Klipschorn bi-amping

[Tonysf]

? So what would you recommend to use for an active crossover if I plan on bi-amping by Klipschorns with either 4 identical mono 8 watt set amps or using either the McIntosh MC275 or the Threshold 800A two hundred watt amp for the bass? Is Behringer a decent crossover? Thanks!, Tony

[Guest " "]

? So what would you recommend to use for an active crossover if I plan on bi-amping by Klipschorns with either 4 identical mono 8 watt set amps or using either the McIntosh MC275 or the Threshold 800A two hundred watt amp for the bass? Is Behringer a decent crossover? Thanks!, Tony

humm.....you have enough amps to do 3-way with a sub...here is a 6db active tube xovers

[Guest " "]

here is 18db per octave

notice the xover points line up to your khorns

[Guest " "]

A lot of forum members use Behringer Active xovers.....many models and prices...google Behringer

Behringer

[Coytee]

I don't know any of the technical answers like Fritzie is working on so I'll leave those to him.

I WILL however, state my thought on steeper verses less steep slopes.

I heard my speakers on a 24 db slope crossover verses a 48 db slope. When I was hearing instrumental music, I'll be honest & say that I didn't hear much of a difference between the two (perhaps someone more critical than me could/would)

When I heard vocals on them, it was EASY to discern a difference and the difference was GOOD. The 48 db slope crossover simply made the vocals more clear. I've heard people say "it sounded like a veil was lifted from the music" and that is exactly what it sounded like.

On its own, either slope I heard sounded excellent however, when putting them side by side it was easy to see that the steeper sloped network created more clarity in the vocals and by extension, I'd have to presume would achieve the same in instrumentals.

My .02 for ya

[Y]

[Deang]

djk: ...Virtually all commercial equipment needs a lot
of work before I would consider it 'hi-fi', especially
Behringer and Crown.

Works good with the stuff I listen to.

[mas]

"...Virtually all commercial equipment needs a lot
of work before I would consider it 'hi-fi', especially
Behringer and Crown."

Works good with the stuff I listen to.

Dean, good point.

(ignoring the reference to Behringer) one wonders just how some one is going to get more accurate resolution and reproduction than what so many of the studios use to power their signal chains used in the recording of the material? So now the playback will have greater fidelity than the source...?

The Rane AC-24 crossover with calibrated signal delay will handle everything a Heritage system needs, including a sub.

Just think, if one adds an EQ they can be an engineer. But they really need the hat.

Combine that with a Crown Xti and one even gets EQ. (Heck, you could go with the Rane, and 4-Crown Xtis for less thant the cost of one of the flea amps alone...

Of course, the hat is extra, as is the train.

[]

[djk]

"

djk: ...Virtually all commercial equipment needs a lot
of work before I would consider it 'hi-fi', especially
Behringer and Crown.

Works good with the stuff I listen to. :"

You like listing to polarized electrolytics in the signal path?

Both of the top-of-the-line Macro Reference and Studio Reference amplifiers have two polarized electrolytics in the signal path, no bias network bypass, and no main power supply bypass. $5 worth of film caps makes them sound better.

Behringer DCX2496, same story, but 15 polarized electrolytics in the signal path.

[mas]

Behringer has specialized in inexpensively producing designs that are no longer protected. Some of their designs are quite good (although not ruggedized, some are not. I make no claims regarding Behringer other than you simply have to determine your use and whether they are sufficient to your needs.

Crown, on the other hand, has specialized in building quality instrumentation equipment (with audio amps being but a sideline until being Harmonized) that works reliably in conditions where your 'hi-fi' units would literally fail. I dare you to take any of your 'hi-fi' amps into the realm of SR and subject them to the full range of commonly encountered variables and see how well they function in the real world - including the studio. And then try to find one reputable person who has a persistent problem with Crown. And we can let them debate the likes of Don Keele who would disagree.

