How To Get Best Results From A Klipschorn

[coda]

[jt1stcav]

What a fascinating article! Should make for some excellent late night reading material (especially when we find out what amplifiers are best to drive the Klipschorns).

[sheltie dave]

Keep in mind this is circa 1952. It is interesting to see the Brook, Leak, McIntosh, and others cited - there was not a plethora of outstanding amps at the time, so PWK cited the ones he liked. It also shows his determination and mindset that he took disparaging remarks about his silly speaker, the scorned Klipschorn, and trademarked it as a thumb in his critics' eye. He DEFINITELY had the last laugh.

If you do the math, tube amps at that time were in the 10% to 20% efficeincy for accoustical output, so a twenty watt amp X 20% would be 4 accoustic watts, more than enough to provide 1 accoustic watt with headroom for the dynamic peaks of the recorded music of the day.

PWK's recommendations were what he thought needed to be available for good sound, NOT a categorical imperative, so please don't start sling stuff at the wall. This gives a good historical framework of Paul's thought process, and how he sold his speakers for twenty years.

[Deang]

I had a very long day today, and that article was just what I needed. Very refreshing and much appreciated. Thanks!

[Painful Reality]

Great find Taddeo.

The Dead Sea Scrolls of Audio?

[howismydriving]

Its gotta be the cats. They improve everything.

[Guy Landau]

Do you think that these amps http://www.geocities.com/TimesSquare/1965/darling.html could drive them?

[3dzapper]

You'd probably be surprised Guy. If they make it to a watt at the output, 80db listening would be possible with 24db headroom. LeoK should love that one!

Rick

[IndyKlipschFan]

Guy...

Klipsch had one pair last year at the annual event here in Indy. Besides going into distortion too soon, I think everyone thought they sounded terrible. Almost sure these are the same ones..they were bright yellow and looked like the ones in the middle of the web page.

[HeritageBob]

The beauty is that the Klipschorns in the picture may very well be making someones life happy in a living room still to this day. The cats although are a different story...........

[coda]

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On 4/27/2004 8:39:25 PM sheltie dave wrote:

If you do the math, tube amps at that time were in the 10% to 20% efficeincy for accoustical output, so a twenty watt amp X 20% would be 4 accoustic watts, more than enough to provide 1 accoustic watt with headroom for the dynamic peaks of the recorded music of the day.

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1951 was a good year for music, does it seem though the article puts more emphasis on the efficiency of speakers to determine acoustic watts in that it never directly mentions amp efficiency?

In the days of the 30- and 60-watt amplifiers, speakers of the direct-radiator class were typically 5% efficient; that is, 5% of the power fed to the speaker electronically would be converted to sound power. Hence a 30-watt amplifier driving a typical speaker of 5% efficiency would deliver about 1.5 acoustic watts maximum.

Now that wide-range low-distortion speakers exhibit around 50% efficiency, less electrical power is needed. An amplifier rated at 10 watts may deliver 5 watts acoustic power, and if one needs only 0.5 watt of acoustic power, the amplifier can be operated at only 1 watt output with extremely low distortion. For home use, peak amplifier output of 1 watt would suffice to feed a Klipschorn.

Guessing similar math is being used today to construct SPL charts. btw, the write-up was the lead article to Vol. 1 of High Fidelity Magazine in the summer of 1951, ~5 years after PWK founded the company that bears his name, he was in his mid-40s at the time. Interesting of course to see his preferences and the reasons behind it, as mentioned in earlier posts, the Brook 12A3-K-1 was a modified version dedicated to the Klipschorn. Did anyone here have a chance to verify the extent of the mods involved?

[Cut-Throat]

Gee!! - 1.5 watts peak provided music at comfortable listening levels in 600,000 cubic feet! - About the size of an aircraft hanger for 1,000 people.

I guess these people still had their hearing unlike a few folks on this forum.

[NOSValves]

I can see right now your headed for banning my friend !

[Guy Landau]

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On 4/28/2004 10:28:55 PM NOSValves wrote:

I can see right now your headed for banning my friend !

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no he isn't.

[Piranha]

Well, I like my rock and roll really, really loud at times myself. Having the cops here a few time a year is par for the course. I just don't know if I could achieve that kind of volume in my 24 X 44 room with a SET amp? Then again, maybe I could? I just don't know. From what everyone says, they sound great. But I sure would like to hear one for myself and form my own opinion. I have yet to hear one, so I can not and will not say anything negative about them. I am hoping to hear one at the Indy get together. If I do, I'll offer my opinions post road trip. Either way, it's a matter of preference. As long as I don't have to foot the bill, everyone has a right to their loyalties.

