neo33 Posted July 22, 2004 Author Share Posted July 22, 2004 "I now believe English to be your second language, and this would explain your sometimes broken sentences and word usage (and spelling as well)" Yeah, yeah whatever, Dean. Of Coarse, English is my second language and I can't spell because my spelling skill is only second to Craig. And I can't even tell the difference between the North poll and my poleing place. "My humble apologies for previous abuses!" That got to be the most racist statement I have ever seen on a forum! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
neo33 Posted July 22, 2004 Author Share Posted July 22, 2004 "Neo, did you see the "in the box" 1993 Khorns from California on ebay? Like brand new unfinished oak and it looks like they are on false corners. They seller a consignment center calls them "pallets". I think the BIN is 3250 or so." I wish I have the dough for them, Rick. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
richinlr Posted July 23, 2004 Share Posted July 23, 2004 Neo, Very interesting! Glad you brought up x-overs in speakers - fully one of the most important aspects in speaker design and often overlooked. I am a believer in the minimalist x-overs. If you can use the drivers natural roll-of characteristics instead of a filter do it. If not, try your best to use only a 6 db/octave. Not only do you reduce the power loss (and get to hear more) but you also reduce the nasty phase issues that come with steep x-overs. If you use quality drivers with uniform response you don't have equalize near as much. Sort of like making the what you are going to put into the box the right size in the first place rather than carving it up later to fit in the box.... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Deang Posted July 23, 2004 Share Posted July 23, 2004 Crossovers are like any other component, you just have to try some different approaches to see what your ears like. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
richinlr Posted July 23, 2004 Share Posted July 23, 2004 Of course, I totally agree that x-overs need to be listened to (Lord knows I made enough junk ones!). That being said, an 18 dB/octave x-over will have more components to pass the signal through and the phase shift will be more than a 6 dB/octave. These two items, as a general rule, will, in an 18 dB x-over, color the sound more than will a 6 dB x-over made with the same quality components. I once sent my pre-amp in to be serviced and got it back with the notice "Your preamp has been upgraded to the current production model to take advantage of latest sound enhancements of the current model." They gave me a bag of left-over parts they had removed from the preamp. They did not put any new ones in place of the ones they removed. It sounded better. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Moderators Amy Posted July 23, 2004 Moderators Share Posted July 23, 2004 Please drop the race comments, or this one is gone. Thanks! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sunnysal Posted July 23, 2004 Share Posted July 23, 2004 rich, unless we are talking about electronic crossovers... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
richinlr Posted July 23, 2004 Share Posted July 23, 2004 True... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
neo33 Posted July 23, 2004 Author Share Posted July 23, 2004 "Very interesting! Glad you brought up x-overs in speakers - fully one of the most important aspects in speaker design and often overlooked." About a year ago I spent 2 hours on the phone listening to Steve Deckert preaching about his Zen amp and the single driver and two-way (with simple crossover) speakers. When I mentioned Klipsch speakers, he started to give me a "lesson" about how Klipsch is not good for the Zen amp. He said that by the time the signals traveled through the Klipsch complicated crossover networks, most of the energy in the 3.5W has been dissipated. I just thought in my mind "huh???". I don't know much about crossovers, but most of what Steve said didn't convince me about how good his amp is. After having consulted with members of this forum about what Steve've said, I've never look back on his stuff. I have since heard much talks about the single driver speakers and even auditioned a few. IMO, they just don't have the details and finesses of the Heritage. Most of them don't have a very good soundstage and severely lacking the bass. I consider my Moondogs and Cornwalls the most prized possession I've ever had in my audio endeavor. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Parrot Posted July 23, 2004 Share Posted July 23, 2004 The Zen is lucky to be considered a 1W amp. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
richinlr Posted July 23, 2004 Share Posted July 23, 2004 Well, a Klipsch Heritage x-over is definitely not the common variety crossover. It's very well made and has impedance matching. Something a whole lot of crossovers don't have. A Heritage crossover is about 4 times the size of the ones in most speakers today. You're right a single driver speaker just can't cut it no matter how hard they try. I am biased toward 3-ways because you can design each driver for what it is supposed to do rather than try to make one do everything (that ain't gonna happen). I know my ET LFT-VIII's (hybrid planar magnetic 3-ways) are not in the same league as Klipsch Heritage but they are very good (albeit very inefficient) with useable bass down to 25 Hz. They image very well (holographic depending on the recording) and have exceedingly clean highs. The main designer does a few tricks in them that contribute to their sound. He crosses the woofer at 180 Hz with a 6 dB filter AND the woofer has natural roll-off beginning around that point. He then runs the midrange panel from 180 Hz. to 10K leaving the entire midrange in one driver. Then another 6 dB filter to transfer to the tweeter panel. He achieves +/- 20 degree phase coherency from 25 Hz to 31 kHz. I was happy as a clam with them until I got a taste of Klipsch again for the first time in a long time and no other speaker has the 'live' sound that Klipsch does. This is the kind of simplicity I was referring to as opposed to the single driver variety... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
