La Scalas Really Made My Room (or not)

[drewogatory]

The LaScalas yelled at me and the Heresys sing to me.

 

LOL, this is a perfect description of La Scalas in a less than ideal room,which is most of them.  Cornwalls or K-Horns are usually a better choice for big rooms that aren't barns or dance clubs. La Scalas are basically a PA speaker and are best utilized that way IMO. What I mean by that is they sound best within a pretty fixed volume range. K-Horns still sound punchy at low volumes, so do Cornwalls. La Scala's are dead until like 80 db or something, then all of a sudden they sound freaking amazing. They are also pretty picky about placement in that big room in my experience. Subs help, you used to see a bunch of LS with subs bolted on top back in the day.

[Marvel]

I found that dropping the mids few few dB that they are more balanced and good at any volume, but perhaps 70-80 dB are really, really good.

[henry4841]

I hear LaScala's are PA speakers a lot and it is a crock of s**t. Same drivers and horns are K'horns with a 2 fold vs a 3 fold horn as in the K'horn. So why in the world would anyone think they are just PA speakers and K'horns are home speakers. Possibly because they were introduced as a PA speaker by PWK but found favor among serious listeners wanting to save a few bucks over K'horns. Missing something like 1/3 octave on the bottom end but these days with cheap subs it is no big deal. If you have to crank them up before they come alive it is in the crossover. I am using a simple 1st order crossover ditching the autotransformer using discrete L-pads for attenuation and mine fill the room at the lowest volume one can listen with. You hear this a lot with those that buy the steep crossover networks from Al. Using steep networks one has to crank them up before they come alive. PWK favored simple 1st order networks at the beginning and used an autotransformer due to the low powered amplifiers for the time to save a few milliwatts.  

[Marvel]

I used 2A3 amps with mine for a long time. Plenty of volume, plenty of bass (great trannies on the amps). I had the mids pulled down a few db, which to me balanced out the range.

 

Mine sounded great no matter what room they were in. Originally in a13x22 foot room, then slightly smaller, then 20x22. Even used them in a banquet hall, 1800 sq/ft with 20 ft ceilings (used a 300wpc Crown for that). Awesome, with the best sound our organization has had.

[drewogatory]

On 11/18/2021 at 3:49 AM, henry4841 said:

I hear LaScala's are PA speakers a lot and it is a crock of s**t. Same drivers and horns are K'horns with a 2 fold vs a 3 fold horn as in the K'horn. So why in the world would anyone think they are just PA speakers and K'horns are home speakers. Possibly because they were introduced as a PA speaker by PWK but found favor among serious listeners wanting to save a few bucks over K'horns. Missing something like 1/3 octave on the bottom end but these days with cheap subs it is no big deal. If you have to crank them up before they come alive it is in the crossover. I am using a simple 1st order crossover ditching the autotransformer using discrete L-pads for attenuation and mine fill the room at the lowest volume one can listen with. You hear this a lot with those that buy the steep crossover networks from Al. Using steep networks one has to crank them up before they come alive. PWK favored simple 1st order networks at the beginning and used an autotransformer due to the low powered amplifiers for the time to save a few milliwatts.  

 You modded yours for a reason, yeah? I love La Scala's and am not trying to talk them down, but in my pretty extensive experience with them, they have proven to be more placement and room sensitive than K-Horns or the smaller speakers. Clearly you can have KHorns in too small a room as well, but finding a room where you can space La Scalas and still keep them away from the walls is hard. They sound fine even under less than ideal circumstances, but as the other poster noted they can be bright. But fine is not the same as ideal and they sound best at least 24" from the walls (which means a 16' room in my opinion) projecting into a big room at a decent volume. If that's not your listening environment I'd encourage you to audition Cornwalls at least before making a decision. All this is out the window if you get a screaming deal obviously.

Edited November 21, 2021 by drewogatory
spelling

[YK Thom]

11 hours ago, Invidiosulus said:

I think these were a good choice.

I’ll post more later.

I noticed these in the photos of your Lascalas. Do they make a big difference?

[MEH Synergy]

1 hour ago, drewogatory said:

Clearly you can have KHorns in too small a room as well, but finding a room where you can space La Scalas and still keep them away from the walls is hard

Going to have to STRONGLY disagree here. Khorns are SUPER picky with rooms, the most picky of all heritage speakers I will say.   La scalas DO NOT need to be off of the wall.  If so, that's a listener choice and your bass will likely suffer severely.   If you have subs, no matter. If you don't.... Your bass will likely be very anemic.   Just my 2 cents based on my experience in several rooms.  

[drewogatory]

19 minutes ago, Westcoastdrums said:

Going to have to STRONGLY disagree here. Khorns are SUPER picky with rooms, the most picky of all heritage speakers I will say.   La scalas DO NOT need to be off of the wall.  If so, that's a listener choice and your bass will likely suffer severely.   If you have subs, no matter. If you don't.... Your bass will likely be very anemic.   Just my 2 cents based on my experience in several rooms.  

Oh man, I respect your opinion, but it's against my experience, but I'd love for you to expound on what you consider a good room for 'horns. They will be bright in a small room but that's every horn ever. I've just never had a room with 2 good corners that wasn't a decent room for khorns. Good being the determinator obv, and I've bought and sold plenty as my house at the time dictated. Honestly I think for an average room Forte IIs or Cornwalls rule as far as Kilipsch go, but subjective.

