Klipsch Forte near or away from the rear wall debate

[Idontknow]

This is what I've been saying all along in my videos of the Forte and I believe the reason so few know about this is because they are simply parroting what others say and pretty soon, everyone starts to believe it without ever having listened to it. Skip to 7:40 of this video. I agree with him regarding the negatives of it as well as how much bass gets lost regardless. In the Upscale Audio room I video'd,  I recorded jazz. When using headsets, you can easily hear that the bass is significantly less at the distance they had their Forte IV from the wall. To add further insult to injury they added subs which I purposely left off which are not needed for general music listening when the Forte is properly placed near a wall in my opinion. If one feels the bass overwhelms the mids, they can pull it out to the desired distance but subs can drown mids anyway, so it defeats the point in my opinion.

 

[roninklipsch]

Great vid thanks. I'm new to the forum and just got some Forte IIIs.  Love them.  At the moment I have two sets of speakers and the panels need to be about 3 feet from the wall.  In order to not have the Fortes behind them, they are positioned 17in from the wall.  The speakers sound fantastic but as you might expect, not a ton of bass.  Fortunately I do have two REL T9xs.  Unlike you I guess, I do feel subs add to any system so I'm not suffering from lack of bass but will definitely take the advice and get them back to a wall and run some tests.  These are not going anywhere soon but perhaps the panels will.

Edited March 3, 2023 by roninklipsch

[Idontknow]

Mine are a mere 8"-12" and the bass is impactful.

 

[Idontknow]

11 hours ago, roninklipsch said:

Great vid thanks. I'm new to the forum and just got some Forte IIIs.  Love them.  At the moment I have two sets of speakers and the panels need to be about 3 feet from the wall.  In order to not have the Fortes behind them, they are positioned 17in from the wall.  The speakers sound fantastic but as you might expect, not a ton of bass.  Fortunately I do have two REL T9xs.  Unlike you I guess, I do feel subs add to any system so I'm not suffering from lack of bass but will definitely take the advice and get them back to a wall and run some tests.  These are not going anywhere soon but perhaps the panels will.

 

That's a good idea. Just experiment and listen to what sounds good to your ears. Many opinions are not based on actual listening experiences. Same problem exists in our telescope industry. Many are armchair readers of optics who have never observed through optics. 

[the real Duke Spinner]

On 3/3/2023 at 8:55 AM, Idontknow said:

This is what I've been saying all along in my videos of the Forte and I believe the reason so few know about this is because they are simply parroting what others say and pretty soon, everyone starts to believe it without ever having listened to it. Skip to 7:40 of this video. I agree with him regarding the negatives of it as well as how much bass gets lost regardless. In the Upscale Audio room I video'd,  I recorded jazz. When using headsets, you can easily hear that the bass is significantly less at the distance they had their Forte IV from the wall. To add further insult to injury they added subs which I purposely left off which are not needed for general music listening when the Forte is properly placed near a wall in my opinion. If one feels the bass overwhelms the mids, they can pull it out to the desired distance but subs can drown mids anyway, so it defeats the point in my opinion.

 

 No way my Forte 11 need subs

[John Chi-town]

As they say, placement is free.  Move them around and see what sounds best in your environment.  I owned forte II for 30 years, and now have IV's.  The bass response is even better on the series IV.  My ideal distance is 12-13 inches from rear wall.  I have never felt I needed a sub with either series.

[Southern]

16 minutes ago, John Chi-town said:

As they say, placement is free.  Move them around and see what sounds best in your environment.  I owned forte II for 30 years, and now have IV's.  The bass response is even better on the series IV.  My ideal distance is 12-13 inches from rear wall.  I have never felt I needed a sub with either series.

My ideal distance is 12-13 inches from the rear wall for my Forte 1's as well.

[billybob]

Yes, it will vary, even corner loading. Abit difficult to describe yet, had decent bass in the middle of the room one time.

 

 

 

 

 

[JohnJ]

Here's where I started, the III has the radiator like the others do.

I used the corners because I've always spread `em... (my speakers) as far as I could. So I dealt with distance from the side walls also. In a 14 X 24 ft room I was out less than 18 inches from each wall in the end.

Took a couple weeks of trial and error to dial in that 38hz.

It's nothing compared to a sub-crawl, I just took my time.

 

@Idontknow By the way, that guy in your first video knows his stuff, Great to deal with also!

 

 

 

[Fido]

As great as my Forte IVs are and the bass sounds deep to the lower 30 HZ range I can’t understand why anyone would not like having subs to fill in the lower registers.  Gaga, Ariana grande, Rhiannah edm etc all sound incredible with. The Fortes and the REL sub in my system.

[chuckears]

I ran my (first series) Fortes close to the back wall for years, and in two different houses; I had tried them pulled away from the wall a handful of times, and never thought the results were as good.  The past year and a half I had them as my mains, I decided to give the pull-away another shot, and they sounded a lot better to me - imaging and bass response were excellent.  I think that the most likely reason was that I had a different synergy of pre- and power amps, the former having a room response kit (ARC Genesis) that applies equalization to the output of all channels plus subs, resulting in a clearer and flatter response.
When I put the Fortes aside for Front Wide duty, and put a recently-acquired pair of Chorus II in their place, I followed the same formula - the center of the passives the same distance from the rear wall as their circumference (15" with the Ch-IIs) - with similar excellent results.