Much like the Russian aircraft designed to function reliably in post strike environments (albeit it constructed with state of the art manufacturing processes).where an American aircraft is brought down by a gum wrapper on a pristine runway. I guess you just get to choose between a Doberman and a prissy poodle with pretty bows who is traumatized by being spoken to in any words other than hushed toned baby babble.

It is amazing to listen to someone state that the Crown Studio Reference amp is not 'hi-fi'. You might want to explain that to the plethora of major 'non hi-fi' studios who for years have produced the myriad product for which you need your exotic 'hi-fi' equipment to extract greater resolution than the studio was able to impart to it!

And what is even more amazing is that many think that this is indeed possible!

And if you don't see the irony here... there's no sense explaining the joke.

Welcome to the perverse world of audiophilia.

But then, we are walking in a land where the basic concept of signal alignment is still foreign to most. []

Its hard not to see the world of audiophila as not being unlike the discipline(sic) of S&M relative to the world of vanilla sex..[:#][] []

[bodcaw boy]

I have been reading this thread as I am always interested in how people want to get the most out of their stuff. And as I read it, it became a little obvious that maybe what this practice of biamping and what it gains you is not all that clear (just as clear as that last sentence was!). So I want to give it a shot and this is just my dumb ole opinion and what I have observed.



To start off with, let's do good ole biamping. One amp for the lf and one amp for the mf/hf. The networks must have separate inputs for that to occur. What do you get? Well you are still feeding full range into each amp so if you are riding a high freq on a low freq and you are clipping, the clipped high freq is now being sent to the speaker. What you do gain is that the output side of the amp is only seeing the impedance of each section. That does offer some advantage to the amp cause even though it is still providing a voltage swing for the low freqs, the amps is not providing any current for the low freqs.


Okay, now what? Next step is to actively biamp. You place an active filter before the amps so that the amps are now only producing their respective bandwidth. But like with anything, this requires some more work. You need to find out the electrical crossover points of the passive network. Then you can place the crossover freqs into the unit and it should work fine, I stress should because you have to choose the same type of filters for both sections so that both sections are affected the same (this helps phase and such so that the passive still tries to add correctly at crossover). Now what have you done? Well you have effectively reduced the duty cycle of the amp. The hf amp does not bother with lf signals and the lf amp does not get bothered with hf signals. Amps runs cooler and less stressful. You also avoid the clipping of one part of the bandwidth while it rides another so you have effectively increased the amp's headroom. The amp power is still the same but becuase the amp doesn't ampilfy the other freqs, you have more headroom available for the amp's own bandwidth. One other note, if your crossover has delay, then you can help align the lf anf mf signals at least if you are provided with that delay number from the manufacturer.



And the last big step is to totally remove the passives. That can be a little maddening to do cause klipsch crossovers are balancing networks. They not only provide crossover slopes but they also provide eqing and level matching and you would need all that info in order to get back to the intended freq response curve.


So you see, it's a tweaks dream. And the first step down that path could be biamping.

Hope this helps,

In Christ, because of God's grace,
Roy

[sunnysal]

Tonysf, I wonder if you should not take some time before deciding about bi- or tri- amping your k-horns. I would recommend taking some serious time listening with your various amplifiers to get a broad, firm feel of what you like and dotn like about the sound in your system. Once you establish that you can focus one what measures you need to take to improve the sound of the music coming from your system. I think it early to jump into such a complicated envdeavour. You might want to look a freshening up the caps in your crossover and perhaps adding some higher quality litz coils. that should make a change in the sound, you couls also consider some of the crossover upgrades/variations that many of us have tried and liked. I would consider those things before moving into active or passive bi and tri amping...enjoy and congratulations on acquiring a geunine classic hi fidelity audio component, one that deserves its classic status! regards, tony

[djk]

"It is amazing to listen to someone state that the Crown Studio Reference amp is not 'hi-fi'. You might want to explain that to the plethora of major 'non hi-fi' studios who for years have produced the myriad product for which you need your exotic 'hi-fi' equipment to extract greater resolution than the studio was able to impart to it! "

I also modify studio equipment to sound better.

