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From: mohler@drune.UUCP (MohlerDS)
Newsgroups: net.audio
Subject: Re: RAW SPEAKERS
Message-ID: <6@drune.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 7-Aug-85 22:14:35 EDT
Article-I.D.: drune.6
Posted: Wed Aug  7 22:14:35 1985
Date-Received: Mon, 12-Aug-85 20:13:50 EDT
References: <3177@decwrl.UUCP> <975@teddy.UUCP> <914@druxo.UUCP> <294@ttrdc.UUCP> <512@bonnie.UUCP> <1035@teddy.Re: RAW SPEAKERS
Organization: AT&T Information Systems Laboratories, Denver
Lines: 71

Klipsch speakers have (like all other speakers) a mix of good and bad
points, that they chose when balancing variables designing a speaker.
To start on a positive note, the Klipsch corner horns have:

1) Very close to the best construction quality of any speaker made
2) A very good older design cross-over with excellent parts quality
3) Very low bass distortion 
4) Tremendous efficiency
5) Good quality horn drivers

On the negative side: 

1) They are billed as the ultimate horn loaded production
   speaker, which they are not. If you read some of Paul Klipsches
   early work, you will find that he states to cover a 9 octave range
   (40 hz to 20480 hz) you typically need 5 horn loaded drivers to get
   really smooth frequency response. 

   The Electrovoice Patrician P800
   (which is quite arguably the best horn loaded production speaker
   ever made) does just that. It uses an electrovoice W30 30 Inch
   (no that isn't a typo) woofer into a short horn facing the corner
   of the room, above that they used an EV SP12B 12 Inch "low midrange"
   driver in another short horn facing forward, then they used an EV
   350 series driver into a large midrange horn, (this is the same
   midrange as the K-Horn) then they used a smaller 350 series driver
   into a series 12 horn, and they topped the whole thing off with a
   T-350a horn tweeter. This yielded awesome sound that was quite
   linear. 

   Note the previous description was typed from memory from having seen
   the guts in 1973 when I was 14, so if some of the driver numbers
   are wrong don't flame at me! The K-horn has some very serious response
   dips between its 3 drivers and at the low end (below 50 hz).

2) The speaker did not take advantage of the new horn design curves like:
   hyperbolic and tractrix contours (see good article by Dr. J. Dinsdale
   published in KEF's speaker publications on these designs). This means that
   the distortion was not as low as it could be. Much of the "horn - sound"
   goes away when you loose the abrupt discontinuity at the horn edge by
   using a tractrix contour.

3) The speaker did not take advantage of the new woofer materials like
   bextrene and polypropylene, which prevents the driver from being as
   durable as the rest of the speaker. It also prevented the bass from
   being less colored.

4) The cross-over has also not been updated to a fourth order Linkwitz
   - Riley or similar crossover, to help smooth some of those dips between
   drivers.

So really what is bad about the K-horn is that it fails to live up to
the potential the concept had. It really could have been the ultimate
horn speaker! In 1980 at the CES show Kenwood showed an amazing 10,000.
dollar horn speaker that was basically a high-tech revision of the Patrician
800. To those that don't think a horn loaded speaker can't sound musical,
you should have heard this giant, it was absolutely incredible!

I intentionally avoided a discussion of how good or bad horns sound compared
to other speaker designs since it really comes down to what a person can
and cannot hear, what a person likes etc. A really good horn speaker can 
sound very good - and the K-Horn could be alot better than it is. A fundamental
objection to horn loaded speakers on my part is the efficiency! It doesn't
make sense to me to play any speaker at a level that over time will damage
my hearing, and that kind of volume (and small amps) were the reason such
speakers were designed. So there you have one set of pros and cons about
the horn loaded design principle.

			David S. Mohler
			AT&T - ISL @ Denver
			drune!mohler or druxu!mohler