Some time ago I reported on the recent AudioXPress article by Mr. John
Warren. Shortly after mentioning this here I received a call from a
Klipschhorn owner I have known for many years, who said that he too had
seen the article and had ordered a pair of the JBL drivers forthwith.
Today I got to listen to the accordingly modified Klipschhorns and
although the owner does not want to "go public" yet he has given me the
okay to discuss the initial impressions formed on the first serious
listening session with these speakers.

We listened to the K-horns both with the original factory horn driver
and with the JBL assembly, which we have dubbed "Gitte" after its
purported resemblance to the then-buff Ms.Brigitte Nielsen's ass
cheeks. However, not being gifted with the legendarily statutory
peckerage of Mr. Dolph Lundgren, we will hereinafter leave that
particular allusion alone.

THE ROOM

The Klipschhorns are located in a rather large room that originally
served as the meeting room for a church, built as part of an extension
to what was originally a small-to-medium rural church in the early
1960's. The original church itself was built in the WW1 era and
demolished after structural problems became evident in the early
eighties. What had been farmland was now a subdivided suburban communty
and immediately faced residentially zoned real estate, so the present
owner bought the property and tore down the church itself and reworked
the meeting, Sunday School, kitchen, and small men's and women's locker
room areas into a residence. The meeting room became his listening and
screening area and at that time drywall partitions were added to the
square room to make the room asymetrical and without parallel walls. A
terraced suspended ceiling treatment using heavy cloths was put up
along with use of commercial studio grade sound absorbent treatments.

THE ELECTRONICS

The owner's preferred amplifiers for general listening are George Kaye
Audio Labs MOSCODE units. He also owns several other amplifiers and of
his collection we listened to a Bryston 4B and a McIntosh MC225. I
brought out for listening purposes a Hafler-designed SMART amplifier
and a DIY tube amplifier built by a friend's late father which uses
four EL84s per channel (parallel push pull) into output transformers of
unknown origin. Plate load is approximately 2800 ohms however. I must
add here, I am not an enthusiast of the EL84 tube for purposes except
guitar amplifiers. However given its history I can't bear to part it
out or modify it. I also brought out my homebuilt Marantz 7 preamp.

LISTENING MATERIAL

The speakers' owner posesses a music library of approximately 5000
records, 1500 CDs and several shelves of prerecorded and amateur taped
open reel tapes, and has two Ampex ATR transports configurable to play
them all. The electronics are modified Ampex. There is also a modified
Roberts deck for play of single channel 1/4" tapes.

We listened exclusively to albums and CDs. We decided against any
attempt to listen to any SACD or DVD Audio so as not to muddy the
waters. We were there to evaluate the speakers.

Our listening material consisted of LP pressings of several Capitol
Frank Sinatra, Beatles, and other popular choices of material,an
original presssing of the "Victory at Sea" soundtrack, current
remastered CDs of seventies Rolling Stones and Abba albums, and current
CDs of fringe artists such as Dan Reeder. We deliberately chose to not
listen to the same track on more than one medium at any time. In
addition we sampled a few old LP's of organ music of the Bob Ralston
and Ken Griffin style and some "bad southern gospel" discs left behind
by the previous tenants. The latter featured dubious harmonic and
theological content recorded, probably more out of necessity than
purism, in a minimalist fashion and of surprisingly good mastering and
stamping quality.

LISTENING

We spent approximately four hours listening, comparing the sound of
the K-Horns with the original and new driver and crossovers in various
positions in the room, volume levels, and with the various amplifiers
and preamps we had available. I chose to have the owner connect and
disconnect the different drivers without telling me which was which,
but we put the equipment on the "back podium" as he calls it, which is
a dedicated gear area resembling, by intent and in fact, a cross
between a FOH board position and the navigator/helmsman's station on
the fictional Starship Enterprise (NCC-1701 as originally shown in the
original Star Trek episodes.) It has two turntables and CD/DVD/SACD
players and a purpose built "console preamp" with balanced and
unbalanced inputs, Penny and Giles faders, and a tube 10.7 MHz FM "back
end" driven by ICOM wideband receivers. We "patched out" the sources to
enable us to listen to some regular preamps (his ARC and a MX110 Mac
and my M7C clone.)

CONCLUSIONS-Abridged

1. There was no question that the re-tweetered K-horns were in every
instance and with all equipment superior. Without a flowery display of
J. Gordon Holt's subjective vocabulary, the retweetered configuration
had more openness, air, upper-end detail, and a more seamless sounding
integration between the midrange and treble registers than the stock
horn did. Loud, brief passages were very noticeably more realistic,
clearer, and less squashed sounding. The difference is so great that in
my opinion the Klipsch company should be told, in no uncertain terms,
to "**** or get off the pot"-upgrade or quit the classic horn line
altogether and leave the field to other parties. The stock K-horn is
now difficult to take seriously, in our opinion.

2. The owner's Moscode amplifiers were the best sounding amps overall,
although the humble SMART/Haflers had more of a mid-to-treble presence
which I personally slightly preferred on the Rodgers "Sea" soundtrack
and on the group singing passages on the "bad gospel" material. The
homebuilt EL84 amp was the tubiest sounding-no surprise-which proved
actually annoying on the Beatles and Stones tracks. The Bryston was a
excellent sounding if slightly bland unit and so was the MC225. Overall
the amps sounded more alike than different and none of the group, even
the EL84 amp, made nearly the difference the tweeter swap did.

