Klipsch is Resting on Laurels of a Glorious Past

[MrMcGoo]

Tom B,

The RF-7s is effectively a three way when run as small. The crossover to the sub is in the digital processor, hence it is very clean. The passive crossover is simplified in the RF-7 since it only has to do 2 way duty. Improved crossovers reduces crossover distortion in comparison to three ways like the Khorn.

The lower excursion of the properly setup (with use of a subwoofer) RF-7's was never addressed by you. I think Paul Klipsch was right when he said that distortion sets in with any cone, including the woofers in the bass bin of Heritage speakers, when excursion exceeds 1/16th of an inch. Use of a subwoofer makes this easy to achieve at most listening levels with the RF-7s.

Bill

[hsosdrum]

Keith:

How much for just 2? I'd love to replace my Cornwall II studio monitors with them (I'll use one of the Corns as a subwoofer).

Please contact me off-chat.

-hsosdrum

[hsosdrum]

DeanG:

Thanks for your kind words. I've been a Klipsch fan since the day in early 1976 that I first heard a pair of K-Horns.

-hsosdrum

[TBrennan]

McGoo---An RF7 used with a sub isn't an RF7, it's a different thing then.

Yes, use of a sub will cut excursion. If you like cones have a field-day. I don't think they're the way to go.

I have some Altec Boleros that use a very sophisticated 10 (3" edgewound voice-coil with the motor from the 414 and a dual profile cone; straight sided about halfway out from the apex and then concave out to the surround) up to 2000hz where a horn comes in. I doubt a better 10 has ever been made. Nice sound but no VOTs. They lack the explosive sense of transients and crystalline clarity I hear when the compression driver goes lower.

One can hear this effect with various Altecs. VOTs that cross at 800 sound quicker and cleaner than 605s that cross at 1600. And VOTs that cross at 500 sound quicker than those that cross at 800.

You know if ole PWK had wanted to use cones he could have, very good ones were certainly available to him. And he could have saved money doing so. But he didn't figure it was the right way to go. I'd agree.

People can and will argue loudspeaker design and with good reason; as no speaker is perfect and it's not even agreed upon what a perfect speaker would even do the potential for argument is infinite.

[hsosdrum]

TBrennan:

Cool pic, but those A7s are NOT studio monitors -- they're playback speakers, a very different animal. Those A7s were used to playback takes to the musicians so they could judge their performance -- they definitely weren't used by the engineer and producer to make judgements about sound (mic choice, mic placement, mic level, etc.). After all, they were located in the performance area, not in the control room.

Chances are that inside the control room shown in that photo were a pair of Altec 604E duplexes in a pair of Altec 620 utility enclosures. THOSE were the monitors (the ones Altec was talking about in 1974 when they ran their ad stating that more studios used Altec monitors than all other brands combined). And they were only horn-loaded down to 1,500Hz. The 604E was a direct-radiator below that.

The A7s were horn-loaded down to 200Hz. Below that the 15" acts as a direct-radiator in a bass reflex enclosure. (The horn in the A7 is too small to effectively load the driver below 200Hz. Check Altec's voluminous lit on the speaker.) The Altec 9846 monitor (the one with the 511B and the 15" sealed woofer) crossed-over at 500Hz (as did the A7-500), which is more than an octave above middle C (266Hz) and is square in the middle of the vocal range, a terrible place for a crossover point. You're much better off getting the crossover up above 1kHz, where it keeps inter-driver phase errors out of the voice range. That's one of the big reasons the 604E sounded so good -- it used a single driver for almost the entire voice range.

Now, it's true that when you're pumping lots of 40Hz through a 604E you're gonna get a fair amount of modulation distortion at 1kHz, but back in the late 60s and early 70s there were very few synthesizers, and most engineers were still in the dark ages when it came to accurately recording frequencies below 80Hz, so in practice modulation distortion was pretty low. Once engineers learned how to record real high-energy bass in the 40Hz - 80Hz octave, the 604 series was quickly replaced by 3-way and 4-way monitors that crossed-over to their 15" woofers below 300Hz. Those monitors usually used 10" or 8" cones for the 300Hz - 1kHz range, keeping the crossover points farily well out of the voice range. None of 'em used horns in that frequency range (too damn big, which is why you very rarely ever saw an A7 inside a control room).

So before all you "horn-eys" go talking about horn-loaded studio monitors, you'd better check your facts.

[TBrennan]

Drum---You're quibbling. I know where various Altecs crossover (604s crossed as low as 1000hz). And regardless of what you think the various big Altecs though partly direct-radiating are referred to as horn speakers. Horns have been used in monitoring for a long time and on all kinds of music.

You can see the A5 in the reconstructed Stax control room and in photos taken at the time.

