klipsch cornwall iv upgraded crossovers

Mine were lined 100% inside with No-Rez. I ripped it out of one of them to the point of stock and compared them. I preferred the one without the No Rez. The No Rez seemed to suck the life out of them. I left the dynamat on the mid range horn. 
 

@ptrck887 , 

How are your CWs positioned? Mine have slap yo mamma tight bass. 

Thanks Mofojo,

I'm pretty good at speaker placement....these happened to end up at 5' off the frontt wall, 10' tweeter center to tweeter center toed in at approx 6" off each shoulder.  I sit 12' from speaker line and 17 feet off the front wall.  Incredible immersive soundstage...as I said the bass isn't bad and frankly I can live with it.  I have had other systems in other rooms where the bass was so focused and real I'd just like to get closer to that....thinking maybe the Townsend Isolation bars may help.  BTW...I'm on a 6" concrete slab floor carpeted.  Simple cork sandwiches helped.

Thanks

Just tuning into this interesting conversation now because I’m considering the CW IV’s.

I understand the various factors here. It is hard to see the logic of the CW’s not being improvable, unless the argument is that these speakers were designed without any price point consideration and they just happened to wind up at a mere $6k or so.

My guess is that if you found the engineers who designed these and got a few beers into them, they’d have all kinds of opinions as to how they would have perfected the design if they were allowed to spend more on parts or design. Note -- not what this or that user or DIY person wants to put in, but the designers themselves.

That could be wrong, but I’d be very shocked if they just happened to make the perfect speaker (given the design) at this price.

I've been enjoying my Cornwall IVs for a few years now and thought it's time for an upgrade. I did the Dynamat thing on both horns which really improved the sound: More open, holographic, I'm surprised! Now I could put more on the baskets of the bottom speakers (let's see) and dampen the cabinet. And that's why I'm posting: Can anyone tell me how to do that and what material can be used? (I hope I didn't miss any important information in the discussion above.)

@ptrck887 

"I’m pretty good at speaker placement....these happened to end up at 5’ off the frontt wall, 10’ tweeter center to tweeter center toed in at approx 6" off each shoulder.  I sit 12’ from speaker line and 17 feet off the front wall.  Incredible immersive soundstage...as I said the bass isn’t bad and frankly I can live with it.  I have had other systems in other rooms where the bass was so focused and real I’d just like to get closer to that....thinking maybe the Townsend Isolation bars may help.  BTW...I’m on a 6" concrete slab floor carpeted.  Simple cork sandwiches helped."

The original concept of the Cornwall was "corner wall" referring to placement as an adjunct to the Klipschorn which was strictly designed for corner placement, the Cornwall could be placed against a front wall or in a front corner depending on the audiophile’s needs. It was intentionally designed as a front ported speaker so that it’s close proximity to a wall or corner would reinforce and flatten the bass response as in the corner horn principal and give an added boost in efficiency of the low end.

@perkadin 

"@larryi well said. Changes are not guaranteed to be improvements and there certainly seems to be a tendency towards more is better. That’s kind of where I was going with bringing cognitive dissonance into the conversation, it provides a behavioral explanation as to why a rational person might go down that path and then vehemently justify their choices.
@rajugsw’s video is a perfect illustration. He took a wonderful sounding speaker, dampened it every way imaginable, and then rebuilt the crossovers that were recently updated for that generation. Fortunately the dampening is reversible, and if the upgraded crossover parts are the same spec as the oem design I don’t think there’s any harm done. If anything the durability should be improved. Would still love to hear a demo since the dampening effects should be apparent on YT audio.

Personally I tend to “trust the chef” but I get why people like to tinker and modify, it’s a fun part of the hobby. Every room is different so it’s not like you can expect everything to be optimized straight from the factory. My mods tend to come through positioning and amplification. I don’t even like to use tone controls, but I see value in them along w advanced room correcting software.  Mostly though I get annoyed when industry people overstate the value of these mods and the assumption that they will result in a noticeable improvement."

I share your sentiments and find the Cornwall IV’s execution ameliorates almost any complaint a horn speaker enthusiast could have regarding typical horn traits. Since Roy Delgado took over as chief engineer at Klipsch, he and his team have introduced many novel design tweaks to their compression drivers, tractrix flares (mumps as an example) and perfected the crossover networks while continuing to use steep 18 dB and 24 dB per octave slopes.

The Cornwall IVs I use are not the first Klipsch’s I’ve owned but seem to embody everything the company has been trying to achieve in it’s 80-year history.

I don’t have the biggest listening room but the Cornwall IVs as large as they are work very well powered by either of the 5 - 6-watt class AB tube integrateds I have. The large 30 inch or so speaker array from the woofer to the tweeter and the finely honed crossover network gives no audible clues to it’s size from my 7.5 foot equilateral triangle listening position and essentially sounds like a point source. The soundscape is seamless from wall to wall with realistic height and depth and the bass goes all the way down clean and tight to the Cornwall’s minus 6 dB of 35Hz without any of the individual drivers revealing themselves. I attribute that some very cleaver crossover engineering!  

Paul Klipsch’s famous mottos was "What the world needs is a good 5-watt amplifier". He was absolutely correct at least as I have enjoyed my Klipsch speakers over the years as well as all the source components I use to drive my amplifiers.