3. Of the preamps, the ARC had the best sounding phono section,
although not as good as the dedicated solid state console phono
preamps. We used a Sumiko cartridge, "the next to the most expensive",
which the console preamps were designed specifically for and "voiced"
using NAB test records and a Hewlett Packard 8903 which lives in the
console. My M7C was slightly lesser in several ways such as definition
and articulation of sibilants and fricatives, especially on Sinatra's
magnificent "Come Dance With Me" and "Sinatra's Swingin' Session".
However, it was quieter. The line sections were indistinguishable. The
Mac MX110, simply put, stunk. It probably is in need of a thorough
rework. However, it's doubtful it was all that great in the first
place, although replacing a lot of caps and resistors and redoing
solder joints and a good cleaning could not hurt. The console's P&G
sliders had a beautiful feel and I imagined for a minuite I was either
Kramer at Electric Lady tracking Jimi, or Scotty running the
Transporter. However, I prefer a calibrated, detented precision matched
attenuator over any kind of pot, in fact, I consider it a requirement
for really serious listening.

4. This listening session was more a fun exercise and a chance to play
with some old stuff than a serious scientific exercise. This is a hobby
after all. However, if time permits, I would like to be able to explore
some ideas I have had for a long time such as the possibility of
building a dedicated dissimilar two channel amplifier to bi-amp the
speakers conveniently, believing as I have the "choke point" in all
conventional systems these days is the passive crossover. Altogether,
it was a lot of fun.

wrote

snip


LISTENING

We spent approximately four hours listening, comparing the sound of
the K-Horns with the original and new driver and crossovers in various
positions in the room, volume levels, and with the various amplifiers
and preamps we had available. I chose to have the owner connect and
disconnect the different drivers without telling me which was which,
but we put the equipment on the "back podium" as he calls it, which is
a dedicated gear area resembling, by intent and in fact, a cross
between a FOH board position and the navigator/helmsman's station on
the fictional Starship Enterprise (NCC-1701 as originally shown in the
original Star Trek episodes.) It has two turntables and CD/DVD/SACD
players and a purpose built "console preamp" with balanced and
unbalanced inputs, Penny and Giles faders, and a tube 10.7 MHz FM "back
end" driven by ICOM wideband receivers. We "patched out" the sources to
enable us to listen to some regular preamps (his ARC and a MX110 Mac
and my M7C clone.)

CONCLUSIONS-Abridged

1. There was no question that the re-tweetered K-horns were in every
instance and with all equipment superior. Without a flowery display of
J. Gordon Holt's subjective vocabulary, the retweetered configuration
had more openness, air, upper-end detail, and a more seamless sounding
integration between the midrange and treble registers than the stock
horn did. Loud, brief passages were very noticeably more realistic,
clearer, and less squashed sounding. The difference is so great that in
my opinion the Klipsch company should be told, in no uncertain terms,
to "**** or get off the pot"-upgrade or quit the classic horn line
altogether and leave the field to other parties. The stock K-horn is
now difficult to take seriously, in our opinion.

2. The owner's Moscode amplifiers were the best sounding amps overall,
although the humble SMART/Haflers had more of a mid-to-treble presence
which I personally slightly preferred on the Rodgers "Sea" soundtrack
and on the group singing passages on the "bad gospel" material. The
homebuilt EL84 amp was the tubiest sounding-no surprise-which proved
actually annoying on the Beatles and Stones tracks. The Bryston was a
excellent sounding if slightly bland unit and so was the MC225. Overall
the amps sounded more alike than different and none of the group, even
the EL84 amp, made nearly the difference the tweeter swap did.

3. Of the preamps, the ARC had the best sounding phono section,
although not as good as the dedicated solid state console phono
preamps. We used a Sumiko cartridge, "the next to the most expensive",
which the console preamps were designed specifically for and "voiced"
using NAB test records and a Hewlett Packard 8903 which lives in the
console. My M7C was slightly lesser in several ways such as definition
and articulation of sibilants and fricatives, especially on Sinatra's
magnificent "Come Dance With Me" and "Sinatra's Swingin' Session".
However, it was quieter. The line sections were indistinguishable. The
Mac MX110, simply put, stunk. It probably is in need of a thorough
rework. However, it's doubtful it was all that great in the first
place, although replacing a lot of caps and resistors and redoing
solder joints and a good cleaning could not hurt. The console's P&G
sliders had a beautiful feel and I imagined for a minuite I was either
Kramer at Electric Lady tracking Jimi, or Scotty running the
Transporter. However, I prefer a calibrated, detented precision matched
attenuator over any kind of pot, in fact, I consider it a requirement
for really serious listening.

4. This listening session was more a fun exercise and a chance to play
with some old stuff than a serious scientific exercise. This is a hobby
after all. However, if time permits, I would like to be able to explore
some ideas I have had for a long time such as the possibility of
building a dedicated dissimilar two channel amplifier to bi-amp the
speakers conveniently, believing as I have the "choke point" in all
conventional systems these days is the passive crossover. Altogether,
it was a lot of fun.


Thanks for sharing this report. I'm glad you did. I enjoy reading the
LISTENING section but not surprise that you we're easily able to
verify sonic differences. This also goes to show the practicality and
efficiency of sighted comparison. You concluded that this was a fun
exercise as it appear to be, and it should be!

Back in the early '80s a friend of mine and I built K horns using plans
from Speaker Lab.
We talked to a Klipsch rep at the CES show that year and found out that
the drivers they were using at the time were made by Eminence in
Linconwood Il.
My friend and I decided to use JBL speakers.
One of the best JBL bass speakers at the time was the D140F which I still
use, JBL mid range drives-horns and JBL tweeters, Xovers.
We would listen to some telarc LP( YES records, it was the early '80s),
then take them to the nearest Klipsch dealer and play the LPs on the stock
speakers, then go back home and listen on our speakers again. Not the best
A-B testing scenaro, but still after a few time it became clear that our
JBL loaded K horns did sound better. John