Klipsch 70th Anniversary Heritage speakers
- Thread starter Flint
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Hmmm...
Five 70th Anniversary Klipschorn speakers for $40k.
I'd need two sets to properly outfit both my HTs (into which they would not fit.)
Total cost $80k.
That's almost the price of a new M4.
And it WOULD fit in MY garage.
Five 70th Anniversary Klipschorn speakers for $40k.
I'd need two sets to properly outfit both my HTs (into which they would not fit.)
Total cost $80k.
That's almost the price of a new M4.
And it WOULD fit in MY garage.
Careful, Jeff. Get started loving Klipschorns and you'll become the world's resource on repairing and getting parts for them... you'll have dozens of old Klipschorns laying around for parts, and you will know all the details on the dozens of crossover designs they've used over the years (tuned to the tastes of the customer per era).
Can you afford another hobby like that?
Can you afford another hobby like that?
MakeMineVinyl
Well-Known Member
This caught my eye regarding the Klipschorn:
The newly enhanced rear low-frequency horn is now fully enclosed, offering more placement versatility in the listening room as the enclosure functions as a corner, delivering powerful bass performance."
The whole point of the original Klipschorn was to use the corner of a room as an extension of the horn; the walls of the enclosure itself are nowhere long enough to support the full bass response as originally designed (30Hz), no matter if it's "fully enclosed" or not.
Saying you don't have to place them in a corner is just plain wrong, at least if you want the bass extension they were originally designed for!
The newly enhanced rear low-frequency horn is now fully enclosed, offering more placement versatility in the listening room as the enclosure functions as a corner, delivering powerful bass performance."
The whole point of the original Klipschorn was to use the corner of a room as an extension of the horn; the walls of the enclosure itself are nowhere long enough to support the full bass response as originally designed (30Hz), no matter if it's "fully enclosed" or not.
Saying you don't have to place them in a corner is just plain wrong, at least if you want the bass extension they were originally designed for!
Agreed.rammisframmis said:
It's interesting, I did a lot of careful listening in '78~'79 before buying my Advents, I didn't like the Bose 901's (which I could've afforded, even as a college student) and I really didn't like the Klispch's of the time.
Six years ago, when I first met you guys and started auditioning for my 5.1 upgrade, I sat in a salon that had me do a blind listening test of about six speakers. He got to about the fourth one, and I said "Yuck! Are those the Klispches??" They were, and the salon guy was kind've surprised.
Don't know why, but there's something about them that just do NOT agree with my ears. :snooty:
MakeMineVinyl
Well-Known Member
Botch said:
I don't like the sound of Klipsch speakers either - its far too in-your-face and harsh. Very much how I'd expect a "typical horn speaker" to sound in the pejorative sense. The newer ones I think are even worse using the constant directivity horns.
I've spent literally years taming the sound of my Altec A7-500s so that they don't have that type of sound (JBL is just as bad in their native state). Horns can sound extremely good, having the quick dynamics no cone or electrostatic/planar magnetic can match, but it just takes LOTS of effort - more than most people are willing or able to expend.
The present state of my system (just in the last year or so) is the use of 6dB per octave active crossovers verses the 24dB Linkwitz/Riley I used to have. The crossover points are really crazy; the LF horn is crossed over at 1200Hz so it is almost wide open to its natural rolloff at around 2kHz due to the very gentle crossover slope. The HF horn is even crazier; its 6dB per octave at 8kHZ (!). Normally of course there would be a huge midrange gap between the two drivers, but it his avoided by the fact that the HF horn normally has excess energy output in the range of 500Hz to around 5kHz. The constant 6dB per octave slope high-pass equalizes the HF horn to essentially flat acoustically to the point that it blends perfectly with the LF horn and the response through the whole region is flat.
6dB per octave crossovers are known to be the best sounding of all, but they can't be used in many configurations because of the low frequency power which would normally be sent to a delicate tweeter.
In the past, I equalized out the non-flat response of the HF horn with an external equalizer (passive). In the present setup I don't need that equalizer, and the very high crossover point going to the HF horn protects it from lower frequencies.
It works!
TKoP
Well-Known Member
So I know I'm a total noob with this stuff, but I thought you'd normally want to cross a driver before it starts naturally rolling off since that "rolling off" part isn't going to sound as good as when it's in the flat part of the frequency range for a specific driver. I'm guess I was wrong with that assumption?
MakeMineVinyl
Well-Known Member
That's not necessarily true. A driver _can_ sound just as good in the part of its band where its rolling off as anywhere else - it all depends on the driver. There are several speaker systems I've seen written about which have no crossover on the LF drivers at all but only one on the tweeter (to protect it from excessive excursion). Again, it all depends on the individual driver....YMMV as usual!
Considering how little the 6dB low pass crossover I have now is doing in my current setup, I could probably just eliminate it altogether, and I might just do that sometime when I get time.
One new thing I've done this last month; I've known forever that the 5/8" thick side walls on the VOTT speaker are totally inadequate to stave off resonances. A couple years ago, I poured a combination of plaster of Paris and sand into the sides and bottom of the horn proper, so those parts don't resonate at all, and I glued a 2x4 diagonally on the inside sides to damp resonances there, to pretty good effect. However the lower back and the (removable) upper back have not been treated at all and resonate like shit when you knuckle test them. I wanted to address this part and was formulating in my mind what I wanted to do about it, then recalled writings by Linkwitz about his enclosure-less di-pole LF "cabinets". My idea - simply remove the upper part of the cabinet directly behind the woofer and replace it with an acoustically transparent grille to keep rats out ;-)
It has worked extremely well. The speakers are now di-pole up to about 2kHz, with a short horn in front (never seen that done). Yes, there is a drop in LF response due to cancellation and no reflex port action, but I simply raised the frequency of the crossover of my subwoofers to compensate to flatness again. The depth imaging has improved as could be expected by the di-pole nature of the speakers now (they are 6 feet from the front wall), and the sound in the LF range has cleaned up considerably; I can now tell the frequencies where the resonances were are now clean.
Of course the bass reflex part of the VOTT enclosure is now moot, but that really doesn't matter since I'm using subs to address that frequency range. Actually since I got subs, the bass reflex part of the spectrum has been filtered out by the sub crossover anyway.
Altogether a good (and essentially free) improvement.
TitaniumTroy
Well-Known Member
Ramis, thanks for the status update of your system. I too would love to hear it someday. I know you commented above about JBL's house sound. However have you had a chance to hear JBL's latest and greatest the M2 speaker, any thoughts on it?
MakeMineVinyl
Well-Known Member
No, I haven't heard them. However JBL's "house sound" is something that I've never heard them deviate from - its their sonic trademark. I don't like it, but obviously many, many do and that's fine. Actually the Altec Lansing sound (when they existed as a professional speaker company) in its raw state is really no different than JBLs, if not more harsh from what I heard while I worked there. Some of their speaker/drivers such as the early Mantaray horns and Tangerine phase plugs sounded like utter crap to my ears. Honestly, the VOTT sounds like crap in its unaltered state. So there you go......