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What have you done to improve the sound of your Klipsch speakers?


jbsl

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What have you done to improve the sound of your Klipsch speakers?

No you can not get bass as low as KHorns with La Scalas but you can do things that will help if you want the bass a little lower and a better blending of the highs, mids, and bass. So these are the things I have done to improve the bass and overall sound of my La Scalas.

Anyone who has done other things to their speakers and systems please tell us what they did.

When I got my 2004 La Scalas I thought they were too bright and harsh and no buzzsaw is not the word I'm looking for. So I've done some tweaks and system upgrades that have taken my LS to a much better level.

1) My living room is small, 15 x 15 x 8 and I sit 9-10 feet back from the LS. So the tweeter was below my chin, the midrange horn aiming at my chest and the bass bin aiming at my legs/ lower abs. I built a 6 1/2 inch riser from 2 x 4 and plywood and now the tweeter is just above my ears, the midrange horn aiming at my face, and the bass bin aiming at my chest.

This did 2 things: one the blending of the highs, mids, and bass was much better! This got rid of the majority of brightness. Two with the bass bin aiming right at my chest instead of my legs the bass seemed more pronounced and had better slam.

In a larger room this riser may not be helpful but it may help so try it.

2)

This one is really up to the individual's likes and dislike in audio gear.

For me once I bought the La Scalas the upgrade bug bit me and I have been infected every since.

The current system for me right now is:

2004 Luxman int amp used as a preamp with a Cayin TA 30 tube int amp and a NAD C542 cd player running thru a Music Fidelity X10v3 tube buffer stage and my 2004 La Scalas. This combo of solid state and tube gear has really given me a great sound and helped improve the bass and the blending of the highs, mids, and bass. Sometime in the 2006 planning on getting some VRDs and maybe a AH!Tjoeb tubed cd player.

3)

For those with tube gear they know tube rolling can make a big difference. I switched from Svevtlana EL 34 to EH 6CA7 and big improvement in bass and less bright or harsh much smoother sound at louder volume levels. This is one plus with tube gear!
Also want to thank Craig for showing me how to switch out some caps in the cayin TA 30 and thanks Robster for mailing me some free caps. This took another edge off the overall sound and smoothed things a bit more.

4)

The KHorns is not the only speaker to get better bass when placed in a corner.

5)

My Luxman L505f int amp has bass, treble, and Loudness controls that I use daily and it improves the quality of sound TO ME!!!!!!! This comes down to a personal belief. I BELIVE that tone controls on quality audio equipment such as Luxman does not degrade the sound but improves it. I work nights and listen to music between 3:30-7:00 AM so the Loudness control and tone controls is great.

6)

I did not have the money for a Jolida or a AH!Tjoeb tubed CD player so I bought a Musical Fidelity X10v3 tube buffer stage and have been using it with my NAD C542 cd player with very nice results. I tried the Jolida cd player and thought it had a better overal sound than the C542 but not for $400 more.

Each of these 6 things helped improve bass and gave me a better blending of the highs, mids, and bass.

Please fell free to post what you have done to improve the sound of your system or speakers.

Disclamer:

IN MY OPINION these are the things I have done that have improved the overall sound coming from my La Scalas. The improvements these mods and tweaks and system upgrades have made to the sound of my LS is my opinion ONLY and can not guarantee they will improve the sound in anyone elses system.

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1.....Place on the long side of the wall

2.....Add center channel

3.....Add subwoofer

4.....Add equalizer, boost 5 db- 30, 2db- 60, cut 3db-240, 3db-480, boost 1db-8k, 2db-16k. (on K-horns only)

5.....Add Hughes Expander (on K-horns only)

6.....Add slave amp feeding K-horns only

7.....Replace old crossovers with Dean Crossovers

8.....#10 stranded wire to K-horns only

9.....#12 stranded wire to Cornwall & side and rear speakers

10...Pipe foam insulators between K-horns and walls for better sealing.

11...Remove pictures from walls

12...Remove objects from shelves

13...Re-design grilles to modern Klipsch standards.