[hsosdrum]

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On 2/11/2005 5:43:26 PM TBrennan wrote:

Drum---You're quibbling. I know where various Altecs crossover (604s crossed as low as 1000hz). And regardless of what you think the various big Altecs though partly direct-radiating are referred to as horn speakers. Horns have been used in monitoring for a long time and on all kinds of music.

You can see the A5 in the reconstructed Stax control room and in photos taken at the time.

TBrennan:

Calling a 604E in a 620 enclosure a "horn speaker" is just plain inaccurate. When a multi-way speaker uses a horn to cover part of the audio bandwidth and a direct radiator to cover the remainder it is a hybrid, not a horn speaker. Altec always accurately referred to the 828 enclosure (the one used in the A7 and A5) as a "combination" enclosure, never as a "horn", because below 200Hz it is NOT a horn. Period.

If you want to make a case for calling a speaker that uses both a horn and a direct radiator one term or the other, the logical way to determine which it should be would be to determine how much of the speaker's total audio energy is radiated by the horn versus the direct radiator. Since the vast majority of energy contained in music exists in the range below 1kHz, it would certainly seem fair to call the 604E a direct radiator, since that's how it delivers most of what you hear from it. But in reality, it is a combination type, as are over 90% of studio monitors.

A proper analogy would be talking about colors. If an object is painted both red and green, referring to it as "red" would be inaccurate, even if is 80% red and 20% green. It is still both. You could accurately say that it is "mostly red", just as it is accurate to say that the 604E/620 is "mostly" a direct radiator. But it certainly isn't "mostly" a horn. The A7 and A5 are "mostly" horns, although a lot of the total energy in music exists below their horn's 200Hz cutoff frequency, and is reprodued by a direct radiator. The K-Horn is a true "horn speaker", as is the LaScala. And the Belle (which, in spite of it being all-horn, I must admit is truly awful-sounding, or at least it was back in the early 1980s, the last time I heard a pair).

If Stax used an A5 for monitoring (in mono, if they only had one), then they were certainly the exception. Were the contemporary photos you're referring to of the control room or the studio area? I can imagine A5s as studio playback speakers, but you'd need a downright huge control room to fit a pair of A5s (the multi-cell doesn't fit inside of the port like a 511 does, making the A5 a good deal larger than an A7.) Reconstruction photos are unreliable -- they could have moved one of the studio playback speakers into the control room during the reconstruction (if they originally had 604s I wouldn't at all be surprised if someone swiped them).

Oh, and I think mentioning that some 604s used a 1kHz crossover point (rather than one at 1.5kHz) meets the standard of "quibbling" far more perfectly than anything I said in my post. Bottom line: it's no less accurate to call a speaker with a direct radiating woofer and a horn tweeter a "direct radiator" than it is to call it a "horn". In fact, it's almost always closer to the truth.

[TBrennan]

Drum---My hat's off to you, from one quibbler to another that's first-rate quibbling and very good reasoning. You give me pause.

Now old KT implied that horns were never used for monitoring anything but "acid-rock", I think we can agree that part of the spectrum being horn-loaded was quite common in monitors. Monitors that were totally horn-loaded were no doubt rare (I recall an old Rolling Stone article in which Emmylou Harris was waxing ecstatic about the LaScala monitors in the studio in which the interview took place) but monitors that went horn above 800hz were evidently common and those going horn above 1600hz were the standard.

I have a history of Stax records that shows Jim Stewart in the control room at Stax with a single A5. Mono as you surmised. The book states that later they went "high-tech" stereo with EV Sentry IVs which as I recall were horn-loaded above 400hz. The people there claim the reproduction of the studio is accurate. By the way one of Al Jackson's Rogers kits is in the recording room. So is some of Cropper's and Dunn's gear. Marvelous museum.

Yes, A5s are pretty big, I had a pair in my basement. Best speakers I ever had, not perfect but totally killer for playing movie soundtracks.

[T2K]

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On 2/11/2005 3:07:50 PM hsosdrum wrote:

Keith:

How much for just 2? I'd love to replace my Cornwall II studio monitors with them (I'll use one of the Corns as a subwoofer).

Please contact me off-chat.

-hsosdrum

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Sent you a PM earlier today. Maybe it worked.

Keith

[Hardhead]

The above exchanges make it obvious that certain of you haven't read or thought much about the Dope From Hope articles and what they mean. For instance, can you say "comb filtering" (partial cancellation of sound waves caused by multiple same-size drivers) which was specifically ridiculed in one of the articles? Even if you don't mind comb filtering, it's hard to argue that, without greater cone excursion (which means more distortion), two 10" Klipsch Klassy Kopper-Kolored Kones with a total area of 157 sq. in. can play as loud with one watt as the 15" woofer (177 sq. in) in a Cornwall, since both woofer systems would have to move the same volume of air to achieve the same loudness. Please note that I didn't even mention Heritage horn-loaded woofers with an effective mouth area of several square feet. But, of, course, I'm arguing hard facts, and I know I'll get nowhere with that approach.