 

Never be too stubborn to experiment with placement.

 

Oh, and for those claiming that their Fortes do not require subs... there is a bottom octave they cannot physically reproduce; there are room resonances and actual musical notes within that octave that your speakers are not reproducing. I heard sounds from recordings - after putting one, then two for balance, subs into the mix, that reached down below 20Hz - that I never heard before.  You might be getting the upper harmonics or resonances from them, but a good sub properly integrated will bring a more live sound from your entire system, even with recordings that do not have musical content that goes below 30 Hz.
 

[John Chi-town]

6 minutes ago, Fido said:

As great as my Forte IVs are and the bass sounds deep to the lower 30 HZ range I can’t understand why anyone would not like having subs to fill in the lower registers.  Gaga, Ariana grande, Rhiannah edm etc all sound incredible with. The Fortes and the REL sub in my system.

 

Personal preference.  I have never heard a sub in a 2-channel environment, that did not seem to muddy up the midrange, to some degree.  Glad you are happy with that setup.  Different strokes for different folks.

[Shakeydeal]

Properly integrated subs don’t “drown” the mids. This is a fallacy.

 

 

 

[Fido]

14 minutes ago, John Chi-town said:

 

Personal preference.  I have never heard a sub in a 2-channel environment, that did not seem to muddy up the midrange, to some degree.  Glad you are happy with that setup.  Different strokes for different folks.

Adding the REL S812 sub to my system brought my system so much more clarity and the deep bass sounds fantastic. I think you need a fast sub ro go along with the Forte IVs.

[chuckears]

13 hours ago, Shakeydeal said:

Properly integrated subs don’t “drown” the mids. This is a fallacy.

 

 

 

“Properly” - absolutely.  When I was running 2.1 channel-only, I had the crossover set at 40 Hz, with the Fortes receiving full-range. The sub was set up to only fill in that bottom octave that the Fortes are incapable of reproducing.  I had it dialed in so well that good recordings were not only live-sounding, but also brought you into the studio or performance space.

 

[Idontknow]

14 hours ago, Fido said:

As great as my Forte IVs are and the bass sounds deep to the lower 30 HZ range I can’t understand why anyone would not like having subs to fill in the lower registers.  Gaga, Ariana grande, Rhiannah edm etc all sound incredible with. The Fortes and the REL sub in my system.

 

I think it's fair to say that those genre's of music you mentioned are notorious for using very low bass though. That's why we see trucks with bass boxes in the flatbeds or trunks of cars. I listen mostly to jazz and classical and I hear no reason to add subs. I'm not saying you are wrong. I'm just saying there should be some context such as placement, room, music genre. If you wear headsets and listen to my video above, you can easily hear more than enough bass, in fact, probably a bit more than needed. Just saying.

[Mikekid]

The ChorusII's are 8 inches from the wall.  Sounds great and has been like this now since checking placement long ago ..and our subs are not adjusted to one of those kids first car with the sub jammed into a trunk cranked so the metal panels started falling off the car.. Conservative adjustments that took a LOT of time to my ears. A couple of months worth, the subs were the most difficult in our room to smooth standing waves and nulls...got them working beautifully together. Not moving or adjusting a thing now. 😃👌 We do listen to a lot of surround music recordings too as well though.  

[Silverfoxvtx1800]

I added Mullard EL34  Mirror Matched set of 8 Welded Plates XF2s  from the 1960s to my PrimaLuna EVO 400 and the bass beats my chest makes my ears sparkle, don’t need a sub with the ForteIVs 13 inches from the back wall 7 inches from the side wall……I change up the 12AU7s with RCA clear tops and Mullard short plates all from the 1960s..don’t need a sub period!!

my wife upstairs in her craft rooms complains of the bass vibrations in the floor at normal listening levels… 

 

[Fido]

I am obviously not the best communicator. I am not claiming that the Forte IVs don't have really good bass because they have great bass to the mid to low 30HZ. Maybe a lot of subs are too slow to keep up with the Fortes. When I added the REL S812 to my system it actually made higher frequencies sound much cleaner and the mids felt much more solid. The REL made the Fortes sound bigger, the soundstage wider and deeper. For the music I like to listen too the REL pumps deep bass down to below 20 HZ. Most music doesn't need to go that low but if you like David Guetta or Rhiannon types of music the deep bass of the REL expands the contrast quite a bit. Id love toe hear those 1960 Mullard tubes in my EVO.

[hron61]

On 3/5/2023 at 7:29 AM, chuckears said:

“Properly” - absolutely.  When I was running 2.1 channel-only, I had the crossover set at 40 Hz, with the Fortes receiving full-range. The sub was set up to only fill in that bottom octave that the Fortes are incapable of reproducing.  I had it dialed in so well that good recordings were not only live-sounding, but also brought you into the studio or performance space.

 

Well said.

When I had my Forte 1s and a pair of WL 300b's and a sub, with vinyl thats exactly how I would describe the sound.

I had the Fortes out from the wall about 5-6 feet.

A truly incredible sound.

I would close my eyes listening to the music and it would feel like I was there with the musicians. I miss that setup to this day.

Edited March 10, 2023 by hron61