reduce midrange horn on the LaScal***

[Groomlakearea51]

My limited experience measuring the stock lascala indicates that they generally benefit from rolling off the top-end response of the squawker - not reducing the output of the entire horn.

I think adding a low-pass filter section at the top of the horn's response will be more beneficial than reducing the total output of the horn and relying upon the natural roll-off of the squawker.

On Dr. Who's notes; I've tried several experiments with the LaScala's. One idea (current configuration) is to use a modified type "A" crossover from Bob Crites with the squawker/tweeter crossover at 4500 Hz. I then use the CT-125's with their extended range. While not necessary, I've also played around and substituted the K-55 with the Selenium D-250-X which is a "screw on" substitute. Requires a 10W 8 Ohm attenuator in line with the positive lead. In that configuration, the D-250 drops off rapidly above 4500 and the CT-125 pick's up well; it "mimics" an ES crossover to some degree. Imaging is very good. I've also experimented with 4 vertical "vanes" in the horn (poor man's Altec) but my ears are not telling me what I'm hearing with that experiment; it's different, but I cannot pin it down.

[ZAKO]

Yes the factory puts one layer of grill cloth on there speakers..Only one, Not two, Not three. And ive not found one sock stuffed inside a factory built speaker from Klipsch.....And the new Jubilee or RF units do not have grills over the HF horns. Last night i tried your dumb expierment. The result was a loss in definition and clarity. It was a filter of gross proportions. It appears you love the sound of a cheap approach than a better approach to good fidelity....Mechanical,,,Schmichanical,,,,You have been awarded the golden BS button of the year. Hang your head in shame!!!!!!

[DrWho]

Did you measure that 9K glitch or take a random auditory guess?

I believe Bob provided a bunch of measurements on it. There were some variations of the K55 that had the problem and Klipsch verified that it had something to do with the pole piece. I agree though - measurements are a must if you want to surgically fix any problem. Moving to better drivers / better horns is definitely the best direction to take if it's an affordable option.

[ZAKO]

Yes and a simple notch filter could be incorperated into xover.....without wipeing out clarity & definition in that mid bandwidth.....as far as affordable option???? I know some people cant spend or won,t spend the money. But to say it sounds great (on the cheap) when its not...Im sure his friend were being kind....But I,m not his friend,,,but a shock of audio reality....I tried his so called tweek and it was a disaster....But like I always say " no telling what people like to hear".

[Islander]

Well, Maron, thanks for at least trying it for yourself. It appears that extra layers of grille cloth did not improve the sound of your speakers. It's as simple as that. Perhaps it was not stretched tightly enough, perhaps your La Scalas have a pleasant-sounding midrange that could only be worsened by a little sonic filtering, making it inapplicable in your case, who knows?

Perhaps you're very pleased with the unmodified sound of your La Scalas. If so, I'm happy for you. Many others have found their midrange annoyingly harsh, including the person who started this thread. You yourself referred to "the Klipsch problem" and "the mid anomality" that you changed drivers to solve. Did your modifications produce a pleasant result? Maybe I will eventually do something similar.

Aha, I just thought of something! Maybe you need to have some unmodified La Scalas to try the extra grille cloth on, since your modified Khorns probably sound just fine as they are.

For that matter, do you even have a pair of La Scalas?

[cjgeraci]

Now switching over from popcorn to chips.................................

Carl.

[DrWho]

lol

It'd be nice if people would quantify the magnitude of difference...I highly doubt the maximum impact of grill cloth is going to be on the same order of magnitude as a problem that a person acknowledges and then seeks help fixing. Heck, even if you could claim a 1dB difference, it will fail in comparison to the signal offsets and the impact of early reflections within the Haas windows - you know, where we're talking variations typically on the order of +-10dB...that's typically, not the maximum hypothetical amount.

Heck, in light of +-10dB how do you know that the minute nonlinear influence of the grill cloth is going to be a change for the better?

[Duke Spinner]

Aaaaahhh ... Who ....

you ... 'n .. MAS ..

the Voice of Reason .... in the Great Wasteland of Opinion

[Islander]

Well, Mike, in non-technical terms, the sound went from "Man, that's aggravating! Maybe I should return these speakers!" to "Hey, that sounds pretty good! Hmm, amazing amounts of detail. What was that sound just there? I never heard that in the song before. Cool!"

Technically, there was a 1-2dB drop in volume from the squawker. As well, I was able to go from -4dB on the treble (which didn't fully fix the harshness) to bypassing the tone controls. Although the Khorn and Scala share the same drivers, there don't seem to be as many complaints about midrange harshness from Khorn owners, so perhaps the synergy between the Khorn bass horn and the mid and high horns is different from that of the Scala.