[hsosdrum]

TBrennan:

Well, I'm envious. Although I've owned K-Horns I stopped using them in 1985 (before home theater happened), so I never had the chance to play movie soundtracks through big horns in my home. I imagine a pair of A5s would make awesome home theater speakers (although using one for a center channel presents formidible logistical challenges in a home).

KT is clearly in the dark about studio monitors. You're totally correct that practically all monitors horn-load the top decade (2k - 20k), and many use horns down to the 500Hz - 800Hz range (mostly Altecs -- I think the last time JBL made a monitor with horns below 2k was the late 40s). I think I remember that same article about Emmylou Harris. If you go on Wendy Carlos' website (she's the Moog synthesizer player/composer who recorded "Switched-On Bach", the soundtrack for "A Clockwork Orange" and tons of other stuff) she talks about using 4 Cornwalls as monitors in her studio in Manhattan, of all places!

Now I'm beginning to miss my K-Horns. I'll say this: In the 2 rooms that suited them well (about 2x wider than deep, with one natural corner and one easily formed by placing a large, heavy bookcase perpindicular to the wall), with the K-Horns along the long wall and the Cornwall in the center (powered by 3 Luxman MB3045 triode tube amps), that system did many, many things right -- absolutely unmatched dynamics, extreme musical detail, pinpoint side-to-side stereo soundstaging, and a sense of just plain "fun". I would bring friends over and play the drum solo from "Tank" off the first ELP album just to see their faces when the phased bass drum came-in at the end -- it would pressurize the whole room. My current system does everything right that the K-Horns did (except for the extreme dynamics), is flatter and has much more 3-dimensional stereo imaging (having the midrange 2 feet behind and the bass driver 7 feet behind the tweeter plays total havoc with the phase alignment between the 3 drivers in a K-Horn, making it impossible to accurately reproduce anything approaching 3-dimensional space), and it doesn't require corners (my home has no useable corners). But it's not that same unbridled, effortless sense of 'fun' that the K-Horns were.

Take care,

-hsosdrum

[Deang]

Imaging is just an illusion anyways.

The time delay "problem" is like real life to me. You know - wife yelling for me from the basement, daughter yelling for me from her room, son yelling for me from the garage. Amazingly enough, it all seems to reach my ears at the same time.

[Duke Spinner]

Nooooo ...Mr. Drum !

there are tons of JBL SM's that use horns over 500 hz

forget the 4311/ 12/ 13 ..

there are 6 or 7, in pro cases that meet this condition

the Cabaret, Summit, etc.

[MrMcGoo]

Hardhead,

The Reference home theater speakers need to be discussed as a 7.1 system, because they are intended to be run as such. Paul Klipsch designed his speakers to be run as singles and later as stereo pairs on LOW power amps. Note that we are comparing apples and oranges in the two different SYSTEMS.

First in the Reference system is the RSW-15. The RSW-15 takes care fo the bass frequencies below 80 or 100 Hz. It takes a lot of power because it is not horn loaded. It has the power that it needs (650 watts RMS, 2400 watts peak.) It has a single active driver, hence comb filtering from multiple drivers is not much of an issue. It can put out 115 db at 32 Hz in a normal room with its single active driver. In other words, it has no trouble keeping up. Bass distortion doesn't become audible until it approaches 10% down this low.

Comb filtering is more of a problem for center channels with horzontal drivers. The RC-7 uses a tapered array to solve the problem. You need to do some serious reading about the physics of the problem and how it is solved with Reference center channels.

The verticle arrangement of the woofers on the RF-7s does not produce the audible problem that you assume incorrectly exhists, provided you run them as small on your processor.

Klipschorns can and do have bass peaks and nulls. A seven speaker Heritage theater could have terrible problems with peaks and nulls, if run full range. It is the room and multiple speakers that causes the peaks and nulls more than multiple cone drivers. I use an electronic system that measures the problem and digitally corrects it. I am still trying to decide if the system is worth the trouble, since I have just started using it.

Bill

[hsosdrum]

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On 2/12/2005 1:13:57 PM bsafirebird1969 wrote:

Nooooo ...Mr. Drum !

there are tons of JBL SM's that use horns over 500 hz

forget the 4311/ 12/ 13 ..

there are 6 or 7, in pro cases that meet this condition

the Cabaret, Summit, etc.

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BSAFirebird1969:

I guess I wasn't making myself clear. JBL absolutely made tons of monitors that used horns above 500Hz. The point I was trying to make was that with such a high crossover point (see below) they really can't be called "horn speakers", since most of the acoustic energy they produce is created by the direct-radiating drivers.

