I recently purchased a set of theses and just wanted to give my opinion of them. I'm no expert on the subject but I feel I should try to give my 2 cents up as to maybe help somebody else who is considering purchasing them.
I don't like the way they sound. They have a woofer that is 4 ohm and has a 95.3 SPL rating and that is mated with a Faital 140 HF driver that is 16 ohm and has a SPL of 109. that's a 14 db difference between the drivers. I'm assuming the attenuation compensation is what is coloring the sound so bad. anyways I'm gonna be moving on to something else now as I can't stand these anymore.
I don't like the way they sound. They have a woofer that is 4 ohm and has a 95.3 SPL rating and that is mated with a Faital 140 HF driver that is 16 ohm and has a SPL of 109. that's a 14 db difference between the drivers. I'm assuming the attenuation compensation is what is coloring the sound so bad. anyways I'm gonna be moving on to something else now as I can't stand these anymore.
Are you saying it has no way to shelve down the 'hot' horn and/or has no CD horn EQ to flatten it? Regardless, isn't there a Klipsch forum where you can maybe get some good help with these? I mean I looked at the info when you first posted about them and saw nothing intrinsically wrong with the basic concept.
GM
GM
the term cornscala no longer has any meaning. Initially it was an attempt to use the components from a La Scala and put it in a vented box with the venting of a Cornwall. The geometry differed in order to accommodate the depth of the mid horn (K401).
But there are now so many variations and substitutions it is hard to know what the result is (it probably has relatively few Klipsch parts in it).
As such the user is own his own for choosing drivers and setting up a crossover. Unfortunately, that is the heart of speaker design and a difficullt one to attempt casually.
If it is faithful to the Bob Crites implementation, then I would ask him.
But there are now so many variations and substitutions it is hard to know what the result is (it probably has relatively few Klipsch parts in it).
As such the user is own his own for choosing drivers and setting up a crossover. Unfortunately, that is the heart of speaker design and a difficullt one to attempt casually.
If it is faithful to the Bob Crites implementation, then I would ask him.
seems like a great combination to me and I prefer a two way to a three way especially when listening in the near field. Have you played with placement and with different amplifiers. The efficiency difference you mention is normal and I doubt very much the cause of your concern. I would not move on so easily I expect that you have a very good loudspeaker there. I would fully expect it to easily out perform a stock Cornwall. Have you worked with Bob to see if you can resolve your issues with this loudspeaker? Best regards Moray James.
No I haven't really talked to bob other that telling him I didn't like how they sounded and was wondering if he was interested in buying back the components. He wasn't. I pieced together a single order crossover set at 900 hz ( a .70 mh air core inductor on the LF and a 11.1 cap on the HF) It was much more open and clear sounding but the horn was killing me. I tried a zobel across the woofer, that didn't help and I could have wired in my 16 ohm attenuators but the last time I tried them on my altec 604s it did the same thing, you could tell they were coloring the sound. Other than that they sounded very nice!!
I agree calling them Cornscalas is like calling a chevy a volkswagen because it has 4 wheels and a motor,
Greg, All I see is a 2nd order crossover with an autoformer tossed in... Not sure if an autoformer is supposed to attenuate or match impedance?
I agree calling them Cornscalas is like calling a chevy a volkswagen because it has 4 wheels and a motor,
Greg, All I see is a 2nd order crossover with an autoformer tossed in... Not sure if an autoformer is supposed to attenuate or match impedance?
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I just had a thought although probably not a problem but, The neo magnet HF driver is not very far from the crossover .... I'd say somewhere between 2 and 6 inches. I wonder if that would have any effect on how they sound? also the first time I opened them up I noticed that they had the wires that go to the HF driver shoved in so far that both of them were touching the aluminum cap on the back of the driver? It was that way on both speakers.
I would suggest that you play these as long and as loud as you can every day for at least a month and then decide if they have made progress. You may be very pleasantly surprised. Best regards Moray James
Using an autoformer to attenuate the compression driver has always sounded superior to my ears. The problem with resistive L-pads is it divorces the driver from the amplifier with a high series resistance. You lose dampening on the compression driver and the resulting sound can be described as being “wooly”. An autoformer attenuates, and can also impedance match. As you attenuate with the autoformer, the reflected impedance seen by the amplifier increases. With a high pass filter this allows you to use smaller value capacitors (higher quality) for the same crossover frequency. There is nothing inherently wrong with the speaker components you have, you just need to work out the proper crossover.
Your 100% correct JLH, This morning when I got home from work I put my simple first order crossovers back in... (.70 mh coil on LF 11.1uf cap on HF) But this time I added my 16 ohm attenuators. It is like a night and day difference. I don't know enough about wiring an autoformer to guarantee a correct crossover and I don't want to rip apart my original crossover to get one. You guys were right, I'm not hearing the colorizing that I though was present when I had used the attenuators before. Now they are everything I wanted in a speaker. clean clear crisp accurate articulate light fast deep not shouty in the least and yet not colored. Extremely happy with them at this point.
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I am glad you got the speakers to sound right, I have herd grate things about Cornscalas. Would be sad to hear bad, just a food for thought do you know what crossover networks are being used. Maybe look into some from ALKEngineering.com he has a great line of crossovers maybe something that would work better. He has one just for the CornScala.
Klipsch loudspeaker corner
Klipsch loudspeaker corner
They're custom jobs from Bob Crites, set at 500hz. I like Alk But haven't checked for crossovers from him. I got pictures I could post up but I'm at work right now and they're at home. Tonight I stuck the zobels back in...yeah, no that wasn't good so I took them back out and then put the port shelves back in....that wasn't pretty either. I wish the ports were as easy to shift around because I think it would be better to have them wrapping around the bottom corners.
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