Wardsweb Home Theater
- Thread starter Wardsweb
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soundhound
Well-Known Member
Botch said:Geez, I've never even heard of those Klipschs; they make that huge TV look... not so huge! :shock:
I'll bet those things will sound large enough for Soundhound!
Actually, the horn system is way over sized acoustically for the apparent size of the room they are in. Bigger is not necessarily better in all situations.
Wardsweb
Renaissance man
They will be bi-amped via a EV DX-38 crossover. The calibration setting were done by Roy Delgato. He is the engineer who worked with Paul Klipsch on the original design of these. The last speaker Paul designed before his death. Roy is the Principal Engineer of Commercial Products at their factory in Hope AK.Orbison said:
Wardsweb
Renaissance man
My other thread covers my vintage stuff.PaulyT said:
viewtopic.php?f=35&t=1378
Hello my name is Luther and I'm an audioholic...
Wardsweb
Renaissance man
They were not originally designed for commercial use. They were to be the replacement for the Klipschorn. When Paul died and the head of accounting took over the company, he was going to end the speaker before it began. Rather than see Paul's last speaker be lost forever, Roy persuaded the new president to let the division he heads take it over. He had to sell it commercially to keep it as an active production item.Orbison said:
Yes the horn is huge and will produce serious SPL, but that isn't the purpose in a home environment. Roy worked very long and hard to perfect the bell to be able to articulate very accurately music. And articulate it does. Think of being able to hear clearly a whisper or to hear the decay of a note. I drove to Hope to hear the Jubilees for myself and spend some time with Roy and other Klipsch enthusiasts. We spent two days going over design, seeing it run in their anechoic chamber and a lot of real music listening in Roys demo room.
soundhound
Well-Known Member
DIYer said:
The Klipsch system is obviously designed for large movie theater sized rooms, and the sound from the drivers will blend well in that environment. The Altec VOTT on the other hand was designed for small theaters and more specifically screening rooms which are typically less than 50 feet in length. Using the VOTT in small bedroom sized rooms (I've done it) doesn't yield the best of results either.
Wardsweb
Renaissance man
Having run Altec A7 VOTT at my old house, I concur they were not at their best. The liquid midrange was there but with a bass fold about 13 feet out my room was too small. The difference in the Jubs and the A7 are night and day. Designed from the start as a 2-way home speaker, the bass bin crosses over a lot higher than the A7 and provide better bass control. True it is huge and wouldn't fit in a lot of people's homes, either for size or WAF, but they work for me.
Wardsweb
Renaissance man
The VOTT issue isn't the horn, actually the 511B with the 802-8g (tangerine phase plug) is sublime. The mid range is just liquid, open and airy. The problem is the bass. The cabinet was made for a long throw into a movie theater or large recording studio. Small rooms can not accomodate the approx 12-13 foot bass fold. So your bass is less and not as tight.DIYer said:
soundhound
Well-Known Member
Wardsweb said:
From my experience, the 811 would indeed be more suited to a very small room, however the VOTT was designed for screening room sized theaters. My A7-500s work well in my 30' long room, however I wouldn't have turned down a room which was 10 feet longer. The biggest issue I've found is that of a large enough space to allow the LF and HF horns to blend well; in a small room they are perceived as individual sound sources instead of an integrated blend.
The 902 was the Altec driver which used the "tangerine" phase plug (it also used a ferrite magnet), designed in the late 1970s while I worked at Altec Lansing as an engineer, while they were still the original company located in Anaheim CA. I bought two of the drivers the week they were released, hoping the promise of more extended high end would obsolete the 802s I had at the time.
WRONG! Those were the absolute worst sounding drivers I had ever heard compared to the 802s. Yeah, they had more high end, but they were harsh beyond belief. I sold them within a week at a loss to one of the technicians on the electronics assembly line. I found the same was true for all the drivers which used the "tangerine" phase plug. In my opinion it was a wrong move by Altec, which at the time was struggling financially (they finally left Anaheim for Oklahoma City right after I left the company in the early 1980s). Altec also used piezo tweeters in their home speaker line at the time (the guts of the driver was literally a "rat chaser" module which they bought from an OEM which was unrelated to the sound industry).
In the end, I believe the peak period for Altec designs was the mid 1970s; everything designed later than that I found to sound absolutely horrible. Perhaps they were grasping for straws with "new" designs in order to keep the company solvent. They also launched a car audio line during that period called "Voice of the Highway" which was actually pretty good. The radical for the time car power amplifier was designed by a buddy of mine at Altec (I designed all of the automated testing equipment to test that amplifier in the Tijuana, Mexico factory which assembled them).
At any rate, I strongly advise people to stick with the 802 which used the conventional radial phase plug and Alnico magnet (the 902 used a ferrite "mud" magnet), mated to one of the 811 or 511 exponential horns. However those horns absolutely need to have thick sound deadening material (Aquaplas was the material Altec and JBL used for this purpose) applied to the outside of the horn to damp some really nasty resonances those horns have in their original un-damped state.
soundhound
Well-Known Member
In my post was referring to the 902, which was the evolution of the 802 and had a ferrite magnet. I thought I made the ferrite aspect clear (please re-read my sentence).
In any event, the harsh quality of the tangerine phase plug has nothing to do with the type of magnet used. Altec Lansing made a lot of wrong steps before their demise. They also raised the crossover frequency of the VOTT (as the A7x) to 1,200Hz. It didn't sound all that great.
In any event, the harsh quality of the tangerine phase plug has nothing to do with the type of magnet used. Altec Lansing made a lot of wrong steps before their demise. They also raised the crossover frequency of the VOTT (as the A7x) to 1,200Hz. It didn't sound all that great.
soundhound
Well-Known Member
Zing said:
There were two models with either 500Hz (like mine) or 800Hz which used a smaller compression driver and horn. I've found that the lower the crossover frequency, the better the overall sound quality (with 500Hz minimum). The stock Altec passive crossover networks sounded absolutely awful, and I think hearing the VOTT in stock form prejudiced many into thinking the VOTT system as a whole didn't sound very good. With the VOTT, it is absolutely vital to dampen the HF horn with Aquaplas, Bondo, or some other deadening material because the horn will ring like a bell when excited by certain frequencies. Additionally, using active crossovers with steeper slopes helps immensely, as does damping the LF horn's walls which are very thin plywood. The VOTT almost requires good tube amplification, with an SET for the HF horn. The stock LF horn does enhance projection below the crossover point, matching the HF horn more in sound quality than using a non-horn loaded LF driver.