Article: Inside a high-end horn speaker

[WMcD]

Submitted for your consideration.

WMcD

Inside a High-end Horn Speaker.pdf

[Islander]

Thanks, that was interesting. I wonder if the writer actually heard them, considering that he made almost no reference to the sound of the speakers.

[boom3]

Gil,

thanks for posting. But I wish the Klipsch folks had straightened him out. The P-39 is not a fully loaded horn speaker and is not being marketed as such. His comments about the Klipschorn verge on the insulting.

[mikebse2a3]

"Update to a classic"

Don't get me wrong I really like the P-39F and I hope it is a big success for Klipsch and brings more people into the Klipsch Family but IMO there is no way it is an update to the Klipschorn.

He also states "While efficiency isn't as important in this era of megawatt amp" [bs]

Efficiency is One of the most important indicaters of a High Quality Reproducer! Seems like I remember PWK made the connection long ago when he stated " Distortion in speakers is INVERSELY proportional to Efficiency."

I fully understand Klipsch needs to market speakers that the public desires but the Klipsch I know has always been about Horns and the qualities they bring to sound reproductions. Klipsch's roots has always been based on a Fully Horn Loaded Systems and any deviation from that was a compromise made to fit some design need.

I can understand the P-39F being considered the Top of a particular Klipsch Line but IMHO any True Flagship from Klipsch must be a "FULLY HORN LOADED SYSTEM" otherwise IMO you have turned your back on what PWK and Klipsch the company has always believed to be true and has always stood for!

Anyway maybe it's just that marketing and magazines use the description "Flagship" to easily these days at least in my understanding/opinion of what "Flagship" should stand for.

mike tn

[Deang]

He also say that high efficiency means it's easy for an amp to drive -- which isn't necessarily true.

It's a beautiful speaker and I'm sure a pair sound really great, but there's only one flagship -- and it's big, black, ugly, and completely bad azz.

[WMcD]

I'm a bit annoyed. Don't blame me, I only post them. Smile.

The illustration must have come from Indy and the fellow seems to be rewriting, poorly, a technical description which he does not understand in its entirety.

Ported and sealed? True. But I suspect he doesn't realize the technology. Of course the back of the horns are sealed so the back chamber has some integrity.

There is a clever description of cave drawings, cupped hands (Bruce Edgar pointed this out) and acoustic Victrolas. But then he yokes "horn honk" and coloration to descriptions of horns in general without any specifics. A smear job. Do KHorns rock the house, or are they honkers?

And of course, it is all but certain he has not heard the Paladium or the K-Horn and has nothing to say in that respect about at least the subject of the article.

Naturally we're happy for info. But what we really want from an author is an accurate and insightful description of the technology based on knowledge and an appraisal of the sound based on experience. Many articles deliver these. Not this one.

Grrr,

Gil

[boom3]

Gil, keep posting! No darts your way, and K&A have taken this matter for resolution.[]

Somewhere, the shade of Julian Hirsch is shaking his head...Stereo Review, for all its other faults, would never have gotten it this wrong... [8-)]

[Guest " "]

what am I missing....woofers look direct radiated with  ports.....is this just the guts that sit inside a horn.....no can't be, else the mid tweeter would face a different direction....so we have a direct radiated ported woofer cabinet in an article about a high end horn speakers.....

 

[IB Slammin]

.............any True Flagship from Klipsch must be a "FULLY HORN LOADED SYSTEM" otherwise IMO you have turned your back on what PWK and Klipsch the company has always believed to be true and has always stood for!............

Now Mike,

With all due respect, Klipsch, the company, has named and quilified this speaker as FLAGSHIP. Klipsch gave it that title, and it is not up to you or me. Granted, this speaker is not fully horn loaded, but neither of us have listened to it. It might better the Khorn, LaS or Jubilee. I will not put it down until I listen to it, as I prefer the impact of PWK's reflex designs as to the "home audio" horn loaded bins. (the current horn loaded Pro and Cinema bin designs are just outstanding)

If there is a back turned to PWK, it is in the non-production of a home version (pretty) Jubilee. With the trendy public desire for little cubes, who would buy them? This guy named Roy that works in Hope has made the Jub available to us. It may not be pretty, but we can get it.

