20 for a center

[bhimeli@aol.com]

can anybody give me info. on changing a KLF20 into a horizontal center speaker

[HornEd]

Modoc, you caught me with little time to go into the whole thing. I have converted KLF-10's and KLF-30's to center speakers and have advised others who have modified KLF-20's. You can search on KLF-30 center and HornEd for details that I have previously written... they may be a year or so old by now. Be specific in your search because I am nearing 2,000 posts and the search engine may allow only about ten percent of that.

Basically, take off the grille and remove all the speakers. I tag the speaker wires so that it is clear which goes where... but it is also pretty easy to figure out from the wire lengths. The wire lengths are sufficient to reach the speakers in their new configuration. The motorboard (in the trade speakers are motors that move air) is attached to the frame of the speaker cabinet with "Liquid Nails" so I use a soft mallet to tap... (pound?)... out the old board. I use a "Dead Head" mallet that tends to bounce less... thus putting more power into knocking the board loose. The board is made of MDF which is sold at Home Depot and Lowes for less than $20 a 4' x 8' sheet.

I use the old motorboard as a template to make the circles and rectangles that need to be cut out. Wear a dust mask because MDF creates a very fine dust... and lots of it! After the circles are cut then you must use a router to cut out a "ledge" for the speakers to rest upon. Just use the same dimensions that are on your old motorboard. The factory gives the motorboard several coats of flat black paint (lightly sand between coats) presumeably to provide an acoustic finish that is less likely to show through the grille cloth.

You can buy the same plastic attachment system if you are willing to drill the holes (takes a special drill) in your motorboard... but I find industrial strength Velcro actually works better and is less of a hassle and expense to install. So, mount the new mortorboard with Liquid Nails, hookup your speakers in the new spaces, screw them down, put the grille back on... and enjoy the best center channel you ever heard on your system. I have attached a photo of my KLF-30 front array (with the grilles off) so you can see how I arranged the new motorboard. By the way, the Mitsubishi TV is a 65" HDTV and it has no problem holding the horizontal KLF-30.

Sorry I have to run... but I hope that helps. =HornEd

[bhimeli@aol.com]

HornEd, that helps greatley, thank you very much.

[bhimeli@aol.com]

HornEd, how do you have your rear center 30 positioned?

[HornEd]

Originally I just had it as a normal floorstander. But, now they are horizontalized like the center in the photo. There is a shift in timbre when you raise them off the floor (as there is in the center... but of course, nothing like a shift from a KLF-30 to a KLF-C7) but that allows the horn tweeter to be higher and has the benefit of spreading the area covered by two cones laterally rather than one cone laterally in the floorstanding position. So, now I have horizontal KLF-30's for the center, side/surrounds and rear effects.

Probably the best reason for a horizontal rear array is that the wider the angle from the cones, the sweet spot becomes wider sooner and, thus, accomodates either more viewers in the classic theater seating mode... or a larger area for informal seating to still be in the sweet spot. Any way you slice it, its a better deal. By the way, while the front center has closer spaced woofers for better screen anchoring, in the rear array speakers the woofers were set further apart in order to maximize the width of the cone angle to the sweet spot. Obviously, if you use two KLF-30's horizontalized as rear effects speakers in a 7.1 configuration, the cone angle becomes even wider allowing viewers to sit closer to the back of the room.

And, don't forget that an adequate subwoofer system that can hit the Dolby pro target of 121.5 dB at 20 Hz. Set your speakers to small and let the sub take care of the non-directional sound below about 80 Hz. Beware that inferior subs have harmonics that tend to give direction to a poorly designed subs output. A good sub tosses the sound out in a directionless manner and your ears associate those low tones with whatever regular speaker is playing the directional sounds (above 80 Hz)... making it sound like the lows are coming from the regular speaker. It is an uncanny experience for your mind to be telling you one thing about the sounds direction and while your ears are telling you something different!

But BEWARE, for once you taste the best that dts or Dolby has to offer in this kind of optimized home theater, you are pretty much ruined for going to professional theaters or even your boss's house to watch a well mixed movie. Its the difference between watching a movie and having a total mind/body experience with it. =HornEd

[bhimeli@aol.com]

thanks as always you have been very informative, but how do you have them on stand on the wall ??

[HornEd]

Actually, I am in the design process of constructing cabinets that will hold the hundreds of DVD's and tapes that I have in my collection as well as assorted gear. Since the speakers are ported to the rear, the cabinets will be deep enough to allow the greatest benefit from the ports.

The new configuration is going into a free standing building that will serve as a theater and meeting room. To garner every inch of sweet spot, the rear speaker array (both side/surrounds and dual rear effects) will have a "bay window-like" structure with side walls that slant like the cone angle. The storage cabinets will be placed in these "windowless bay windows" with the speakers laying horizontally atop them. Obviously, the large screen requires that viewers sit about ten feet from it... so the sweet spot is pushed back in the room. The portruding rear speaker array additions allow more of the basic room size to be utilized as an expanded sweet spot.

Hmm, this is beginning to remind me of the Harry Bellefonte rendition that went, "It was clear as mud, but it govered the ground." Basically what I did was calculate the sweet spot and then pared away the areas where the sound would be less than ideal... the need to have distance between the rear array speakers and the sweet spot prompted the idea of using a sort of projected alcove as both a storage and speaker area.

A variety of this design will be incorporated in a 30' trailer that expands into a 16' x 26' sound insulated home theater built to ideal proportions revealed in the Fibonacchi number set. The Audio Engineering Society's (AES) standard listening room is a model of this math and represents a "Golden Cuboid" 10' by 16' by 26'. This approach side-steps the standing wave and other anomolies that can haunt rooms not built with high end audio applications.

Of course, setting up any speaker system should include a reliable SPL meter... at least as good as the Radio Shack analog version. I do not recommend the digitial version because the method of isolating the number in the display is not as exact as observing the pattern on the analog dial.

Well, I need to get on down the road... and be lost in the non-web ethers for awhile to get some things done. I'll try to check in on any questions when I return... maybe as early as this weekend. =HornEd