If you lived a lot closer, I'd invite you to come over and bring your instrumentation, along with some of your favourite tunes, so you could see for yourself. My speakers sound nice and I'm really happy with them. That's all. I didn't intend to start a bun fight over a simple little tweak.

[ZAKO]

Islander.....Has it ever accoured to you that the Khorn & the La Scalas have the same K55 and K77 on top? The K55 has gone through different manufactures,, It would be wise to see if you have a problem with yours The glitch did not show up with all manufactures that made them....You might want to try the newest version.... Yes I have several top hat Khorn system i can switch to the origional Khorn top unit with all drivers & xovers or switch to modified units with electronic xovers....As some on here have witnessed....The modified units Paul Klipsch had heard and saw many many years ago....These same mid units are now in my listening room. They were owned by George Ashworth,,,Who helped Paul in the earley years,, Even Paul stated his babys are a tweekers dream.....Grill cloth are no grill cloth...I really dont care with the sound of your so called tweek....remember the fundamentals of musical instruments accoure between 30hz & 5000hz,, above that,, are the harmonics of all musical instruments....If you want to filter that mid portion be my guest....but to say this is some great improvement is not true...Last night I gave it an audition and it was a ludicress audible disaster. But I gave it a try.

[Islander]

Islander.....Has it ever accoured to you that the Khorn & the La Scalas have the same K55 and K77 on top? The K55 has gone through different manufactures,, It would be wise to see if you have a problem with yours The glitch did not show up with all manufactures that made them....You might want to try the newest version.... Yes I have several top hat Khorn system i can switch to the origional Khorn top unit with all drivers & xovers or switch to modified units with electronic xovers....As some on here have witnessed....The modified units Paul Klipsch had heard and saw many many years ago....These same mid units are now in my listening room. They were owned by George Ashworth,,,Who helped Paul in the earley years,, Even Paul stated his babys are a tweekers dream.....Grill cloth are no grill cloth...I really dont care with the sound of your so called tweek....remember the fundamentals of musical instruments accoure between 30hz & 5000hz,, above that,, are the harmonics of all musical instruments....If you want to filter that mid portion be my guest....but to say this is some great improvement is not true...Last night I gave it an audition and it was a ludicress audible disaster. But I gave it a try.

Maron, look at my posting immediately prior to this one of yours. Although the Khorn and the La Scala have the same drivers, they do sound different, as many people will agree. What works for me apparently does not work for you. Neither one of us is deaf or a fool and we do not need to fight a duel over it.

[ZAKO]

Islander....As i said I went the extra mile to try your tweek ....You could now take the effort to try ours....I never liked the K77 tweeter....It varied from batch to batch,,,Even Paul had to go through every one to find the good ones & he sent the rest back to EV....The La Scala & Khorn went through a hundred modifications & some were better than others (like some women i new) The new modifications from Klipsch today, mids, tweets & xovers would cost about $1700. I dont Know how many have taken that offer. So you have many options, or not.....We tried to help but it seems to fall by the wayside ...No one here is trying to be combative...Just suggestive.

[Guest " "]

ok, so far, we have

a. use some cloth

b. replace the t4a with a t2a

c. use an l-pad

d. use tweeter transformers

e. use some resistors

f. maybe try a p-trap

g. update the drivers (edit)

did I miss any

[DrWho]

Update the drivers

[Islander]

Yes the factory puts one layer of grill cloth on there speakers..Only one, Not two, Not three. And ive not found one sock stuffed inside a factory built speaker from Klipsch.....And the new Jubilee or RF units do not have grills over the HF horns. Last night i tried your dumb expierment. The result was a loss in definition and clarity. It was a filter of gross proportions. It appears you love the sound of a cheap approach than a better approach to good fidelity....Mechanical,,,Schmichanical,,,,You have been awarded the golden BS button of the year. Hang your head in shame!!!!!!

Maron, perhaps you feel your language was not combative, but many people would. I certainly do. I feel no need to hang my head in shame. As well, when someone from the "MO galaxy", as the listing below your avatar window states, refers to spanking, as you did in one of your other posts, I have to wonder what direction the discussion will take next.

I believe I mentioned that I had replaced the K-77s with CT125 tweeters. The volume of the new tweeters was within 1dB of each other, while the two K-77s differed by around 3dB. The improvement in the sound was immediately noticeable.

