Center channel with K-horns! Wow!

[DaWoofer]

Are the fixed resisters mandatory, or can the speaker wires just be directly connected with a pot in line? Thanks for your input, I've not yet heard a 3-channel yrt but sounds like its worth a shot. I only have Heresy's and alot of other speakers to choose a third. I though about a coaxial Jensen 12 in.

[sfogg]

Erik,

"It was here on the screen when I came back in to report that I think a rear channel has some definite potential!

...but, with a provision:  It seems to sound best to me if turned down to a level lower than than the front speakers, which makes sense for me, because I want the image to be primarily a frontal one where attention is not pulled to the back -- as if the music is saying, "Hey, don't forget about us!"

That makes sense to me. With the Lex. you will get the sound of the acoustic space out of the rears. It will expand the apparent 'depth' of your system but it won't really change the frontal perspective. There is actually a control that will allow you to move your 'position' in the hall to move more toward the front or toward the rear of the hall.

With the setup you have now you probably have your surrounds considerably lower then you would using the Lexicon. There are numerous reasons for this if you are just doing the Hafler passive rear channel.

First the rear channel only has about 3dB of channel separation from the fronts. IOW what you have in the rear speakers is nearly the same as what is in the front. If this is too loud it WILL throw your frontal perspective all helter skelter. The Lex. will steer the ambient info in the music to your surrounds and it will be very different then what is going to your front speakers... IOW a great channel separation and instead of just a mono channel (over however many speakers) the Lex. will steer either two or four channels of surround material out. Correlated surround is very artificial sounding as that just doesn't occur in real life in a hall, that is why the surrounds need to be fed stereo material or four channels if you are using four surrounds.

Second if your rear speakers are closer to you then your fronts you will hear the rears first. Because the material is almost the same as what is coming from the front and because of the HAAS effect this too will pull your soundstage to the rear. The Lexicon handles this in a few ways. First you enter the distance to each speaker as part of the setup. It uses this to apply a delay to the channels needed such that the info hits the listener at the same time... this is called Time Alignment and is now very common in multi-channel processors. The Lex. will then apply an additional delay (user adjustable) to the surround information to allow the HAAS effect to anchor the material in the front of the room.

Third what you are getting in the rear is sort of a duplicate in the front. That means it is full range. Ambient info in a hall is usually rolled off somewhat just by the large space and absorption. The Lex. gives you the ability to roll off the ambiance in the surrounds (and that too is adjustable). That will make the surround action more natural and less distracting.

"How does a component like the lexicon process a rear channel"

It actually won't do just a single rear channel as Lex. feels that won't get the job done satisfactorily because the ambient info will be correlated. If you only have a single amp channel or speaker you can't really use that with the Lex so you will have to limit your experiments to 3 front channels. It will do either none, 2 or 4. The simple answer is it determines what is surround info (and center channel info) based on phase and amplitude relationships between the L/R channels.

More details on this from the developer of Logic 7 (Music Logic) is at:

http://world.std.com/~griesngr/SUR.html

http://world.std.com/~griesngr/AES8A.html

Shawn

[Marvel]

Erik,

Noooo! Just change the extension of the file name back to exe. It is a standalone program and doesn't install anything, it just runs. I only changed the extension to .run because some folks have trouble with exe extension when they download them.

Again, rename HPad.run to HPad.exe

That's what you need to do. Maybe put a shortcut on your desktop. I just keep it in a utilities folder.

Marvel

[Erik Mandaville]

Marvel: Ah! Ok, I understand -- and thanks. With the way I'm planning to use the Moondogs, this will very likely come in handy! Thanks for the clarification.

Shawn: "Third what you are getting in the rear is sort of a duplicate in the front. That means it is full range. Ambient info in a hall is usually rolled off somewhat just by the large space and absorption. The Lex. gives you the ability to roll off the ambiance in the surrounds (and that too is adjustable). That will make the surround action more natural and less distracting."

I think you have described exactly the impression I have gotten. I listened to one full CD of instrumental (Baroque wind concertos)and one with vocals. The recording quality on both is first-rate, and despite the fact that I really, really like the way the room is being loaded, the Heresy at the back is too much of a mirror's reflection of the front. I hope people don't mind my describing what I'm after in visual terms, but if the front speakers are providing crystal clear, photographic-like reproduction the musical event, it seems to me that what comes from the rear should be more like to the ears what viewing an impressionistic painting is to the eyes. The overall structure is intact, but with slightly less attention to detail and image focus. So, it's the forward sharpness of transients that seems to draw my attention a little more than would be the case in real life.

I am enjoying this very much, and actually couldn't wait to listen again today! The sense of wholeness or completeness that this center channel has brought was something I did not expect at all -- that is the truth. I can tell that the addition of the remaining speakers (primarily two in the rear)brings about the need for a more 'talented' means of integrating the use of more amplifiers and speakers. This simple little minibox must have been a pretty innovative thing in its time, and I can't tell how much I look forward to trying your very generously shared Lexicon!

