Klipsch Roy Delgado explaining why Klipsch measures so bad.

[Cbdb2]

In a large fullrange horn concept which provides controlled directivity down to 70Hz, I would not bet on that.

Where the sound go? If its not absorbed its reflected. With high directivity you get more direct sound but theres still the same amount of reflected sound.
The reason we measure speakers off axis is because of these reflected sound.

 

[mhardy6647]

speaking of Klipsch, PWK, and anechoic chambers...

 

[PristineSound]

There is a DIY option for MEH speakers too (https://www.diyaudio.com/community/attachments/meh-pdf.1116142/)

That is the one that I was considering, but it does take a considerable about of resource investment; time, tools and material. The cabinet does not look as straight forward as a standard bookshelf, which even that, I would heavily critique my armature woodworking skills, so this would definitely be another level for me. I probably would need a separate budget just to practice the wood working before hand. I suspect a CNC machine would make it a lot easier, but now I'm going down the rabbit hole. The other alternative is draw the plans in CAD and bring it to a professional and have them cut it. . .probably the smarter route, I'll safe time and money in investing in the tools and all the screw up's.

I'm a sucker for point source speakers, but just hard to justify the DIY route at this point, perhaps later down the line.

 

[dlaloum]

And I've seen Fulcrum Acoustics correct the impulse response using DSP (a patented process), but that's really aimed at PA-duty, and typically lower fidelity applications.

Chris

Isn't that one of the things that Dirac does? correct impulse response?

 

[Chris A]

Here is a link to a JAES report on the subject.: Improving Loudspeaker Transient Response with Digital Signal Processing

Here's the patent: Creating digital signal processing (DSP) filters to improve loudspeaker transient response

This is pretty esoteric stuff. I would be quite surprised if Dirac is doing anything like this. I would think that Dirac would be using FIR filters to collapse any phase growth, but that's completely different than what Gunness is doing to improve the impulse response of compression drivers.

Chris

 

[kyuu]

I dunno if Dirac is doing anything analogous to what's in that paper, but "correcting" the impulse response is indeed one of the things Dirac attempts to do.

 

[Arindal]

he was told by Paul to not go too deep into AES papers, this implies any research or scientific papers in the field of acoustics and physocacoustics. Much of Toole and associates' papers are on AES.

If their design goals are fundamentally different than Toole´s ones, it makes a lot of sense to ignore these papers in my understanding.

So while the spinaroma proper does not include the polar maps, but in essence, polar maps are inextricably part of the spinaroma, meaning if you did the spinaroma properly, you will inherit very high-resolution polar maps

It is out of question that spinorama and near field-based calculation work pretty well. I have compared numerous measurements with what I had from a truly anechoic chamber, and in most of cases it is close to identical. Only noteworthy exceptions are concepts which employ a fair amount of cancellation from sources which are very far apart from each other, such as active dipole subwoofer arrays, bass cardioids and beam-steering line arrays.

So the spinorama is exact in the meaning that it tells you what is actually happening in the whole spherical room in a distance of 1m. That does not necessarily give a full picture of how a speaker will interact with the room or behave in listening distances far off what than the measuring conditions.

Unless its anechoic all rooms have: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Critical_distance
Where the spl from the direct sound (your speaker) equals the spl of reflected sound (room).
In living rooms that distance is usually between 1 and 3 meters.

In practice, the critical listening distance is vastly dependent on the speaker´s directivity index, and will change drastically over frequency with many rooms and speakers. But I agree that it is astonishingly low for most of home listening environments.

Bigger room larger distance.

No. Bigger room, smaller critical distance. Check the Sabine formula, the easiest form of predicting reverb in a room, expressing that it is proportional with the room´s volume.

When your further than twice the critical distance the spl stops dropping (noticibly) with further distance.

For a perfectly diffuse soundfield, it is correct that the further drop in direct sound level will not be noticeable from a certain distance on. In practice, reflections are not perfectly diffuse.

 

[NTK]

No. Bigger room, smaller critical distance. Check the Sabine formula, the easiest form of predicting reverb in a room, expressing that it is proportional with the room´s volume.

No. First, the statement defies logic. An infinitely big room with have a zero critical distance?

When aspect ratios are similar, larger rooms will have less surface area to room volume ratios. When average wall absorption is the same, a larger room will have a bigger <A>, and therefore larger critical distance r_d (see eq 13.32 for an omni point source).

with <A> defined as:

 

[Da cynics]

2) I know this may have been lost or misled, but I actually have great interest in horn speakers. I am on a quest to listen to a multi-entry horn for over a year and have yet to be successful. So if you know where I can go to listen to one, please let me know. I have considered building one using DIY blueprints, but it's just too much investment for something I have not tried.

A modern and very interesting experiment.