neo33 Posted July 23, 2004 Author Share Posted July 23, 2004 I don't know how Klipsch do it, but even their multimedia speakers sound like no others. The very first time I listened to the ProMedia 2.1, the hauntingly holographic imaging was almost scary! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dodger Posted July 23, 2004 Share Posted July 23, 2004 Hello: As long as we've moved onto speakers, I am in agreement that a good three (3) way is my choice. I have my Paradigms which require a sub, But other than K-Horns, for me, I have yet to hear anything that surpasses the Cornwall IIs. They're flexible as far as brands of amps that will mate with them. I'm also very happy with the overall sound and the amount and definition of the bass. For a total of less than $1150.00 for two (2) pair, I receive quality sound that would command at least twice the price. Enough, the words wear thin. dodger Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
neo33 Posted July 23, 2004 Author Share Posted July 23, 2004 "For a total of less than $1150.00 for two (2) pair, I receive quality sound that would command at least twice the price." Are you willing to forgo one pair for $575? . I need two more pairs to complete my all Corns HT system. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ray Garrison Posted July 23, 2004 Share Posted July 23, 2004 RichInLR, The 6dB per octave crossover sounds like it would be simpler in theory, but the problem is that the slower rolloff means that there's a lot more driver overlap. This causes some designers to go nuts with the crossover, trying to engineer out any anomolies in the off axis response due to the varying dispersion characteristics of the drivers and the resulting lobing, and smoothing out phase variances. Here, for example, is the crossover for the Thiel CS 6: I believe it has 34 components. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
richinlr Posted July 23, 2004 Share Posted July 23, 2004 Ray, That Thiel crossover is out of control. Why compensate for picking the wrong drivers with an overly complex crossover? My ET's have two coils and 4 caps (only 2 caps are used at a time - other are optional for tweeter level control). Pretty simple. Tweeter level control is too - just dial in more capacitance and lower the cut-off to increase the level. No resistors, no switches - uses jumpers to change the capacitance. Everything else is soldered. If you actually go through the calcs for the ET's you find out that low pass freq. for the woofer is pretty far away from the high pass for the midrange. I did the calcs a long time ago and believe that the slopes cross over each other at something like 3 dB down. 3 dB down on the woofer at 180 Hz + 3 dB down on the midrange panel at 180 Hz. = 0 dB down total at 180 Hz. That's how the overlap is handled. In order to use gentle slopes, though, you have to have drivers that will easily extend well beyond the actual crossover point. The woofer is an 8 in and a lot of folks run 8 inchers as high as 3.6 K (as in the Klipsch RF-35). The mid panels are 126 sq. inches (more than twice an 8 inch cone) so they could easily go pretty low themselves. There's actually a lot of elegant and simple good engineering in the ET's. Bruce Thigpen at ET is a bit like PWK - a perfectionist and a bit eccentric Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
neo33 Posted July 26, 2004 Author Share Posted July 26, 2004 Nearly 6000 have viewed this thread. I wonder why so many people would read the nonsense about SET amps. I can only imagine that they each own a SET at the very least. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Parrot Posted July 26, 2004 Share Posted July 26, 2004 ---------------- On 7/26/2004 6:38:08 PM neo33 wrote: Nearly 6000 have viewed this thread. ---------------- The nearly 6000 hits does not mean 6000 different individuals have read the thread. Every time someone clicks on the thread to read a new post, it registers as another view. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Erik Mandaville Posted July 27, 2004 Share Posted July 27, 2004 As someone who has both built two of the SE OTLs and spoken very highly of the way they sound, I've recently been asked why I haven't responded to the recent portraits of amplifier distortion. In general, I have had difficulty logging onto the forum; in particular, distortion measurements for me have never been an important factor in qualifying the merit or lack thereof of an audio component. In my opinion, the SE OTL is a wonderful reproducer of music, and, also in my opinion, is a difficult amplifier to better in terms of cost. Thread after thread after thread on this forum has illustrated the fact that low power SET amplifiers are not to everyone's liking, which is why I think it's good that there is more than one kind of amplifer from which to choose. The fact that the conflict continues is evidence to me, and in my opinion as well, that the machines we use to play our music have become the means to a different end. It no longer seems to be about sharing a common interest. There are MANY non-horn-speaker advocates with whom I've communicated that have asked me why I would choose to listen to a type of transducer that has the reputation (in some circles)of being inaccurate, distorted, harsh, honking, overly aggressive...and so on and so forth. And many of you who own high efficiency horn speakers know this to be the case, as well. However, do some of you, based on that conception, suddenly feel obliged to immediately part with your speakers? Moreover, does it matter what those individuals believe (certainly they are entitled to thier opinions), and should you similarly feel obliged to get rid of the source of a treasured sound characterisic based on comparatively sterile scientific data? If that is the case, than we each have every right to make a decision based on what aspect of a component's performance -- these being carefully carried out measurements and recordings of distortion characteristics or, much more simply, the way the device sounds to us individually, in our listening environment, with our related components, and the type/s of music to which we like to listen, and at the level of volume we most prefer. In my opinion, forming judgement of an audio component based on what it looks like on a green screen is as premature as not wanting to try a new recipe because it combines ingredients that, as far as past experience may be concerned, seems incongruous. I have to pack some amplifiers for shipping. If there are typos and incorrect spellings above, excuse those -- I'm typing very fast and don't have time to proofread and make corrections. Erik Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
3dzapper Posted July 27, 2004 Share Posted July 27, 2004 Erik, I proof read your post and feel that you require the latest edition of the "NOS Dictionary" to improve your spilling. Rick Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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