klipsch cornwall iv upgraded crossovers

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.

"@larryi funny enough, I was at the local Klipsch Heritage dealer in town and he swears the Cornwalls sound better with solid state gear. He has his powered by a rebuild/refurbished Marantz 2330 receiver. Different strokes for different folks (I mean, I love my ProAcs with an SET amp), but I would have thought tubes would have been the ticket (although Marantz is known for their warm house sound)."

I, too, have found my CW4's sound better with SS amplification than tubes, of course, it may be the particular tube amp I was using (Dennis Had Inspire).  I should try them with the Oto, but it's a bear to move around.