CARVER AND KLIPSCH

[HORNLOVER]

I TELL YOU THIS BOARD IS TRULY A GIFT FROM THE GODS! I HAVE A COULPLE OF QUESTIONS.

1.I HAVE A 200W CARVER AMP ON LAYAWAY AND I'M CONSIDERING MARRING IT TO MY FORTE II S.

IS THIS TOO MUCH POWER FOR SUCH A SENSITIVE

SPEAKER?

2.I HAVE A YAMAHA AMP AND WOULD LIKE TO KNOW

WHERE THE TONE CONTROLS SHOULD BE FOR OPTIMUM

PERFORMANCE.

[sunnysal]

400watss? too loud?...I have a 100 watt amp which gets to unlistenable territory with just 10 watts into my k-horns...your speakers are a little less sensitive but no matter,400 watts could be too much, you might hear hum from your components and certainly will only use the first 10% of the volume control...many people think an amp needs to be above one third power to give its best...others say less strain on the amp means less distortion...the only that is certain is that your speakers wil not use more than 10% of the power in your amp in the wildest possible scenario...which carver is it?

[drobo1]

Hornblower,

Klipsch plus low power amps (especially tubes) equal great sound. 400 watts is way too much.

drobo

[HORNLOVER]

THANKS FOR THE REPLY I NEED TO MAKE A CORRECTION THE AMP IS ONLY 200W. IN ANSWER TO YOUR QUERY ITS THE MODEL M-1T.

[rkolbe]

I have been driving my Cornwalls with a Carver 400W amp for years. With age the audible hum in the amp has increased. I just replaced that amp with the newer carver A-753x which has 250 wpc. The sound is definitely improved from the carver cube. I should point out that my volume control never reaches 1/2...

[HORNLOVER]

THANKS AGAIN FOR THE INFO I CAN HARDLY WAIT

TILL THEY GET MARRIED IN 2 WEEKS. MY YAMAHA ONLY PUSHES OUT 70WATTS SO IT SHOULD BE INTERESTING.

[Steve Phillips]

Too much power has never hurt anything,too little is time to replace drivers.Now if you think it has to be turned up all the way,that is anouther matter.I talking solid state not tube.My Denon 85X5 has never pushed more than 2 watts into my 77'Horns(have a watt meter on them)They stay,with music,at around 1/2 a watt.Movies I've seen it just touch 2 watts.Point is I'm looking into 200 per channel minimum.Just for the pure slam and not having to worrie about clipping my tweeters out the door.

I would love to have a nice 3 or 4 watt tube amp,but my system does both music and movies.I'll stick with SS.

You will never use near that much power,but it doesn't hurt to have it.

[Ray Garrison]

Steve P,

Actually, I used to believe that "too much power has never hurt anything" as well, but then there's too much power, and there's TOO MUCH POWER.

I used to have ( sniff sniff) a Dalquist SW-1 subwoofer - was one of the best sounding subwoofers I've ever heard (and I've owned Velodyne UDL-18, F1500, VMPS Larger, REL Storm). Dalquist was rated maximum input power of 75 watts. I was using an Adcom GFA555 bridged into mono, which pushed something like 600 watts continuous, 1000+ peak into that impedence. I was outside one day helping my bud wash down his boat, had the doors and windows open with some Dead playing on the stereo, suddenly noticed there was NO BASS. Figured I'd popped the fuse on the Adcom (not the first time). Went inside, checked amp, was fine, checked sub, was silent. Pushed cone, got horrible grinding noise. Opened up sub, looked at driver. I had MELTED THE INSULATION ON THE VOICE COIL and FUSED THE FORMER. Dalquist wanted $350 for another woofer. bye bye bye.

Never assume too much of anything is not enough. Sometimes too much is, uh, too much.

Ray

[BobO]

Hornlover,

You are getting plenty of good advice about the power issue. More power isn't necessarily better, it's just more. The kind of power, s.s. or tubes or class A or whatever, has more of an effect on the sound with the highly efficent, revealing nature of klipsch speakers.

As far as the tone controls go, the best position for them is bypassed, IMHO.

BobO

[HORNLOVER]

YEA I GUESS I'LL JUST HAVE TO FIND OUT WHEN

I HOOK THE AMP UP. I WAS JUST WORRIED BECAUSE

KLIPSCH SPEAKERS ARE KNOWN FOR THEIR SENSITIVITY. I MUST SAY I'VE BEEN HOOKED ON KLIPSCH FOR ABOUT 5YRS NOW. A PAIR OF 1.2 S

WERE AT A PAWNSHOP. I WAS AMAZED AT HOW FULL

THEIR SOUND WAS.

[Steve Phillips]

Ray and BobO,I am in complete agrement with you both

Yep,that I would say is extreme.I'll just stick with 200 or so with my Horns and Heresy

I have heard my KG-3s and later my KG-4s clip using a 50X2 reciever.Even my Chorus has cliped using 80X2.The Chorus never clipped when I ran them with a 105X5 B&K amp with 3090 B&K pre-amp.I was not realy happy cause I found I could run the volume all the way to it's limit and stand to be in the room.YES it was painful,but it was concert level.I don't do that anymore,only once just to see if it would handle it.

I believe it's only too much when you abuse it.

[Stu Pidass]

Interesting thread. I've been driving heritage Cornwalls with the same 70 watt amp for 20 years now. Tube amps are foreign to me, however, those who like them swear by them to the grave.

