"I can't get no.....Satisfaction"------Mick Jagger and DeanG-------long post warning

[ClaudeJ1]

My only comment is the room is probably more important than the crossover.....Claude

If you're using a crappy set of networks, it'll sound crappy and I
don't care how acoustically perfect your room is. Bob might say it's
like driving your car on pavement as smooth as glass -- with fouled
plugs.

---

Dean

Ya know, when I was 14, I "discovered" Klipshorns in my local Hi-Fi store in Detroit. I went in to pick up my twin 6x9 speakers on an Ampex, Dolbyless, stereo cassete recorder with FM tuner. I picked it up in my younger brother's little red wagon. My first "system" (mono), at 13, was a pair of Koss headphones adapted to a Zenith AM radio that I took on my paper route. My dad thought I looked ridiculous, BUT, I still think Sony stole the idea of portable sound from me without compensation (1967), but I digress. On my way out of the store, I asked "could I please listen to those big ones over there." Since I had just spent my hard-earned paper route money, the salesman, only looking mildly annoyed, let me have a listen to some symphonic music. I knew right there that someday I would own these things.

In the mean time, I started designing and building my own speaker cabinets, culminating in some 511B horns, T-35's, Cornwall copies and even big cabinets made from the Badmeiff/Davis book nomograms on bass reflex. I still ALWAYS had better sound than all my non-audio-freak friends. I even joined tha AES after reading PWK's papers for a while and hung around with the local audio geeks. I spent my teenage years helping garage bands get better sound and building speakers, which got bigger and more expensive, as I could afford them. This culminated in my spending $1,000 (a fortune for a kid in the 70's making $3/hr.) on RAW Altec and EV components. I bought L-pads from Speakerlab, wound my air core chokes, and put film capacitors in my textbook networks these went in 20 cubic foot boxes I built. These sounded damn good, but not as good as Klipshorns. I also hand wired some Southewest Tech Products monster amplifiers (which never sounded as good as an old HK tube integrated amp, but they were 1 Kilowatt each into 4 ohms). I transferred dance music from LP's to 10 1/2" reels on my Crown at 7 1/2 IPS and got paid $150/gig to play my killer system, drink beer, and dance with the girls. I earned enough money to finally do what I wanted to do.

At 23 years old, the day before I got married, I ordered a pair of KC-BR's and one La Scala. I already had a 3-channel strereo with the PWK bridged mono box for my home system. I fine sanded and steel wooled that veneer almost shiny and hand rubbed several coats of Forby's Satin Tung Oil into thos babies. The biggest upgrade I ever made to them was to buy the very first Sony CD player in 1983. I recently upgraded to 1977 Walnut Khorns (from my brother) and sold my originals to a friend. Klipsch was always "digital ready."

I have had recapped Marantz tubes, all kinds of SS bipolar or MOSFET amplifiers, moved my Klispsh Array into many different rooms and many different homes over the years. I have added and subtracted several pairs of Heritage Klipshes over the years for other rooms and at my photo studio. My main quest has been for better and better recordings from talented musicians and producers. I remember that the Sheffield Labs records always made my system sound better.

The biggest upgrade I have made to my original system of late is to go 5.1 with Choruses in the rear. I tried 6.1 with twin Chorus II's in the middle rear, but it was more trouble and space than it was worth (the law of diminishing returns). I got some used VMPS sub woofers to try and mate up to the fronts. I crossing over at 60 hz to the subs and set up the system with the AVIA DVD.

I was happy with my stereo at 23, as commercial recordings got better my system got better. On my 50th birthday, (after 27 years of happy listening), I upgraded to 5.1 with a refurb Onkyo (great DSP's and good amplifiers) for $185, and added the most cone area I could find to match the K's. I'm not the same decibel freak I was at 20 as I'd like to preserve my hearing but I do listent to live levels whenever I can.

In short, I fully understand the laws of diminishing returns along with economics of time, money, and the possiblity of an early death and gradual hearing loss.

So DeanG, I don't know you personally, but I'm sorry to hear that you spent all that money on new Khorns, tore out the tops, replaced the horns, Xovers etc. and are still not happy with the sound, and thus are selling them to start over with a new platform for perpetual R&D. Been there, done that.