Erik

[sfogg]

Erik,

"and despite the fact that I really, really like the way the room is being loaded, the Heresy at the back is too much of a mirror's reflection of the front."

It won't be that way with the Lex. It will literally remove the hall sound from your front speakers and move it to the surrounds. The info sent to the rears will be different then what is in the front speakers.

" This simple little minibox must have been a pretty innovative thing in its time"

PWK was obviously ahead of his time in recognizing the importance of the work at Bell labs. That he stuck with it and actively promoted 3 channels pretty much his entire life shows he didn't care about sticking with 'common' wisdom.

"and I can't tell how much I look forward to trying your very generously shared Lexicon!"

Glad to hear it.

Shawn

[horn player]

I have a pair of Khorns 27 feet apart and I want to play a LaScala between them. Presently, I have a Denon class A amp and only play the Khorns. An Onkyo TXDS 484 Home Theater receiver (5.1 channel, 4 years old) is available in the local trader for 100. Would hooking up the LaScala and Khorns to this receiver be an acceptable alternative to building a center setup? I only have older 2 channel receivers and haven't kept up with the latest equipment. Also, would having my Heresy speakers hooked to surround help? Again, this will only be a music system, using radio, CD, cassettes, phono. Thanks in advance for your suggestions.

[Erik Mandaville]

This is a good time to stop for today. I think I have a 2A3 starting to head out to pasture, anyway. A fairly common cool dark blue that it's had for a long time is starting to go a gassy blue-white, and that's not good. I've had this RCA for a long while, and was just putting it to a little extra use.

Shawn: Thank you for giving up so much of your time today and throughout this thread to help me with this experiment. I appreciate it very much!

Dee: The schematic you sent me for PWK's minibox has, to my surprise - very pleasant surprise at that - changed the sound of my system in a way I did not at all expect. I am actually and honestly thrilled! Three channels has stuck for good. That alone is comforting if the inclusion of a subwoofer and/or rear channel stereo does not work out. However, I'm going to remain neutral until I try it for myself. So, in a very real sense, this extremely inexpensive and simple little box has been the best component upgrade since the Klipshorns themselves arrived. It has improved the sound in our house exponentially. I remember building it in sort of a 'ho-hum' way, early in the morning before I took our dogs for a walk. When I plugged everything in and plopped in the first CD, I just was sort of, well....kind of shocked, I guess. Awesome!

Shawn: I am sending you a PM/email.

Erik

[sfogg]

"An Onkyo TXDS 484 Home Theater receiver (5.1 channel, 4 years old) is available in the local trader for 100. Would hooking up the LaScala and Khorns to this receiver be an acceptable alternative to building a center setup? "

I don't think so. That Onkyo doesn't appear to have any processing any more advanced the Dolby Pro Logic. That doesn't work very well for music as the soundstage will collapse into the center channel.

If you want to get something with better processing for music find a receiver with Dolby Pro Logic II that has the full user adjustable controls in the music mode. DPLII was developed by Jim Fosgate and can do a nice job on music and gives some adjustments to help tailor the sound. Because it is from Dolby just about everything from the last few years has the DPLII modes in it but not all have the adjustable parameters.

Depending upon your budget used older processors might make sense too. The unit I'm lending to Erik originally was a $4500 processor. I bought this one for a touch over $400.. which is a little below their going rate but not that much. (Note: If anyone is considering a DC-1 let me know as there are multiple hardware versions of it with different software options and some are better then others, let me know if anyone wants more info)

Shawn

[horn player]

"I don't think so. That Onkyo doesn't appear to have any processing any more advanced the Dolby Pro Logic. That doesn't work very well for music as the soundstage will collapse into the center channel.

If you want to get something with better processing for music find a receiver with Dolby Pro Logic II that has the full user adjustable controls in the music mode. DPLII was developed by Jim Fosgate and can do a nice job on music and gives some adjustments to help tailor the sound. Because it is from Dolby just about everything from the last few years has the DPLII modes in it but not all have the adjustable parameters."

Thanks Shawn - I'll look for one with DPLII with adjustable controls.

Paul

[Erik Mandaville]

I thought I might refer those interested to a post in the technical forum. It includes a link to some interesting reading on the theory and application of a derived center channel with Klipschorns -- and the subsequent perceived larger soundstage and image.

We threw this back-and-forth quite a bit the other day, but the picture shown of the 3-channel setup at the bottom looks nearly identical to my own. The center speaker, however, consists of Lowther PM2A driver in a rear-loaded Medallion speaker enclosure. Although I would one day maybe like to replace the Lowther horn with a Belle or La Scala, what I have now actually blends very well with the Klipschorns.

Erik

[Erik Mandaville]

Just FWIW: To give you an idea of what Lowthers cost, the PM2As I have (JUST for the drivers) are now selling for about $1,600/pr.