All said,

I do agree with most of your post. Just wanted to give you a hard time.[]

tc

[mikebse2a3]

.............any True Flagship from Klipsch must be a "FULLY HORN LOADED SYSTEM" otherwise IMO you have turned your back on what PWK and Klipsch the company has always believed to be true and has always stood for!............

Now Mike,

With all due respect, Klipsch, the company, has named and quilified this speaker as FLAGSHIP. Klipsch gave it that title, and it is not up to you or me. Granted, this speaker is not fully horn loaded, but neither of us have listened to it. It might better the Khorn, LaS or Jubilee. I will not put it down until I listen to it, as I prefer the impact of PWK's reflex designs as to the "home audio" horn loaded bins. (the current horn loaded Pro and Cinema bin designs are just outstanding)

If there is a back turned to PWK, it is in the non-production of a home version (pretty) Jubilee. With the trendy public desire for little cubes, who would buy them? This guy named Roy that works in Hope has made the Jub available to us. It may not be pretty, but we can get it.

All said,

I do agree with most of your post. Just wanted to give you a hard time.[]

tc

Now Terry[]

If you read my first sentence carefully you should know I'm not slamming the P-39F. I sure hope my friends at Klipsch know that and I would fully expect it to be a great speaker since Klipsch has put so much effort into it. But for the article to word it as if it is an upgrade to the Klipschorn is crazy(It has no Horn Loaded LF Section). At best you could call it an upgrade to the cornwall if you wanted to reference a past design but that would have been more accurate but less exciting than playing off the Klipschorns reputation. You have to know PWK would have flashed the [bs] on that statement. As far as the P-39F's performance all I can say is all speakers have compromises and they are in the P-39F just as they are in the Klipschorn, Jubilee or you name it. There are always boundaries set forth in any design but if we are talking about an all out absolute best we know how to build design then for it not to be a fully horn loaded system from Klipsch (should I say it?) would be Heresy!

Of course Klipsch can call the P-39F or anything else they choose to a "Flagship" product but IMO I would qualify that statement with this is the Flagship of (for example: Palladium Line). Why heck we can just have a Flagship for every catagory of product that is produced if you want but then that would begin to dilute the meaning of Flagship wouldn't it and that is where the danger of over using it could come into play for a company.

As far as my reference to it would be like turning a back to PWK and what Klipsch the company has always stood for(at least what I have always perceived they stood for) what I'm simply saying is unless they have discovered something new and no longer believe that Horn Loading offers the ultimate in performance if performance is what it is all about then there is no getting around the fact that the True Flagship or (Flagship of all Flagships) must be a FULLY HORN LOADED SYSTEM.

mike tn[]

[seti]

.............any True Flagship from Klipsch must be a "FULLY HORN LOADED SYSTEM" otherwise IMO you have turned your back on what PWK and Klipsch the company has always believed to be true and has always stood for!............

Now Mike,

With all due respect, Klipsch, the company, has named and quilified this speaker as FLAGSHIP. Klipsch gave it that title, and it is not up to you or me. Granted, this speaker is not fully horn loaded, but neither of us have listened to it. It might better the Khorn, LaS or Jubilee. I will not put it down until I listen to it, as I prefer the impact of PWK's reflex designs as to the "home audio" horn loaded bins. (the current horn loaded Pro and Cinema bin designs are just outstanding)

If there is a back turned to PWK, it is in the non-production of a home version (pretty) Jubilee. With the trendy public desire for little cubes, who would buy them? This guy named Roy that works in Hope has made the Jub available to us. It may not be pretty, but we can get it.