My very first question/post here had EXACTLY to do with replacing the "plugs in my engine" (the capacitors) after suspecting they could have gradually gone foul after all these years.

I have been perfectly happy enjoying the dynamics and detail of good recordings. I lived though the bad early SS amps, which were ALL cleaned up via the work of Dr. Matti Otala by the 80's and could easly be heard even through my home-made, before Khorns, systems. You can't really get bad amplifiers anymore relative to the high TIM distortions of the old days. I am not interested in how many "veils" I can lift from female vocals in my system since that is a quest for only fractional decibels at best. I remember distinctly what PWK said, in front of Jim Hunter, his chief engineer, about why they needed the AK network to make up for a mud magnet driver anomaly in 1985, he didn't flash his BS button, as you suggested.

I still laugh at all the "new better" speaker designs from all these companies I never heard of that won't be around in 2 years and all the time wasted. PWK said it all years ago and people are still trying to move air rather ineffeciently. Klipsch speakers get us to 90% of perfect sound from a transducer that adheres to the least compromised PRINCIPLES good sound. People can spend their entire lives and forturnes trying to get the last 10% and it will never happen.

90% of the sound you actually hear is the ROOM and I'm perfectly happy with my terrible no-good factory buit crossover networks, even though they may be slightly refreshed by "new plugs."

I'd rather work on the 90% part (a room's 12 db fluctuations receiving low IMD sound from Klipsches) instead of 1 or 2 db's worth in Xovers that only serves to, at best "lift the proverbial veils" ONLY in an ABX comparison. Any SIGNIFICANT further improvements will be in THE most enjoyable Return On Investment of all, more and better recordings and time to just listen.

All of the above is a semi-educated, semi-experienced OPINION from a reasonable intelligent human being.

[PrestonTom]

Claude,

That is a nice story, a nice journey.

There is a spectrum of folks. On one end those like yourself will do little tweaking to the cabinets themselves, while others are more adventurous. Personally, I will probably venture in that direction. But is is remarkable that someone can pick up some cabinets and 20 years later (maybe with a bit of tweaking) still remain satisfied.

How many consumer items in our life do we have that we will still enjoy 20 years later? Well-designed, loaded horn designs really are something special

Good Luck,

-Tom

[Al Klappenberger]

Claude,

You simply haven't heard a Khorn with a set of Altec VOT horns or my Trachorns installed.

AL K.

[JJkizak]

ALK:

In my case I don't want to get hooked on upgrading the K-horns like I am hooked on computers. Once a year I have to get new motherboards, new memory, new processors, new cases, new power supplies, new harddrives, new OS software, and upgrade umteen million software applications. Then troubleshoot the system to see why it doesn't work well. Before I would consider doing upgrades to the K-horns I would have to purchase a miraid cluster of top shelf (American) test equipment, build an optimum 25 ft x 25 ft listening room to the house, and a whole slew of top shelf equipment to test. I figure maybe about a million bucks would suffice at today's prices. I guess I'll stick to the Chinese computers.

JJK

[Deang]

"... I'm sorry to hear that you spent all that money on new Khorns, tore out the tops, replaced the horns, Xovers etc. and are still not happy with the sound ..."

Where did you get the idea that I'm not happy with the sound I'm getting now? In the thread to which you are referring, I said "they are the best loudspeakers I've ever heard". Circumstance may dictate that I end up doing nothing and force me to stay put -- which is perfectly fine with me. If I make the move it will be towards a superior bass horn and large format driver -- which will translate into higher efficiency and lower distortion. No, I don't know if I will like the sound better --but this is my hobby, and as such it simply brings me pleasure to play and pursue lofty and elusive goals. When I get to the top of a mountain I start thinking about the next peak -- pretty much how I am with most things in my life. This doesn't mean I'm not content with where I'm at.

With your level of experience you probably know that capacitors have an aging property. Over time, length of which is determined by several factors including the evironment they are worked in, the dielectric starts to break down. I'm just saying if the caps are old and acting as much as resistors as capacitors -- treating the room isn't going to remedy the effects of a poor performing network. As for the horn and tweeter you are presently using -- if you are happy with them, then by all means enjoy them.

[seti]

"... I'm sorry to hear that you spent all that money on new Khorns, tore out the tops, replaced the horns, Xovers etc. and are still not happy with the sound ..."