Maron, I appreciate that you tried my suggestion even though you were not pleased with the results. If I were to now replace my midrange drivers and horns as per your suggestion, I think it quite likely that my speakers would sound better. However, that's not in my budget at the moment, and as I mentioned previously, I'm very happy with the sound I'm getting at present.

As for my apparently not showing enough appreciation for your attempts to help me out of my "problem" (poor sound, bad attitude, shocking ignorance of basic acoustics, whatever), as perceived by you, you may recall that I was not the original poster looking for helpful suggestions. Biglaz asked a simple question, but rather than answering him, you felt compelled to issue me a "golden BS button of the year". On the bright side, if that was your button for the year, I guess everyone else is safe for another eight months or so.

You have your opinion, I have mine. There's not much left to say, other than thanks for the opportunity to exercise my restraint and diplomacy.

[ZAKO]

Thank you for your nice opinion and have a nice day....You may keep the button as a sign of my generosity.

[BS Button]

Yes the factory puts one layer of grill cloth on there speakers..Only one, Not two, Not three. And ive not found one sock stuffed inside a factory built speaker from Klipsch.....And the new Jubilee or RF units do not have grills over the HF horns. Last night i tried your dumb expierment. The result was a loss in definition and clarity. It was a filter of gross proportions. It appears you love the sound of a cheap approach than a better approach to good fidelity....Mechanical,,,Schmichanical,,,,You have been awarded the golden BS button of the year. Hang your head in shame!!!!!!

Maron, perhaps you feel your language was not combative, but many people would. I certainly do. I feel no need to hang my head in shame. As well, when someone from the "MO galaxy", as the listing below your avatar window states, refers to spanking, as you did in one of your other posts, I have to wonder what direction the discussion will take next.

I believe I mentioned that I had replaced the K-77s with CT125 tweeters. The volume of the new tweeters was within 1dB of each other, while the two K-77s differed by around 3dB. The improvement in the sound was immediately noticeable.

Maron, I appreciate that you tried my suggestion even though you were not pleased with the results. If I were to now replace my midrange drivers and horns as per your suggestion, I think it quite likely that my speakers would sound better. However, that's not in my budget at the moment, and as I mentioned previously, I'm very happy with the sound I'm getting at present.

As for my apparently not showing enough appreciation for your attempts to help me out of my "problem" (poor sound, bad attitude, shocking ignorance of basic acoustics, whatever), as perceived by you, you may recall that I was not the original poster looking for helpful suggestions. Biglaz asked a simple question, but rather than answering him, you felt compelled to issue me a "golden BS button of the year". On the bright side, if that was your button for the year, I guess everyone else is safe for another eight months or so.

You have your opinion, I have mine. There's not much left to say, other than thanks for the opportunity to exercise my restraint and diplomacy.

Ahem, I am the BS Button of the year. I have not one opinion on this subject, however.

BS Button [bs]

[ZAKO]

BS Button.....Thats a heavy responsibility you carry on your shoulders.....Your like the grimm reaper ready to call on us poor souls.

[DrWho]

did I miss any

Well....just for audiophile completeness, let's not forget fancy speaker wire, fancy interconnects, cable risers, replace the caps (same value, expensive brand), buy the wife some jewelry, green marker on the CD's, cabinet vibration dampening, upgrading all source equipment, hanging beach towels and egg cartons throughout the room, throw a blanket over the TV, put a hat on top of each of the speakers, Remove all binding bosts and solder directly to crossover and output terminals, decrease the wire gauge, listen at night, power filtering, put a clock in the garage, and my personal favorite: wooden volume knobs.

Ironically - none of these will contribute to any of the diffraction effects that occur from having extra sets of acoustical impedance boundaries introduced by the extra grill cloth. [H]

Sorry, mas put me up to it []

So....anyone had any peanut better lately? I hear there's legumes in Florida.

[Islander]

You forgot Shakti Stones, the Irrational But Efficacious CD, Totem Beaks, alcohol, other drugs (whoops, those last two are too cheap to be audiophile grade), but the list is probably endless.

So what do diffraction effects sound like? I know some speaker cabinets are designed to minimize them. I have heard comb filtering, so I'm familiar with that.

In other news, my new furniture arrived last week, and now I'm sitting three inches higher than before. I'm hearing a little more midrange and high detail, along with slightly weaker bass. Time to re-adjust the sub! The new furniture reclines, and when the left footrest comes up, allowing the bass to travel directly through the 1' x 2.5' gap under the seat, the sound changes, and it changes again when the right footrest comes up as well. I'll check the bass response with my meter (sorry, it's all the gear I have) and try to chart the changes.