Crown is a benchmark, as is the McDonald's double cheeseburger.

Neither is the best product of its type.

I only eat at McDonald's when I have to, they are on the bottom of my list for burger dives.

I only use Crown amplifiers if I have to (I always bring a good amp and crossover to a gig so as not to get stuck with what they have).

Not all studios use 'benchmark' gear. Some of the best sounding recordings come from the likes of Shefield Labs, GRP, and DMP; they all use customized gear. After my customizing mixers and amplifiers for a studio, the quality of their recordings always improve (now that they can hear what they are doing).

If anyone wants to eat at McDonald's (or listen to Crown), it's a free country.

[mas]

"It is amazing to listen to someone state that the Crown Studio Reference amp is not 'hi-fi'. You might want to explain that to the plethora of major 'non hi-fi' studios who for years have produced the myriad product for which you need your exotic 'hi-fi' equipment to extract greater resolution than the studio was able to impart to it! "

I also modify studio equipment to sound better.

Crown is a benchmark, as is the McDonald's double cheeseburger.

Neither is the best product of its type.

I only eat at McDonald's when I have to, they are on the bottom of my list for burger dives.

I only use Crown amplifiers if I have to (I always bring a good amp and crossover to a gig so as not to get stuck with what they have).

Not all studios use 'benchmark' gear. Some of the best sounding recordings come from the likes of Shefield Labs, GRP, and DMP; they all use customized gear. After my customizing mixers and amplifiers for a studio, the quality of their recordings always improve (now that they can hear what they are doing).

If anyone wants to eat at McDonald's (or listen to Crown), it's a free country.

Great analogy [*-)]

Funny you don't continue and point out that those same facilities also not use Klipsch speakers. So much for benchmarks... and lumping all Crown, with their MYRIAD range of product, into one category is a bit amazing. But it certainly illuminates the thinking(sic) behind the rationale.

But since many of the more prominent studios do, and even fewer use Klipsch, I guess by your analogy that would render Klipsch the equivalent of Krystal or White Castle gut bomb suitable for the soon to be regretted 2AM munchie run.

And still, capacitors are the key, while signal alignment in the time domain is still a mystery to far too many. Yup, ain't we advanced... It must be nice to think one is on top of the world as you have those wheel bearings on your Conastoga wagon greased up just perfectly! It must fly like the wind!

It must be very satisfying to myopically focus on such minutia while missing much larger and more fundamental factors contributing to the reproduction of sound.

Those caps must be at least several weeks old....isn't it time to swap them out? []

But then the focus of this thread illustrates this fundamental problem very clearly, as so many want to keep debating the internal characteristics of an amp relative to the fundamental advantages offered by properly using independent signal aligned amplification of each passband. And the advantages to be realized have little to nothing to do with what capacitors are used (regardless of he degree to which many have pushed this laudable goal). But having found the ideal capacitors, perhaps one would be better served by spending more time discovering the wonders of acoustics (and incorporating a thorough understanding of the time domain) than simply analyzing electronic signals on an oscope as if they are all minimum phase.

Don't misunderstand me, I am not belittling the focus on components. But their scope is simply tiny in context with the much larger and more more pervasive realm of acoustics where much more significant and fundament improvements can be realizedl

An exampe of that to which i speak - it makes little difference regading the frequency response of an amp if the acoustical factors of the speaker itself, and additinally if the speaker and room create orders of magnitude greater frequency rsponse anomalies. The response of the amp is rendered negligible. Does this mean that we should ignore it? Of course not. But in the total scheme of things, it is well down the list of issues where significant improvements can be realized. And it makes little sense to spend inordinate amounts of money and energy to simply focus on these aspects to the ignore-ance of the much more substantial variables of which we have the means to moderate.