Where did you get the idea that I'm not happy with the sound I'm getting now? In the thread to which you are referring, I said "they are the best loudspeakers I've ever heard". Circumstance may dictate that I end up doing nothing and force me to stay put -- which is perfectly fine with me. If I make the move it will be towards a superior bass horn and large format driver -- which will translate into higher efficiency and lower distortion. No, I don't know if I will like the sound better --but this is my hobby, and as such it simply brings me pleasure to play and pursue lofty and elusive goals. When I get to the top of a mountain I start thinking about the next peak -- pretty much how I am with most things in my life. This doesn't mean I'm not content with where I'm at.

With your level of experience you probably know that capacitors have an aging property. Over time, length of which is determined by several factors including the evironment they are worked in, the dielectric starts to break down. I'm just saying if the caps are old and acting as much as resistors as capacitors -- treating the room isn't going to remedy the effects of a poor performing network. As for the horn and tweeter you are presently using -- if you are happy with them, then by all means enjoy them.

I didn't get the impression that you were unhappy with them at all but considering trying something else....

Bravo for buying Khorns new.... If I had the cash I would but I am waiting for a local pair under $2K and being in Little Rock that means just waiting and watching the paper.

[Al Klappenberger]

JJK,

Yes, a lot of good test equipment is a must if you are going to design and evaluate mods to existing equioment, That's why I DO own the equipment! I have done all that testing already. All you need to do is install it and enjoy! An BTW: upgrading a speaker is duck soup compared to "upgrading" a computer. Believe me, I do both! Every time I do a mod to a computer, even if it just new software, it becomes all sorts of unexpected hell! I just put in Norton 2005 antivirus to replace my expired 2004 version. I couldn't use the 2006 version becasue I sitll use windoze 98. Norton 2006 REQUIRES XP. Now everything takes several minutes at boot-up before things start running. I hate windoze XP becasue it's DOS emulation SUCKS! My favorite programming editor won't work right under XP and I'll be d__ed if I'll "upgrade" that!

Claud,

Not too many people CAN upgrade their listening room, but if you can, DO IT! Then move on to the speaker. The weakest link is whichever is weaker!

Oh yeah; don't pay any attention to Dean's perpetual mods. He just changes stuff to keep from getting bored! []

Al K.

[Deang]

Oh yeah; don't pay any attention to Dean's perpetual mods. He just changes stuff to keep from getting bored!

That's the same thing Craig said. There's a lot of truth to that. A lot of it revolves around curiosity too.

[SilverSport]

to a far lesser degree I think this is what a lot of us do...

[JJkizak]

AL K:

Sorry if I came across too huffy. But watch out for Norton as they slow down your machine about 20% and to get it out you have to re-install the OS, and thats after you uninstall it. My guru buddy says try something else but he does say that "Ghost really works well now that the bugs are out. Norton leaves about 30 files in the OS that do not get removed, and maybe more. I switched to Trend Micro and it is much quicker on the boot. I also found out after I switched from dial-up to DSL that spam and viruses were reduced about 98%. I rarely get any spam and maybe one virus hit from a website in the last 3 months.

But maybe I can still entice you to experiment with the multiple driver bit (I know you said there is too much distortion) But if lets say a 5 driver midrange and 5 driver tweeter were made to work in a cluster to one modified horn that would be the koolest thing for pile driving high end and also mount in the same wooden enclosure. Each driver operating at 1/5th the power input.

JJK

[Al Klappenberger]

JJK,

I didn't know about the mess Norton leaves behind, but I am not surprised a bit! Everything windoze does is a mess! I remember the DOS days. In fact, by first computer was a Heathkit H8. Then a Zenith Z100. I rmember HDOS then CP/M and then MSDOS. I still use the DOS command line for a lot of stuff. I always say, remember WIndows 3.xx, well, that was a DOS program! In those days you would just delete a directory (before the egg heads renamed it to a "folder") and everyhting was gone!

I noticed a big drop in viruses when I switchedfrom dial-up to DSL too. I got rid of spam when I changed my email address from alk@... to al_k(at)... on my web site. I make people rename the (at) to @ manually. This way the spamers machine scans won't find it. That address is a dummy forwared to another "real" one so that I can change it at any time. Only trusted people or companies have the "real" one.