All said,

I do agree with most of your post. Just wanted to give you a hard time.[]

tc

Now Terry[]

If you read my first sentence carefully you should know I'm not slamming the P-39F. I sure hope my friends at Klipsch know that and I would fully expect it to be a great speaker since Klipsch has put so much effort into it. But for the article to word it as if it is an upgrade to the Klipschorn is crazy(It has no Horn Loaded LF Section). At best you could call it an upgrade to the cornwall if you wanted to reference a past design but that would have been more accurate but less exciting than playing off the Klipschorns reputation. You have to know PWK would have flashed the [bs] on that statement. As far as the P-39F's performance all I can say is all speakers have compromises and they are in the P-39F just as they are in the Klipschorn, Jubilee or you name it. There are always boundaries set forth in any design but if we are talking about an all out absolute best we know how to build design then for it not to be a fully horn loaded system from Klipsch (should I say it?) would be Heresy!

Of course Klipsch can call the P-39F or anything else they choose to a "Flagship" product but IMO I would qualify that statement with this is the Flagship of (for example: Palladium Line). Why heck we can just have a Flagship for every catagory of product that is produced if you want but then that would begin to dilute the meaning of Flagship wouldn't it and that is where the danger of over using it could come into play for a company.

As far as my reference to it would be like turning a back to PWK and what Klipsch the company has always stood for(at least what I have always perceived they stood for) what I'm simply saying is unless they have discovered something new and no longer believe that Horn Loading offers the ultimate in performance if performance is what it is all about then there is no getting around the fact that the True Flagship or (Flagship of all Flagships) must be a FULLY HORN LOADED SYSTEM.

mike tn[]

Did we get a Harumph out of that guy?

Yup love them bass horns!~

[DrWho]

PWK was a fan of horns because of their efficiency - which is to say

that PWK was a fan of efficiency. According to Keele, it is possible

for direct radiators to yield more efficiency for a given cabinet size

at the lower frequencies.

http://www.xlrtechs.com/dbkeele.com/PDF/Keele%20(1976-05%20AES%20Preprint)%20-%20Efficiency,%20Horns%20vs%20DR.pdf

I don't fully buy into Keele's argument because it ignores the polar

response, but the point is that a horn is a tool and no tool works for

every application. In other words, does anyone know of any horn that

could fit in a cabinet the size of the P-39F and have a bandwidth that

extends below 40Hz?

I'm not trying to say that going fully hornloaded is a bad approach,

but we live in a world that is limited by the size of the cabinet. If

you really wanted a truly ideal system, then you wouldn't be

considering folded horns either...

For what it's worth, Klipsch has way fewer fully hornloaded systems

than they do direct radiator systems. Even way back in PWK's day,

there was the khorn, lascala, cornwall and heresy (and I wouldn't

exactly consider the lascala a full range speaker). Then after those

first few years, the only hornloaded bass bin I know of is the MWM

(which is huge). Everything else had direct radiators... If you compare

the Klipsch direct radiators to other companies, one of the first thing

you'll notice is how dynamic they are. I would say the Klipsch legacy

is high efficiency across all forms of loudspeaker design - not just limited to horns.

I would still expect the Jubilee to sound better than the P-39F, but I

wouldn't be surprised if the P-39F beat the khorn. Heck, there is no

shortage of people that prefer the cornwall to the khorn and I've no doubt the P-39F will smoke the Cornwall.

[Islander]

I fully understand Klipsch needs to market speakers that the public desires but the Klipsch I know has always been about Horns and the qualities they bring to sound reproductions. Klipsch's roots has always been based on a Fully Horn Loaded Systems and any deviation from that was a compromise made to fit some design need.

I can understand the P-39F being considered the Top of a particular Klipsch Line but IMHO any True Flagship from Klipsch must be a "FULLY HORN LOADED SYSTEM" otherwise IMO you have turned your back on what PWK and Klipsch the company has always believed to be true and has always stood for!

Since the name Heresy has already been used, should the Palladium speaker be renamed the Apostasy?