker having a larger mouth dimensions vertically and horizontally--such as the K-402 horn (professional cinema series) or perhaps the Danley Synergy series which reuse the midrange horn as the bass horn.  I don't recommend diffraction techniques--such as a Dutch & Dutch type of configuration since it has the same downside as line arrays, which significantly affect lower midrange clarity.

 

Chris

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Cornwall 4, Mid x-over Mid 700 Hz, High 5,000

34 Hz -20K Hz

 

LaScala 2, Mid x-over Mid 450 Hz, High 4,500

50- 20K Hz

3db louder at 1W 1M

 

Cornwall has better Mid Horn Design. Is it audible and can it be forced.

 

LaScala captures more, most voice except for the lowest tones,  on the mid driver with the lower crossover point. Same question, is it audible and can it be forced.

 

The world of design trade offs,

driver alignment, Horn geometry, crossover points, freq response, cabinet size and shapes ........

 

 

Voice frequencies, crossover points, drivers

 

In Telephony the Networks are designed around 300-3,000 Hz ideal for male voice vs bandwidth trade offs, 4k would have been better for female voice. foundational science and engineering all male engineers with male voice test tapes, female voice oversight rolls them off at 3k

 

First, one line per voice

Second, Frequency division multiplexing of digitized voice

Third, Time Division Multiplexing with significant over-speed and buffering

Fourth, High speed asynchronous optical packet voice with buffering

 

Frequency band

" In telephony, the usable voice frequency band ranges from approximately 300 to 3400 Hz.[1] It is for this reason that the ultra low frequency band of the electromagnetic spectrum between 300 and 3000 Hz is also referred to as voice frequency, being the electromagnetic energy that represents acoustic energy at baseband. The bandwidth allocated for a single voice-frequency transmission channel is usually 4 kHz, including guard bands, allowing a sampling rate of 8 kHz to be used as the basis of the pulse code modulation system used for the digital PSTN. Per the Nyquist–Shannon sampling theorem, the sampling frequency (8 kHz) must be at least twice the highest component of the voice frequency via appropriate filtering prior to sampling at discrete times (4 kHz) for effective reconstruction of the voice signal. "

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voice_frequency#:~:text=A voice frequency (VF) or voice band is,ranges from approximately 300 Hz to 3400 Hz.

 

 

Great content from a Microphone manufacturer

Important frequencies

The important frequencies in non-tonal (Western) languages are illustrated by the diagram below. Here, the frequency band around 2 kHz is the most important frequency range regarding perceived intelligibility. Most consonants are found in this frequency band.

facts-about-speech-fig04_1.jpg

A speech spectrum is either high-pass or low-pass filtered. Using an HP filter at 20 Hz (upper left) leaves the speech 100% understandable. (This is because the complete speech spectrum is there). An HP-filter cutting everything below 500 Hz still leaves the speech signal understandable. Even though most of the speech energy is cut out, the intelligibility is only reduced by 5%. However, applying a higher cut-off makes intelligibility drop.https://www.dpamicrophones.com/mic-university/facts-about-speech-intelligibility

 

 

 

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3 hours ago, Chris A said:

Cornwall IV controls its vertical polars to about an octave lower than the RF-7 III, which means you'll have significantly more clarity. 

 

 

3 hours ago, Chris A said:

 

 

When I sample speakers, my quick test is Ronstadt Skylark CD quality, first 30 secs

 

If the singer doesn't impart feeling, the speaker/system is losing something.

 

When the girls turn the Wyles on, you should feel it at Emotional level.

 

I had a friend who wanted to know the differences between various gear and source formats; 

I used a Sheryl Crow tack starting at Youtube Vevo , different encoding, first on headphones, then different amps, and different speakers. Ending on LaScalas + McIntosh + DTS 48K Hz DVD source

 

Some of my Yamahas sound even better, but I didn't want to start moving Amps around.

 

Each step he liked it more than the previous version

When we got to the last version, I asked how does it sound now  ?

 

"Like she is sitting on my lap and blowing in my ear"

 

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Being a rf7iii owner I would say these speakers are built for electronic music. I’m telling you right now it’s like they were made for it. They excel and that’s and understatement when it comes to electronic music. The cornwalls are quite a bit more expensive than the rf7iii and imho even tho the cornwalls are more expensive  I could still see the rf7iii doing electronic music better. Tho I have not heard cornwalls just my opinion. Either way I think your can’t go wrong. I also love electronic music and I feel like for the money klipsch is the best for this type of music when it comes to other brands. People say klipsch are for rock, I say they are for electronic. 

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