"But maybe I can still entice you to experiment with the multiple driver bit (I know you said there is too much distortion) But if lets say a 5 driver midrange and 5 driver tweeter were made to work in a cluster to one modified horn that would be the koolest thing for pile driving high end and also mount in the same wooden enclosure. Each driver operating at 1/5th the power input."

That has alreay been tried. I think it was called a BOSE 901! [6]

Al K.

[seti]

AL K:

   Sorry if I came across too huffy. But watch out for Norton as they slow down your machine about 20% and to get it out you have to re-install the OS, and thats after you uninstall it. My guru buddy says try something else but he does say that "Ghost really works well now that the bugs are out. Norton leaves about 30 files in the OS that do not get removed, and maybe more. I switched to Trend Micro and it is much quicker on the boot. I also found out after I switched from dial-up to DSL that spam and viruses were reduced about 98%. I rarely get any spam and maybe one virus hit from a website in the last 3 months.

   But maybe I can still entice you to experiment with the multiple driver bit (I know you said there is too much distortion) But if lets say a 5 driver midrange and 5 driver tweeter were made to work in a cluster to one modified horn that would be the koolest thing for pile driving high end and also mount in the same wooden enclosure. Each driver operating at 1/5th the power input.

JJK

If you like command line try linux : ) it is a hoot and runs better on older hardware also I think they have an old DOS package. I support 15 windows servers and 140 windows workstations but my personal computer is a Apple Powerbook. OS X is the best OS ever!

If you are looking for some decent antivirus software that doesn't require 5 running services and nags you to death with alerts and popups try Kaspersky.com .

[DrWho]

treating the room isn't going to remedy the effects of a poor performing network.

Nor will treating a network remedy the effects of a poor performing room []

[ClaudeJ1]

Dean G and Al K.

Thanks for taking my post in the friendly spirit, with which, it was written. It's difficult to even imply proper inflection of voice when using a keyboard.

On the issue of my concluding that you were not satisfied (erroneously or not), I simply got the idea that even POTENTIAL actions speak louder than

words and that offering for sale, at a lo$$, "the best.......ever

heard" means you want more than it can offer, hence the post's title.

There's absolutely

nothing wrong with that choice, BTW. I'm sure we would all be interested in reading your journal as your continued your journey to sonic Nirvana. I just wanted to point out that I understood

where you were coming from by telling you I did similar things at a

different time in my life. I just made a different choice that once I

got to Khorns, I would keep them for life, and basically stop there.

On the question in my very first post, I think I will order BC's cap kit and start there. I also find Al K's designs intriguing, so I haven't ruled those out either in the future. All I know is that my center La Scalas top end and each of the Khorns sound way different from each other on pink or white noise by way of their respective positions in the room. Even if I got 3 new, hand selected ALK's with 1% tolerance, they would still sound different from each other by way of their different locations in a room whose contents create physical assymetries and affect the sound.

I had two pairs of Altec 511's in my teens, which were basically metal copies of PWK's K-5J's, so that would be a step backwards for me. I'm sure that any good Tractrix would be a slight improvement (like my Chorus II's vs. Chorus). But I don't see the ROI on Khorns, speaking strictly for me. Spending 2-3 Grand on new tops and Xovers when the same money would get me 2 more used Khorns for the Rear 5.1 channels (which would also be a waste since the levels are so low, Chorus is good enough.)

I don't think that PWK would have made the K-400 if the K5's were better. On that note, (small tidbit) I remember PWK telling me that after creating and measuring the new exponential horn for the Belle Klispsch, he concluded that the K-400 was probably longer than it needed to be.

Anyway, I do enjoy reading everyone's thoughts in this group. Thanks for sharing them with me and keep making good noise with your Klipshes, modified or straight from Hope.

[ClaudeJ1]

If I make the move it will be towards a superior bass horn and large format driver -- which will translate into higher efficiency and lower distortion. No, I don't know if I will like the sound better --but this is my hobby, and as such it simply brings me pleasure to play and pursue lofty and elusive goals. When I get to the top of a mountain I start thinking about the next peak -- pretty much how I am with most things in my life. This doesn't mean I'm not content with where I'm at.

I'm just curious as to that "superior bass bin." Will that be a Klipsch bass bin or something on the order of Bruce Edgar's designs?? Since he's a proponent of Tractrix and hyperbolics.....Good luck in your quest.