[MEH Synergy]

13 minutes ago, drewogatory said:

They will be bright in a small room but that's every horn ever.

Wrong, sorry. Very wrong. I had a small room and had every vintage heritage and modern heritage in there.   Had plenty of pro speakers as well, NONE of them were bright, NONE.  It's about placement and equipment primarily.  My mileage varies immensely from yours.   Not a fan boy per se either, my mains currently are JBL large scale cinema. 

[geoff.]

...right this moment, listening to my LSI Splits pulled out about 2 feet in my 12 x 12 room

 

 

[drewogatory]

11 minutes ago, Westcoastdrums said:

Wrong, sorry. Very wrong. I had a small room and had every vintage heritage and modern heritage in there.   Had plenty of pro speakers as well, NONE of them were bright, NONE.  It's about placement and equipment primarily.  My mileage varies immensely from yours.   Not a fan boy per se either, my mains currently are JBL large scale cinema. 

I mean, I've bought,sold,traded since the 70's and and managed multiple music venues with every variety of PA known to man, but I'll go ahead and bend the knee to your obviously superior opinion on this.

[MEH Synergy]

Don't take my word for it...  Ask Roy how the biggest horns do in small rooms.... Perhaps it was what you are using to power the rig? Some PA amps can be ruthless when it comes to sound reproduction. I have had series I, II, III heritage where it applies. Some, I only had 6 feet apart, none we bright.   My experience, yours obviously was very different. I've also had decent RCF HD powered speaker and JBL SRX 700 and 800 and series. None were bright unless pushed to extremely unreasonable levels. 

[MEH Synergy]

Anyone else, feel free to chime in about your extremely bright horn speakers of any kind in a small room?   For the record, toe in and out can solve a lot of this and when it can't, pull the speakers farther apart and get them closer to being corner loaded. Problem solved often fro my experience if need be. 

[Dave A]

On 11/16/2021 at 11:08 PM, RandyH said:

  2 separate 2-channel rooms , the CW  for rock music , the LS for Jazz or Classical  ,  the Heresy acts like a Studio monitor giving you that clear HF and detailed  Mids and mellow bass  tones to aid the bigger speaker , and way less distortion -

 

So how are they powered? Sounds like an unusual setup and I would like particulars on what you did and why you did it.

[dtel]

1 hour ago, Westcoastdrums said:

Ask Roy how the biggest horns do in small rooms...

True, I remember hearing a large horn in a small room makes it easier for the horn to control the room...that general idea anyway.

[Dave A]

5 hours ago, dtel said:

True, I remember hearing a large horn in a small room makes it easier for the horn to control the room...that general idea anyway.

Interesting thought. Since large horns are mainly the domain of pro speakers they lend themselves well to something I have noticed with pro gear. They have an inherent ability to overwhelm bad acoustic environments better than regular home owner gear.

[Marvel]

I'm going to ask Travis (or another mod) to create a new thread and move all this extra stuff from here.

 

I'll just say -- I love La Scalas. They've worked great in any room I've placed them (both pair). I didn't get rid of them because they didn't work in the spaces... it was financial or needed the room.

 

[henry4841]

10 hours ago, drewogatory said:

 You modded yours for a reason, yeah? I love La Scala's and am not trying to talk them down, but in my pretty extensive experience with them, they have proven to be more placement and room sensitive than K-Horns or the smaller speakers. Clearly you can have KHorns in too small a room as well, but finding a room where you can space La Scalas and still keep them away from the walls is hard. They sound fine even under less than ideal circumstances, but as the other poster noted they can be bright. But fine is not the same as ideal and they sound best at least 24" from the walls (which means a 16' room in my opinion) projecting into a big room at a decent volume. If that's not your listening environment I'd encourage you to audition Cornwalls at least before making a decision. All this is out the window if you get a screaming deal obviously.

I installed a bigger horn because the bigger the horn the better the sound. My thoughts and I do like to experiment. The Cornwall is an excellent speaker but it has a much smaller horn then a LaScala. I also have years of experience having owned my LaScala's since '86 and listened with them stock until a few years ago. Room placement is more of a problem with K'horns the LaScala, at least until Klipsch sealed the back of the K'horn. Until then I had no place to put them because of my listening room. Never had a reason to step down to a Cornwall. In fact after purchasing my LaScala's I have never considered any other speaker for my prime listening. Before then I was changing speakers on a frequent basis searching for better. 

[jjptkd]

Not everyone is going to have the same experiences with various speakers or equipment best we can do is look at the majority just like reading through reviews on amazon if 1000 people say something is good and only a handful say its bad then well what do you do? Best it to try it yourself and make your own determination. 

 

I will say rooms, speaker positioning, seating positions, equipment matching and source material all play a big part not to mention personal preference / subjective taste. When I sit forward on the edge of my couch my stereo sounds quite a bit different than if I sit back, moving only 2 to 3 feet max. A lot of people focus on speaker positioning which is important but listening position can also play a big role in my experience. 

 

 

[henry4841]

One personal taste in music also has an important point in which and what kind of speakers one chooses. When I bought my LaScala's I was much younger looking for the live rock concert experience and LaScala's fit the bill perfectly. They will rock and rock hard. As my taste in music has changed and my volume level has decreased in proportion to my age I could get by with a much smaller speaker such as the newer offerings from Klipsch such as tower speakers or even bookshelf speakers. Let's face it the Heritage line are huge speakers with a low WAF. But I still love my speakers that fill the room at low volume levels with no wife to complain about them.