There is a much larger and much more fundamentl frame of reference from which a much greater benefit may be derived. And bi/tri amping with passive crossovers with radically offset acoustic origins just 'ain't' it! Regardless of the capacitors used.

But, one thing I do agree with... it is still a free country. Enjoy...

Edit...Playful jousting aside...Please do not misunderstand me. I have nothing but admiration for the degree and knowledge that so many here have expended in optimizing the electronics!

My point is simply that there is another realm that we would all benefit from that offers an order (or two) of magnitude of even greater benefit than does simply optimizing the components! And simply optimizing the components fails to address the fundamental limitations that render these improvements alone almost moot. And what frustrates me is that rather than actively recognize, become familiar with, and incorporate this understanding, that we are much too quick to run back to a contractive understanding at the expense of a greater more expansive understanding of the total system that offers a much more significant benefit.

It is not a question of whether better electronics can sound better. Of course they can. But they are fundamentally restricted if the acoustics are ignored. And their enefits very quickly become asymptotic where a large expenditure returns a very minor improvement. The acoustical interaction at the speaker and room level are fundamental constraints that even the best components cannot overcome. Thus, focusing solely on components is not the answer. But optimizing components after the fundamntal acoustical relationships are addressed can serve to optimize the listening experience.

[DrWho]

Mike, I think you're being deliberately obtuse.

Not really....at least not deliberate, lol.

In our example two 50W amplifiers are found to make the speakers play the same volume as a single 200W amplfier (that's where the 4:1 number thrown about comes from).

Ok, so that works for 100Hz and 1kHz with a crossover. Now feed 20Hz and 200Hz into the lower leg with the 50W amp. What is the voltage at each frequency? It can't be 20V RMS because you need a 200W amplifier to do that.

As far as clipping amps, how is that going to introduce less distortion than electrolytics? The woofer section can usually extend beyond the range of the actual crossover and there is absolutely no attenuation in the system of the higher order harmonics generated by clipping (except of course the woofers own mass/inductance roll off, or HF corner of the horn if it's hornloaded).

I gotta agree though that electrolytics in the signal path are rather obnoxious sounding. Do film caps really "fix" the problem or do they just attenuate it? I almost wonder if it wouldn't make more sense to just DC bias every cap in the signal path. I've been trying to do some research on quantifying the differences and it seems that it's mostly crossover distortion and hysteresis on top of the non-linear curves (but everything seems to have a fairly linear region in the middle).

[Duke Spinner]

crimp it ....[]

use ... De-Ox .. tho ..

[Guest " "]

"I almost wonder if it wouldn't make more sense to just DC bias every cap in the signal path "

sounds like a great marketing opportunity...I haven't seen any DC bias upgrade kits for sale yet....if we can keep it simple and use aligator clips instead of solder joints there might be a wider market....last schematic I saw showed a few 1 megaohm resistors running off one 9 volt battery....not much drain there so you are basically talking battery shelf life as the replacement factor.

[Deang]

Mark -- you might want to know that Dennis (DJK) has been espousing and emphasing the importance of time alignment around here for as long as I can remember. I can only say that it's not often in this hobby that one can have it all. It would be great to run some state of the art amps and whatever else to be at the pinnacle of sound reproduction -- but most of us have make hard choices and pick our poison. No doubt there are things around that sound better than the Crowns, but the Jubilees and Crowns are still a few notches up over Heritage, tubes, and good passives. Now, if the Crowns sounded subpar they would already be gone, but they do pretty good. I'm 70% movies and 30% music now, and the music I like isn't usually recorded all that well -- working best in my room at low to moderate volumes. If I was doing a lot of well recorded music at live levels, the Crowns probably wouldn't get it over the long haul, but for where I'm at and what I doing right now -- they're perfect. I'm rather fond of McDonalds, especially that #4 value meal.

[Deang]

"I gotta agree though that electrolytics in the signal path are rather obnoxious sounding. Do film caps really "fix" the problem..."