And for the record, I am not quite in Smilin's SPL league, but then again, who is? Where is he anyways? Has anybody heard from him? The last I heard he was heading to Florida to look after his Mom. I hope that works out OK for him.

[NOSValves]

Guy

If you can't see the baiting he just did in 2 threads in less then 5 minutes you need to learn to comprehend the English language better the comments were insulting to many with out lashing out at anyone person. Someone needs to point these things out. Posts like the last two he made were exactly the types of post that cause numerous problems on this forum. I think everyone here needs to burry the hatchet like we did on the phone just yesterday. Incedently no where in that article was a SET amp mentioned. The 1 1/2 acoustic watts used in the mentioned room was for dinner music and I bet was not very darn loud or very complex music.

Craig

[Deang]

"I guess these people still had their hearing unlike a few folks on this forum."

I don't know, I've spent a lot of time worrying about your hearing.

I enjoyed reading the article, but didn't see much sense in putting much emphasis on those numbers related to amplifiers. I thought we all decided is was all based on preferences and listening habits? Who cares?

I've become a big advocate of the tube sweet spot/power idea. If you can get the best sound you've ever heard listening at a half of watt, well, that's great. However, if I had an amp like that, I would just be overdriving it all of time. Obviously, I wouldn't be hearing the amp at its best very often. I have 40 wpc, and rarely if ever use all of it -- but I do drive the amp and tubes into the area they sound best at, which is certainly louder than most SET amps would be happy about. Besides, serious bass slam and control are hardly attributes of low power amps -- and you don't get either without some power and decent damping. There is more, but I think I'll spare you guys my impedance curve rant.

[sheltie dave]

There are major differences between dinner music at a social function vs DJing at an outdoor college party for 15,000 people. While the amplifier usage was markedly different, the speakers I used at both were La Scalas - and they sounded great at both.

There is a slight difference in perception, as I would want the music to be loud enough to be heard, but soft enough that a fork clinking on china can be heard by everyone at the table for a social diner. At the outdoor venue, I want the music loud enough that a shotgun blast can be heard for at least twenty yards.

We have argued along, around, through, and between amp power, usage, listening levels, et al, that it really doesn't matter any more. Who cares if there is baiting, just let it ride. It doesn't matter either way - and realize there was ALWAYS at least a teensy bit of salesmanship in Paul's spiels. I was in a B52 size aircraft hanger yesterday, and you could be heard across the hangar just by yelling...across 200 yards.

I found a Realistic integrated amplifier for $2 that works wonders in aircraft hangars with Onyx speakers

[Colin]

Damn that is a good article, Paul W. Klipsch has said similar things in other publications, but his insistence in startlingly plain language, that cone loudspeakers cant reproduce realistic low bass, even in line driver arrays, is refreshing. It is also unusual for any manufacturer to state so clearly their brand-name preferences for source and amplification.

One of the many unique qualities of the classic Klipsch corner Khorns is that the design intentionally uses the existing walls of the listening room to recreate the music. I know of no other design that does something like that. This is a shame since so many small loudspeakers sit in bookshelves that could be perfect horn enclosures themselves.

He said:

That a sizable chunk of music was below 50Hz

The better the loudspeaker, the more it emphasis the deficiencies of the associated apparatus.

Negative feedback, he says back in 1952, is irritating to both golden and tin ears

Note that the ten watts of 2A3 tube power that Klipsch liked is the old IHF measurement of peak power, NOT the square wave measurement of RMS adopted in the 70s after the growing popularity of solid-state amplifiers. My Bottlehead 2A3 Paramour monoblocks actually put out about 6-watts maximum; close to the ten watts IHF of the Brook amplifier that PWK favors.

Even then, he concludes the article by saying that vibration isolation platforms for source components should be a bed of rubber and yet NOT resonate above 5Hz. This is something that Gingko verified forty-years later with the design of their Cloud 10s. (http://www.enjoythemusic.com/magazine/equipment/0404/ginkocloud10.htm)

[Parrot]

Background music at dinner? Just about any amp and speaker would suffice. Using a Klipschorn only for this would be on the order of never getting out of first gear in a Ferrari.