DrWho Posted July 11, 2005 Share Posted July 11, 2005 So I was in Milwaukee last Saturday watching Kait (girlfriend) play in a rugby tournament and then afterwards we hooked up with malotky...who btw has a way awesome decked out house, but more importantly he's got a wicked cool HT as well. I'm not talking just sound though, he's got toys up the wazzoo. Anyways, as is tradition I started the first listen with one of my favorite songs from Nightwish of course. It's not the best recording but it's what I like to listen to...I'm trying to find a khorn system that makes it sound like it does at home, but I'm pretty much decided that I would have to remaster the CDs to get it to sound right on khorns... The second track I played was a way overcompressed industrial rock techno thing by celldweller...it's got this insane introduction that just blasts this loud powerful bass. I was actually surprised that the khorns were actually good down to 30Hz...there was a 20Hz or so subharmonic that got lost, but those khorns could really belt out the sound. You can't listen to loud compressed music for very long so we turned it off and then malotky took over playing some music dvds to show off the system. I must say that I was extremely impressed with that Godsmack dvd...we listened to this one song where the lead singer shows off his drumming skills and the two drummers are going at it (great musicianship), but the recording was amazing too. It was one of those recordings that it was so clean that you just want to keep turning it up and up and you'll go deaf before you start feeling it. We of course didn't listen that loud, but it's the only way I can describe it. Somewhere during this time damonrpayne came over as well and it was nice meeting him...he looked way way different than what I remember at the pilgrimage (no I wasn't drinking either). I didn't get to talk to him at the pilgrimage so it was nice to meet him in person and he's a cool guy too. After the godsmack we listened to some queen (something Kait would enjoy too). That too was a lot of fun...I think they got a bit carried away with the surround sound thing, or maybe I'm just not used to it yet because it did feel a bit unnatural at times. Nevertheless it was still really cool and I loved the music so it was a lot of fun. After that damon put in some bluenote CD of something, trying I think to see what his future HT is going to sound like. It's actually being built right now so he's without music for a bit (man that's gotta be hard). And then our short visit came to a close...Kait had to get home so she could prep for a trip to the Czech Republic where she will be teaching english at a summer camp. All in all the trip was worthwhile and John is a great host (as it seems most everyone on the forum is). I wish we could have stayed longer because I was very much enjoying myself. As always I'd like to mention a few things about the sound. I'll start with Kait considering she has no interest in audio and she's partially deaf. One thing I've been noticing with khorns is that they seem to have almost a tubby sound to them, which really surprised when Kait told me she was hearing the same thing (without me ever mentioning it beforehand). The three places I've heard khorns (artto's, pilgrimage, and now malotky's) have always had this subtle thing happening in the lower mids. Let me stress that it's nothing major and on the good recordings you don't really hear it...so it is at least partially attributed to the source material. But the fact that Kait heard it too reassures me that I'm not being too critical (which I often am). I've also never heard the tubbiness sound on any other system besides the khorns though (including some studios and expensive headphones), so there's gotta be something happening with those bass bins. Anyways, this is pretty much the only "flaw" I could think of with his setup and it's always easier to talk about flaws than it is the good things...so basically everything else was amazing: the custom center channel sounded way better than I thought it would and those SVS subs are really clean sounding (so much so that I requested once to crank them up so that I could hear them better...which obvsiouly wasn't needed when we changed over to the music DVDs). The timbre matched high-mounted heresy surrounds were very nice and not distracting. I believe the bigger room was a huge factor in allowing the heresies to bloom and fill in the sound. Kait was telling me on the way home that the sound was so much bigger than it is with my system at home. She's always skeptical about me with it comes to audio, but I think she finally is starting to appreciate what I'm aiming for...and malotky's system is very close to what I have in mind for my future home. I'm just not sure if the khorns are the speaker for my tastes though. Perhaps I'll have to have two sets of mains that I switch between depending on the crappiness of the recordings. The coolest thing that I had never seen before was his remote that controlled his computer via radio waves instead of IR, which allowed him to put his computer in another room so you don't hear the fan noise. It had a little joystick which controlled the mouse and he had an external USB dvd player sitting in his rack (running the USB through the wall to the pc) on the other side. He was using the hardware upsampler at the time, but the program he's running has the ability to upsample everything using different methods which totally enhanced the picture. You shoulda seen those cymbals gleaming during the Godsmack dvd. Btw, if you end up reading this would you mind sharing the exact titles of what we listened to? I seriously need to go out and purchase that DVD! And if Colter reads this, then you need to get the DVD too if you don't already (or anyone else that likes rock). Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