Well, there's no question that films sound better -- that's not even up for debate. I quit caring about why some caps sound better than others, it's enough to know they just do.

[DrWho]

it's enough to know they just do.

Awfully boring don't you think?

[djk]

"Mark -- you might want to know that Dennis (DJK) has been espousing and emphasing the importance of time alignment around here for as long as I can remember. "

Thanks for pointing that out.

I started using all-pass delay circuits at speaker level (passive) and line level (active) after reading the Linkwitz articles in the JAES (1977) and Wireless World (re-printed in Speaker Builder ). I bought one of the first DSP based (Motorola 56007) crossovers as soon as they were available (adjusted for inflation they were over 20X the money they are today for a stereo three-way).

"Funny you don't continue and point out that those same facilities also not use Klipsch speakers. So much for benchmarks... and lumping all Crown, with their MYRIAD range of product, into one category is a bit amazing. But it certainly illuminates the thinking(sic) behind the rationale."

You seemed to have missed my earlier point, 'benchmark' does not mean the best, it simply means a common standard that most everyone can relate to. In the mid to late 70s the JBL 4311 was the benchmark. A Klipsch Heresy measured flatter (above 70hz), sounded better, and cost about the same. A little later the Yamaha NS10M became the benchmark for nearfield monitoring, where the similarly priced Klipsch Kg2 was a vastly better product.

As regards "Crown, with their MYRIAD range of product," the differences are less than you would expect, despite scores of designs and many different designers (both designs and designers spanning decades).

"And still, capacitors are the key, "

You got that right (even though by being sarcastic you're actually wrong).

"while signal alignment in the time domain is still a mystery to far too many. Yup, ain't we advanced..."

Addressed above, and still missing the point.

"Ok, so that works for 100Hz and 1kHz with a crossover. Now feed 20Hz and 200Hz into the lower leg with the 50W amp. What is the voltage at each frequency? It can't be 20V RMS because you need a 200W amplifier to do that."

Granted, but not relavent to music as most music contains content above 200hz.

"As far as clipping amps, how is that going to introduce less distortion than electrolytics? "

Clipping is harmonicaly related to the signal, capacitor distortion as a function of dielectric absorption is not, and occurs at the zero-crossing part of the signal (when there is no signal to mask it).

"I gotta agree though that electrolytics in the signal path are rather obnoxious sounding. Do film caps really "fix" the problem or do they just attenuate it? I almost wonder if it wouldn't make more sense to just DC bias every cap in the signal path. "

For the most part, film caps are a very real fix, their DA is several orders of magnitude lower than the electrolytics. DC bias of electrolytics is also a kind of fix, but film bypass caps still help here too (may be more related to inductance, ESR and other factors at this point). I have found small bypass caps on interstage coupling electrolytics (ie: with DC across them in single ended circuits) to be a (small) improvement.

"sounds like a great marketing opportunity...I haven't seen any DC bias upgrade kits for sale yet....if we can keep it simple and use aligator clips instead of solder joints there might be a wider market....last schematic I saw showed a few 1 megaohm resistors running off one 9 volt battery....not much drain there so you are basically talking battery shelf life as the replacement factor."

Can't make very much money on a couple of 1M resistors and a battery clip! Seriously, it could be expensive proposition. Twice the number of caps that are also twice the size, more area (for same) on the crossover board.

But what if you don't need the mega $$$ caps (because of the improvement with DC bias)?

(a pair of) Type E network: done stock with four 2µF Hovland (or the cheap Mundorf) for $102 vs DC biased with eight Bennic for $15, Clarity Cap for $20, etc. Type B network: Hovland $143 vs $21 for Bennic. Type A network: Hovland $210 vs Bennic $24. Type AA networks: Hovland $194 vs $31.50 for Bennic. Be something to look into.

"I'm rather fond of McDonalds, especially that #4 value meal. "

If I have to eat there I generally choose chicken.