With the Klipsch design being so efficient, it's not really a matter of how much power but the quality of power you should consider. Having said that there are reasonable limits to the minimum you should consider. Obviously you can't do much with 1 or 2 watts.

Speakers have a sensitivity measurement usually in the form of "db @ 1 watt/ 1 meter" (that's 39 inches for you Americans ). Every time you double the wattage you will increase the sound output by 3 db.

A speaker rated at 101 db would go as follows:

2 watts = 104 db

4 watts = 107 db

8 watts = 110 db

16 watts = 113 db

32 watts = 116 db

You get the picture. Keep in mind that 115 db is generally considered concert level sound (it's pretty damn loud). The above is continuous watts and there will be need for short bursts of extra power for a loud drum beat etc.. This is known as "headroom". Decide how loud you want/need and make sure you amp has enough headroom. It's been my experience that any quality amp will have plenty of headroom for a heritage series speaker (Cornwall, La Scalla, Horn or Heresy). I am not, however familiar with the Forte ll.

Remember: Quality over quantity.

[Dick]

OK, if you ant to talk about low power ... When I was refinishing my La Scalas out in the garage, I used a 6 watt per channel Radio Shack amp to drive then when I was relaxing. If I turned them up even close to 50% the neighbors would come over and ask who was having a party... It certainly doesn't take much to drive those monsters.

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Richard Hemmings

[edster00]

I'm powering my Belle's with a Monarchy Audio 25wpc (zero feedback, class A) amp and it seems to be plenty of power. I never turn it up past ~11:00 on the preamp volume control if I want to be in the same neighborhood with them.

[Cruzer]

I am driving my Chorus IIs with a Carver TFM-35 since 1992 and they sound amazing with the volume set at #3. They used to clip when I was driving them with a 25 watt Yamaha.

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Cruzer

[decibel man]

I think one important point about amplifiers that is commonly overlooked is the amount of current that is available. IMO amprage is almost as important as wattage. If a high wattage receiver is lacking in amprage it will start clipping at lower wattage than its peak, this holds especially true with multi-channels are driven simultaneously. A high amprage moderate wattage receiver is safer and probably better sounding for our klipsch speakers than a high wattage low amprage receiver. I have always made sure that ample current was available on any of the receivers that I have purchased. My main system receiver has a monsterous 75 amps of current available at 100 watts. You can pretty much bank on never being able to reach clipping as long as I am using the Klipsch speakers. I believe the Carvers are pretty high current also. In fact a good number of mid to high end receivers have a respectable current output.

Just my two cents.

Happy listening and enjoy!!!

JT

[boa12]

d-man, great point. i think my current (so 2

speak) sony (my 1st entrance into a/v) falls into your latter category). 110W X 5 but the thing is light as a feather (weight & amperage). guess that's why i've blown 3 drivers in the fronts in less than a yr.

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RF-3 (front), RC-3, Cornwall I (rear)

Velodyne HGS-15 sub

Monsterbass 400 sub cables & Monster Z-12 speak wire

Sony de935 a/v receiver

Sony DVP-C650D dvdp

Sony Trinitron 27" tv

Technics dual cassette deck

Technics direct drive turntable

Scientific Atlanta Explorer 2000 digital cable box

rock on!

[chickey]

I run my Chorus II's off a Carver M 1.0t, and it still sounds great after all these years. Got home from work tonight, tired and in the mood to play some music...loud! The lights on the Carver never budged from idle, and the Chorus' sounded as sweet as ever. I think it's a great combination, IMHO.

Colin

[jdm56]

I think amplifier power is like money - you can never have too much, but also like money, it can't buy happiness! I do believe that with high effeciency, revealing speakers like most klipsch models, that quality of power is more important that quantity. Like the saying goes, if the first watt sucks, why would you want 200 more just like it?

Regarding the use of tone controls, I say if it sounds good - do it! In my previous room I got by just fine bypassing them, but my current room is more lively and seems to benefit with a slight nudge - about a 3 dB boost at 100 hz.

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JDMcCall

[Colin]

mention Carver and I just have to chime in

At one point, I was living with a solid state Carver 1.5 amp capable of 750-watt peaks per channel. The live cannon shots on Telarcs 1812 Overture smacked the floor, tickled the toes, raised dust, rattled windows, impressed teenagers and created a tsunami sound wave big enough to flatten Tokyo. You could feel it all right. Even with out a sub woofer, the Cornwalls had no problems with this unusual musical piece. The combination of the two components however did not make music. The noisy THD of the amp wore out my ears at normal listening levels and eventually, over a period of time listening lost its pleasure and stereos fell to the bottom of my hobby list.

Super powerful solid state amps, like Carver, have tremendous amounts of Total Harmonic Distortion down in the microwatt range. Their THD ratings are from the best part of their measurement curve, not the lowest part of it.

Unfortunately, as I learned from the insane posters on the Klipsch BBS, ultra efficient horns idle along on only a few milli-watts of power. Most of the time, they do not need all that much power. It is only for those rare microseconds of sonic shock, like the levered thump of the kick drum, that the speakers suddenly cry for instantaneous surges of hundreds of watts. But those microcosmic spikes soon pass and the speakers are idling along again with barely a push from the amp.

That is why tweaking audiophiles the world over are gushing over the benefits of flea powered tube amps coupled with big old horns.

The combination has been around since the fifties, yet even as 2-channel sound begins to exit the audio stage, the demand for low powered, but sweet sounding, tube amps seems to be increasing.

Bottom line? For loud music yes, for normal listening levels, no.