damonrpayne Posted July 11, 2005 Share Posted July 11, 2005 The DVD was a Queen CD mastered by the DTS company. I'm not sure if it is generally available. The Jazz CD I put in was "A song for my father", Horace Silver quartet. Boomac turned me on to it. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
colterphoto1 Posted July 11, 2005 Share Posted July 11, 2005 That wasn't one of the horrible Night at the Opera SACD's was it? You said the Queen was a DVD. Have to look it up. Nice job on the review DrWho, keep up the travels and education on classic rock, my friend! Michael Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DrWho Posted July 11, 2005 Author Share Posted July 11, 2005 Well it's the Godsmack DVD that impressed me the most...it was some live concert when the lead singer decided to show off and they brought out a complete second drum set. So both the real drummer and the lead singer show off proceeded to play together and it was intense. You'd prob like the queen CD though because it would sound mega cool with all your cornwalls all over the place (kinda like Yellow Submarine x 10) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Seadog Posted July 11, 2005 Share Posted July 11, 2005 Interesting. That's the first time I have heard someone describe the K-horn as "tubby". To me they don't necessarily slam the listener with a low frequency blast like a large direct radiator, but "tubby"? Nice review of an obviously very nice system. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
j-malotky Posted July 12, 2005 Share Posted July 12, 2005 Dr Mike Who Thanks for the kind words. I do like my system Here are some pics on the forum for reference. http://forums.klipsch.com/idealbb/view.asp?topicID=50440 The room looks the same, the rack is a bit different these days. I remember your trip to Artto's and the "tubby bass" description. The only thing I can add is, well, I have loved Khrons since the early 80's so that is the sound I am use too. When I built a HT, I knew I would have to build it around my Khorns and that NO other speaker would satisfy me. I guess I like "tubby" bass The other thing that throws people off on my system is the fact that I run my subs very flat. Most of the bass you hear is comming from my Khorns. The SVS's pretty much just do the .1 effects soundtrack like explosions etc. At some point I will most likely replace my SVS's with Klipsch Ultra's as I do enjoy the more acurate bass rather than the harmonic effects. That is the way I like it. Every once and a while I think about working on my center and build a horn loaded bass bin. But the dual K22's really do a great job. The K400 was a must in my room. The smaller 600 and 700 just did not sound right. In a smaller room, they would probably work fine. The Queen DVD is titled Greatest Video hits 1. The DTS soundtrack is amazing. Unfortunately, the videos have not been restored or remastered so they look like the 70's. I was lazy and left my HTPC on hardware deinterlacing, so Mike saw a lot of pixelation that software deinterlacing does a better job but, I mostly wanted to show off the soundtrack on that one. The Godsmack is titled Changes. The DTS soundtrack is great, and It looks amazing on my HTPC. It took me about 2 months to get my HTPC tweeked right, but now that it is running it makes my projector look like what my khorns do for audio. Lots of definition and clerity with the same double edge sword of Khorns. The better the recording the better it looks, and the worse the recording can make me revert back to my old 480p player. If you have a projector, build a HTPC Mike, hopefully next time you are up this way, you can spend more time listening to my system as this trip was pretty short. JM Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DrWho Posted July 12, 2005 Author Share Posted July 12, 2005 Man I wish I could describe the "tubby" sound better. It's almost as if somebody turned the woofer on the cornwall so that it was facing the corner and then had a killer subwoofer pointing forwards right at ya...almost like something in the cabinet is resonating or some wierd reflection happening. I would love to take some transient response measurements (short tone bursts) and see if there isn't any basshorn "ringing". That's precisely it...it's just like a mid-range horn that rings, but at a lower frequency (I'd say around 200-400Hz). Crappier recordings can often tend to be a little shy in the lower bass region and that probably unmasks it more...the khorns have really big thunderous bass, so don't mistake tubby with a crappy blose acoustimass module (not even close to that lol). Ya know, maybe it's the midrange horn ringing due to the low 450Hz crossover (maybe one of those fancy steep slope crossovers might do the trick...) And btw, it's not like it's that big of a deal or something that you wouldn't easily become accustomed to and tune out. Would you mind describing your htpc in a bit more detail? (yes, I'm giving you bragging rights, but only this once) you know, like all the hardware and software and the price. I really really liked the implementation so I'm gonna have to go out and do some product research and get some more ideas. Do you have a lot of HD space? I was thinking you might consider setting up a virtual dvd rom and saving dvd images on your HD...then all you have to do is open the file on the virtual rom and then it'd play exactly like the dvd was in the player. Then you could completely not have to get out of your chair to even swap movies and all that Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
damonrpayne Posted July 12, 2005 Share Posted July 12, 2005 Better yet Dr. Who, get Windows Media Center and MSFT speech server. One of my fellow Milwaukee geeks has a setup where he is easily able to voice-command his media center PC. (Setting this up is not friendly to the non-programmer) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