I have 3 JBL pro catalogs in front of me right now (1976, 1980 and 1998), and

the lowest any of the monitors in those catalogs crosses-over from direct radiators to horns is 800Hz, in the 4331 and 4333. Except for the 4333, all of JBL's big 3-way monitors used direct radiators (15s or 12s) from 30Hz or so up to 1kHz. The 4-ways crossed-over from 15s to 10s or 8s at between 250Hz and 350Hz, and the smaller cones carried the load up till 1.2kHz or so before the horns kicked-in.

I was just on the JBL pro site last nite and their 2005 pro catalog doesn't show any large studio monitors at all -- just 3-way boxes a la the 4311 (which was a really, really bad-sounding speaker -- woefully inaccurate midrange frequency response in that sucker). I guess Genelec has sewn-up the big box studio monitor market.

The store I worked at during the late 70s carried JBL and Klipsch, and we would A/B the Cornwall and the JBL L300 (home version of the 4333 monitors) and watch customer's faces when the big, clean, spacious, dynamic sound from the Klipsches collapsed into a harsh mass of confusion when we switched to the JBLs (which retailed for 50% more than the Cornwalls), especially on orchestral classical music. Sold a fair number of Cornwalls that way. Never sold an L300 (or an L200, which was the home version of the 4331 and was closer to, but still higher than the Cornwall in price). Fun stuff.

[Deang]

Why did it take you so long to join us here? Refreshing posts - thanks.

D

[IB Slammin]

Been out of town for a while, and this has been a fun read.

So,.... George Orwell was a Brit?

Terry

[3dzapper]

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On 2/12/2005 10:33:02 PM IB Slammin wrote:

Been out of town for a while, and this has been a fun read.

So,.... George Orwell was a Brit?

Terry

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Terry LMBO.

Rick

LMBO the new poli-correct way to say.....

[Trey Cannon]

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On 2/11/2005 7:45:09 AM TBrennan wrote:

McGoo---If you really think a 2-way with a pair of 10s is the way to go I've some 30 year old Dynaco A-50s that should be right up your alley.

PWK was wrong about high efficency causing low distortion. As has been pointed out earlier a high efficency cone will have the same distortion as a low efficiency cone making the same output.

(BuLL SH!T, it will not)

And high efficiency full-range drivers suffer from more distortion than low-efficiency multi-ways.

(again BS )

Were this not true all any of us would need are Altec 755s, EV SP-8s or Lowthers.

It's more a case that inherantly low distortion devices also happen to have high efficiency; woofers with huge magnets and 3" edgewound voicecoils, compression drivers and such.

Now if you like the sound of your 10s that's aces with me, one can't argue preference. But any speaker running from the bass through lower treble from a direct-radiator is a highly compromised device amd I'm including in this such stellar speakers as Altec 604s and 605s which run 15s of unequaled quality up to 1600hz.

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...someone said once that there is more than one way to trap a mouse...

The same can be said with audio.

PWK started the Khorn in the lated 40's as a 2 way speaker.

He used the KISS method. In a 2 way there is only one chance to mess up the crossover. In a 3 way there are 2 chances.

The more crossover points you add, the more phase problems you add.

The Klipsch LAW is just that a LAW. It can apply to many things.

efficency = 1/distortion

The woofers on the RF-7 and many of our products have low 2nd and 3rd harmonic distortion. They also are "well dehaved" up to aroud 2.5kHz.

We cross the over below 2k...The horn is "well behaved" down to about 1kHz.

PWK went to a 3 way Khorn in 1953 or so. He did this (from what I understand after talking to him about it) because the drivers he was using were running on the "edge" of their capabilitys. The 3 way gave the drivers more head room.

Once there were drivers that could do the job he wanted, he went back to a 2 way...the Jubliee.

BTW: remember that the Khorn, Belle, La Scala, Cornwall all use the K-33.

As a driver, it is not the best in the wrold...It only moves a short distance. In the 3 speakers that are horn loaded, it works in a sealed cabinet as a compresion driver. moves a short distance in a seald cabinet, this is about as easy of a job that you could ask from that driver.

In the cornwall it has to work harder. going up to 700Hz (rolling off at 12db per Oct.) So if you have 100db @ 500Hz you should still have 88db @ 1000Hz. Whitch is a lot of mids coming from the woofer....

Wait, someone said that was bad...but they like the way the Cornwall sounds...

Ok now I am mixed up...

[Deang]

"PWK was wrong about high efficency causing low distortion. As has been pointed out earlier a high efficency cone will have the same distortion as a low efficiency cone making the same output."

"(BuLL SH!T, it will not)"

"And high efficiency full-range drivers suffer from more distortion than low-efficiency multi-ways."

"(again BS )"

Yeah, I caught those too, but didn't say anything because I don't like arguing with speaker experts.