JW Sound Design

Designer of premium sound reinforcement and reproduction systems based in Chattanooga, Tennessee

www.jwsound.live

Portable Battery Powered MEH Build

Need/Use Case: I’ve always wanted a decent bluetooth speaker that I could carry when traveling/hiking/camping/etc. but could never find one that really provided a quality listening experience. Most of the larger manufacturers with bluetooth devices seem to be dubious with their ratings and make...

www.diyaudio.com

 

[Arindal]

An infinitely big room with have a zero critical distance?

Yes, in theory. Infinitely big volume means infinite area of reflecting walls hence indefinitely sustaining indirect sound even if there is wall absorption. Note that Sabine's formula is neglecting the adiabatic properties of air, i.e. increasing absorption towards smaller wavelengths, so in reality this will never happen. And of course in reality there is an initial time delay between direct and indirect sound at play.

If you want to have a glimpse of an idea how it sounds, take a clicker frog as used by recording engineers to a large empty water cistern (or a cathedral). It's fun.

 

[beagleman]

Archetype: The Klipschorn – Iconic American Loudspeaker

Much like legendary American industrial designers Charles and Ray Eames influenced all things midcentury modern, so too did Paul Klipsch impact high fidelity. Few, if any, modern audio engineers could profess ignorance of Klipsch’s groundbreaking folded-horn, corner-loading, three-way Klipschorn...

www.resistormag.com

Not a made up excuse but it is creating a product that serves a specific market. There is a reason why it has been around for almost 80 years.

I remember first time I saw and heard them.

They were BIG speakers, they cost a lot and likewise had big effortless sound and could fill a large room quite well.
But to me, they lacked in actual sound quality and smoothness and so on. Not horrible mind you, but just not a refined "great" speaker.

It sounded honestly like a well sorted "sound reinforcement" speaker to me.
I put them into the category of big and loud but not truly "Hi-Fi".
Not horrible, but a compromise.

 

[Keith_W]

Yes, in theory. Infinitely big volume means infinite area of reflecting walls hence indefinitely sustaining indirect sound even if there is wall absorption.

Your homework is to calculate the surface area to volume ratio of a 1m cube vs. a 100m cube. Then come back and argue that larger volume = larger area of reflecting walls.

 

[Chris A]

It sounded honestly like a well sorted "sound reinforcement" speaker to me.

Go listen to a pair of Jubilees--I can guarantee that what you hear will be a totally different experience.

(By the way, I actually have a lower opinion of old Khorns than you do....but then again, I've lived with dialed-in Jubilees for a long time, so my expectations on what "good" sounds like has definitely improved.)

My guess is that the new AK7 Khorns with DSP option probably sound a lot better than the ones you heard--whenever that was.

Life goes on--things change.

In one of the longer YT videos of Roy talking about the genesis of the Jubilee, he described being head hunted by competitors. But he always asked if the company that was interviewing him was prepared to become the next Klipsch (...really...). He said that he believes that Paul Klipsch was on to something, and to step back from that level of performance...well... That's quite a statement, especially from Roy, a person that I personally know to be not into hype of any sort.

Chris

 

[PristineSound]

That's quite a statement, especially from Roy, a person that I personally know to be not into hype of any sort.

You are a good friend. Please know that questioning someone's explanation is not an attack on them so long as it is done in good faith no matter how rigorous the questioning is, especially in a forum like this. From these interviews I've seen, Roy seems like a great guy to have a drink with to shoot the breeze.

My take away is that the Klipsch heritage line is designed for a very specific audience, the ones who will buy them, will buy them. . . measured performance irrelevant. . .those who won't buy them, it wasn't meant for them anyway. The newer lower lineup is not too shabby and heck a lot better than those Klipsch made in the 2010's. And the measurement question from the interviewer just wasn't expected as it is out of character from that interviewer.

Anyone know of MEH on display in the northeast of US, let me know.

 

[beagleman]

"or simply your listening preferences/hearing acuity." <- golden ear-ish, maybe?

Anyway, my point is there is a reason or excuse for almost everything as to why Klipsch doesn't sound good. . .to some (or a lot of) people at least.

Maybe Klipsch should start designing speakers not just for corners as Roy have stated as a reason why they don't measure well. Maybe they should leverage all the research that has been conducted in acoustic and psychoacoustic science over the years (in another interview Roy said Paul told him to not get too deep into established research papers because it may take away creativity and/or innovations).


I have my theories: I don't think Roy and Klipsch are incapable of designing an excellent measuring and sounding speakers at all. In fact, I think they are more capable then many companies because they generate so much revenue and can afford the R&D resources. I think what it comes down to is:

(a) The current formula and business model works, enough people are buying, they are selling and they are making money, so don't fix it if it's not broken.

(b) Many of their customers buy based on nostalgia, it's kind of a like a muscle car, sure it's fast off the line, but there is no way in hell will you ever get a good lap time, but who cares? People who wants to buy a muscle car, because they want a muscle car. So instead of designing from the ground up for a very expensive pair of speakers, retrofitting fixes to a 80 year old model that was design with fairly primitive knowledge of modern science 80 years ago, is what this specific group of customers want.