[jwc]

Al, it is funny hearing you say upgrading a computer is a big deal. I find it to be a joke really compared to stuff you and I have spoken about.. I was big into the computer upgrading and building prior to my arrival here on this forum.

I have used Linux and currently have a linux based server in my house running everything. To run windows w/o much problems....I erase the hard drive every few months and reinstall. I never put all that rediculous software on there. My computers boot up to the desktop in no time.

Until I installed one of your ALK's on my La Scalas 2 years ago, I had some unbelievable stuff in my house.

I had one computer that was supercooled with Peltier plates. Both the CPU and the Video card were running at -20 C. I had a 1.8 P3 clocked to 3.8 w/o a hiccup. The heat was dissapated with two water pumps and two radiators. All in one computer case custom.

Why? I was a huge online gamer...and pretty good. I've got good reflexes. Two problems came out of all this stuff. My right hand and fingers started getting Knumb to where it would take a few days to recover. I tried all kinds of different computer accessories w/o much luck. This problem didn't fit well with my occupation.

The other problem was my power bill. I had accessory power supplies to feed all this crap. My wife loved the way all the water pumps and fluids look....so I made two more computers that were water cooled....not supercooled. My electric bill was out of sight...plus...the house would get hot as hell from all the dissapating heat.

Oh well....now I am a junkie here...not quite as good at this stuff yet.

Dean. Are you getting soft? I expected some Wescott power punches out of this.

[ClaudeJ1]

Claude,

That is a nice story, a nice journey.

There is a spectrum of folks. On one end those like yourself will do little tweaking to the cabinets themselves, while others are more adventurous. Personally, I will probably venture in that direction. But is is remarkable that someone can pick up some cabinets and 20 years later (maybe with a bit of tweaking) still remain satisfied.

How many consumer items in our life do we have that we will still enjoy 20 years later? Well-designed, loaded horn designs really are something special

Good Luck,

-Tom

I'm still amazed at how good these things do sound. Even better today, than 38 years ago when I heard them as a kid, since everything has gone plastic in the consumer world. Relative to wavelength propagation vs. distortion, PWK's original paper described the Klipschorn as "a loudspeaker of small dimensions."

[Al Klappenberger]

Seti,

I would love to dump windoze and go Linux 100%, BUT: I sell and maintian filter design software (PCFILT, S/FILSYN, LCLAYOUT and a few other small ones) that are Windows based. I am stuck with windoze! These is no market at all for engineering software in the Linux world. It's all PC based.

JC,

Computer stuff is changing so fast that I can't keep up with it. There are so may vendors making stuff that doesn't work well with the other stuff. If I could keep my machine simple enough to be able to reload windoze easily that would be grate, but it takes me several days to get all the stuff back on it. That's one good thing about filter designing, it very difficult to learn, but it doesn't change much. About the only thing that changes is the materials and components to choose from is endless and new stuff is always evolving. Like when I worked at K&L Microwave years ago the smalest inductor I could make as a "true" coil was about 10 NanoHenrys (10e-9 Henrys), Now we can make them below 4 nHy. That's about 3 turns of #34 AWG wire on a 20 Thousandths diameter form. Compare that to the air core coils I use at audio!

Al K.

[Deang]

Dean. Are you getting soft? I expected some Wescott power punches out of this.

I'm too tired to deal with it!

[DrWho]

These is no market at all for engineering software in the Linux world. It's all PC based.

Yikes! All the software we're using on campus is Linux based - which is annoying because learning Linux just adds one more level of complexity to my homework [6] What kind of tools are you looking for? I can go to the labs with a list of what you want to do and get you some names of the software we're using...the best thing is that most of it should be free - (which means free test runs). Let me know if you're interested.

Another option would be to do as my CS buddies do and have two computers - one with windows and one with linux. You can then use Samba to communicate seamlessly between the two which allows you to use linux as much as possible and saving the wonderful world of windows for those "have to" situations.

Don't want two computers? Then go the route I did and dualboot, using ffs in windows for communicating with the unix partition and unix already has built in capability of reading windows files. The only downside is you can't write to the other partitions (but you shouldn't want to do that anyway).

Please pardon the intrusion...