damonrpayne Posted July 12, 2005 Share Posted July 12, 2005 How I long for people to post about their "Trip to Damon's place", they should be digging next week. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
j-malotky Posted July 12, 2005 Share Posted July 12, 2005 Who - I think I understand the tubby definition. As a matter of fact, on some disks the bass almost seems delayed or extra sustain is a better term. I always thought it was because the Khorn has a double folded bass bin. Maybe the guys who do the time correction, there systems might sound better to you. As for the HTPC, give me a few days, I'll make a list of components, software and features. Maybe take some pics of the setup. As for storing movies, I do have probably 10 movies on the HTPC's hard drive and maybe 10 more on my file server. It is very easy to set up a video jukebox. If you notice, mine was set up to auto play any DVD placed in my drive. When I thought about setting up speach recognition, I quit as it took me long enought to get all the systems running together so I decided to mimic my DVD player functions as much as possible. I also thought, what if the movie someone says "Turn on the Lights!" and my lights go up JM Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DrWho Posted July 14, 2005 Author Share Posted July 14, 2005 ---------------- On 7/12/2005 4:57:21 PM j-malotky wrote: Who - I think I understand the tubby definition. As a matter of fact, on some disks the bass almost seems delayed or extra sustain is a better term. I always thought it was because the Khorn has a double folded bass bin. Maybe the guys who do the time correction, there systems might sound better to you. ---------------- Hmmm, that's an interesting concept. Now I have to find someone with a delay processor that will also be willing to show it off...I've got access to a few digital processors that can do this, but they're all tied up in other sound systems. I think the next time I go to visit someone with khorns and I have a lot of time that I'll pick up one of these units from my local pro audio dealer and then we can play around with it...but that means we're talking bi-amping everything too which totally raises the cost (which detracts from the coolness of the khorn). ---------------- As for the HTPC, give me a few days, I'll make a list of components, software and features. Maybe take some pics of the setup. As for storing movies, I do have probably 10 movies on the HTPC's hard drive and maybe 10 more on my file server. It is very easy to set up a video jukebox. If you notice, mine was set up to auto play any DVD placed in my drive. When I thought about setting up speach recognition, I quit as it took me long enought to get all the systems running together so I decided to mimic my DVD player functions as much as possible. I also thought, what if the movie someone says "Turn on the Lights!" and my lights go up ---------------- When my dad was working as a software designer he brought home one of the early voice recognition programs and installed it on our old computer. It took forever to train it though because you had to keep recording yourself saying the same command over and over and over (and it had some fancy algorithm to try and recognize every variation based on your voice patterns). It was kinda cool when you got it working, but it was annoying because you had to be very careful about what you say and how well you said it. I'm sure they've gotten better as the software had advanced, but I can see myself accidently stopping the movie while yelling at my dog (who likes to lick everything in sight). ...looking forward to reading about your setup. The better you describe it, the more I realize it's like my future dream system Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
damonrpayne Posted July 14, 2005 Share Posted July 14, 2005 You're probably talkinga about Dragon Naturally Speaking, it was an amazing pain to train. Nowadays the test patterns are provided for you before you get the software, and the neural nets (I'm guessing its a neural net pattern recognition based approach) can converge on the word pattern without needing to know anything about your voice. I've seen some live speech-server demos and it is impressive. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DrWho Posted July 14, 2005 Author Share Posted July 14, 2005 The software my dad brought home didn't have a name at the time because it was still under development. A later version of the same still undevloped software had a feature that would upload your training patterns to a server...not sure if research was being done at the time, or if it was some fancy mechanism to try and improve performance by pooling data from many sources. We didn't even have the internet back then (early 90's) so I never got to see this feature in action. I would love to see what they're doing currently with the voice recognition though...I've read a few articles and it sounds lightyears beyond what I got to play with. I've also read and heard some demos of computer generated speech where the computer says whatever you type. They pretty much have it perfect now (or good enough that it sounds like a person) except for the fact that the english language is retarded...but I also got to hear a german generated voice and I must say that it was amazing. It'd be a great way to learn a foreign language without having to spend big bucks (having a computer talk is a lot cheaper than paying some guy to talk in the studio). Now only if we can program computers to express emotion too... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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