I also think Roy was blindsided by Thomas's question about why Klipsch don't measure well, so he may have stumbled on his replied because the above answers (if my theories A and B is right) would not be good for PR. You see, Thomas is a hardcore subjectivist, that may be a question that he is asking to validate that measurements carries very little weight.

There is a reason why (1) in all the years Klipsch only sent one of their newer model speakers to an objective based review outlet, Audioholics (2) there is essentially no interaction between Klipsch and the objective based speaker community that I can observed, you will never see Roy giving interviews with people like Erin, James Larson or Amir. Or if he did, I missed it.

Your muscle car analogy fits with the "Jeep Wrangler" to a large degree.

I bough one mostly cause my father owned a Jeep when I was a young kid. I loved the "Idea" of the Open top jeep going through the woods.

In reality, it was a mediocre road vehicle, Cramped, loud at highway speeds, Mediocre gas mileage, and did not handle great, and in stock form really no different than most other 4wd vehicles for sure. A lot of compromise for nostalgia.

 

[beagleman]

Go listen to a pair of Jubilees--I can guarantee that what you hear will be a totally different experience.

(By the way, I actually have a lower opinion of old Khorns than you do....but then again, I've lived with dialed-in Jubilees for a long time, so my expectations on what "good" sounds like has definitely improved.)

My guess is that the new AK7 Khorns with DSP option probably sound a lot better than the ones you heard--whenever that was.

Life goes on--things change.

In one of the longer YT videos of Roy talking about the genesis of the Jubilee, he described being head hunted by competitors. But he always asked if the company that was interviewing him was prepared to become the next Klipsch (...really...). He said that he believes that Paul Klipsch was on to something, and to step back from that level of performance...well... That's quite a statement, especially from Roy, a person that I personally know to be not into hype of any sort.

Chris

The ones I listened to were from the early 90s.

May I ask, what connection you have to Klipsch, or are you just an owner of the Jubilee speaker?

 

[Chris A]

You are a good friend.

No, I'm not.

But I own a pair of 1st-gen Jubilees (among other second-hand and heavily modified loudspeakers made by Klipsch over the years).

I've conversed with Roy many times online since, and once face-to-face in Hope over a two-day Jubfest in 2009 (a free event), but certainly do not count him as a friend.

My goal was a fully horn-loaded 5.1 array with fully multi-amped/DSPed loudspeakers using in-room acoustic measurements to guide my upgrades. I achieved that about a decade ago:

My take away is that the Klipsch heritage line is designed for a very specific audience, the ones who will buy them, will buy them. . . measured performance irrelevant. . .those who won't buy them, it wasn't meant for them anyway.

It appears (yet again) like I'm dealing with a heavily spring-loaded opinion here that doesn't change, no matter what information to the contrary is presented. While I am more than willing to talk about specific details of pros/cons of Heritage Klipsch models, making these sort of sweeping generalizations I believe does no one any service, and in fact, looks quite biased. I don't believe I'm the only one here that has formed that opinion over the less than one week duration of this thread.

It's okay to have decision bias, but for me, it's not okay to keep pressing it in such an uncalibrated fashion on an open forum such like this--which is dedicated to "the science of home hi-fi audio components". Your above quoted statement can be your opinion, but it certainly isn't fact. The facts are that Heritage Klipsch is quite popular and enjoyed by many thousands of happy owners, even more so today than in the 75+ year life of the company.

In fact, the numbers of Heritage products on the used market are such that there is a pretty firm price range (used) for each model that comes up for sale. I wouldn't call that "a very specific audience". Also, due to its longevity of products (...which are still in its product lineup...), there are third-party sources that cater to maintenance, repair, and upgrade of these Klipsch products. I know of no other such community for loudspeakers in such numbers of enthusiasts.

May I ask, what connection you have to Klipsch, or are you just an owner of the Jubilee speaker?

I believe that I answered your question, above. I have no personal or business connection with the company or Roy, and never did.

Chris

 

[kyuu]

Where's the flatness??

 

[Cbdb2]

In practice, the critical listening distance is vastly dependent on the speaker´s directivity index,

Not really, the critical distance is multiplied by the square root of the directivity index, thats hardly vastly dependant.

 

[Cbdb2]

Yes, in theory. Infinitely big volume means infinite area of reflecting walls hence indefinitely sustaining indirect sound even if there is wall absorption. Note that Sabine's formula is neglecting the adiabatic properties of air, i.e. increasing absorption towards smaller wavelengths, so in reality this will never happen. And of course in reality there is an initial time delay between direct and indirect sound at play.

If you want to have a glimpse of an idea how it sounds, take a clicker frog as used by recording engineers to a large empty water cistern (or a cathedral). It's fun.

Well none of your "theorys" agree with the equations acousticians have been using, in practise, for decades.