14...Glue loose window pane.

15...Use coax and toslink connections

16...Use low maintenance SS components

17...Move records and turntable to attic.

18...Tell funny tube stories on Klipsch Forum

JJK

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Funny you should mention this. I just finished starting a thread on the Woodog listening school. I think speaker positioning are pretty critical with most setups. Just spent some time doing this and the results are on that thread.

Otherwise

Obtained CW's for all four corners of room, nothing like timbre match in HT.

Purchased a more evenly matched KLF-C7 to replace the poorly matched RC7

Upgraded from ProLogic to 5.1 Yamaha Receiver

Moved everything around so the proper systems are in the proper rooms. That has taken a year since the move.

Michael

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I'd have to go through 4 years of history to post all I have done and I'm still not done LOL!! I think the speakers themselves sound very good original and I didn't touch a thing in them for the first 2 years of ownership. I spent that time fine tuning gear. Since then I have started messing with the crossovers, Klapperhorns and so on.

The biggest free tweak speaker wise is placement!! This is some thing not easily done with Khorns.

Craig

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I'm surprised you have spent all that money on your system without spending anything on room acoustics. A square room is going to have substandard bass. You should have bass traps in the corners.

Here is the master thread at avsforum.com but there are other threads related to room acoustics.

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=255432

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Gave the Fortes an all-Audio Research tube rig. No mods to the speakers themselves.

Gave the Synergy HT system a Panasonic XR-55. Spiked the center, L and R speakers.

Spiking the SF2s got me a level of improvement very disproportionate to

cost. It wasn't a little improvement, it was a lot --

particularly in low-level detail retrieval and removing hi-frequency

'hash'.

The XR-55 is a scary, wonderful piece. I'll just leave it at that ;)

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I went from 5 Heresy II's to 5 Belles . ( Seemed to do the trick ) Oh yeah , I went from using the short wall to the long wall , incredible differance . Unfortunately I did have to give up the dining table as a result , but my sister has promised to get a set of TV trays for me for Christmas ! [Y][Y]

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Sold them...

Now those khorns sounds much better in someone else room!

I'll get another pair when I feel I have a decent room for these.

At least you had the energy to give them a try, while others, stuck in

a rut, guzzling down sixpacks while their eyes, glazed over, dart

about in the general direction of *their* Cornwalls, struggle in vain

to find the courage to make a change.

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I notice that a few of you guys have put your speakers on the long wall with great improvements. I did the same a while back. My listening room is 24 x 14-- Big difference on the long wall. My question is; would this improvment be the same for all speakers, or just the Khorns???
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Replaced all those rolled off, no top end, Electro-Voice T35

Super-Sonax with the Avedon Sonophase Throat pieces of feces, with JBL

2404Hs. It amazes me that Klipsch has used that piece of crap for

so long. Maybe if they hadn't, the damn thing would have

disappeared long ago, relegated to the great expectations pile in the

sky. All the factory network tweaking and after market voodoo in

the world can't fix what's wrong with this thing.

Listened to them for a while with at least a decent top end.....

......then sold them all to a fellow with bad hearing

I did hang on to one pair of Heresys though, to remind me of Paul Klipsch's GENIUS!

It's just the mediocre execution that has evolved over the years using cheap, wide tolerance parts that nixed the deal for me

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I haven't experimented much with my RF7's but with my KG4.2's one time I hung them on the wall. Yup, on the wall about 3' off the floor and it created the most horrible bass-less sound I ever heard out of those things, sort of bose like. Put em' back on the floor real quick.

Also put them in the back room which is heavily carpeted with heavy curtains all around, almost an acoustically "dead" room. First set them on the floor without anything underneath. It was verrrrry bass heavy, an almost polk like closed in muffled sound. Installed the spikes and set them up on concrete pads and boom!, everything cleared up again and they haven't been moved since.

Changing speaker cables made a difference going from zipcord to heavy 12ga. copper, then when I added a 120 watt amp after always using a receiver that was a nice change.

Speakers are like Real Estate, location, location, location......[:D]

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