musichal
poet emeritus
The problem with a bottleneck is its preclusive effect on assessment of an entire system; judgment is suspect until traffic is relieved at the restriction. That's just the nature of the bottleneck beast.
I have known for the last few years that my Adcom amplification resides higher up the food chain than the Paradigm 7se II speakers, but must admit that I had wondered about the Lexicon DC-1 preamp. After all, not only is it a preamp, but a HT processor, too. On top of that, even if you feed it an analogue signal, the first thing it does is convert that to digital. So how good can it really be? Just how many bottlenecks do I have in this system anyway?
Enter the Klipsch Forte. Mine are the original, not the II, in all their oiled walnut glory. Klipsch built them in Hope, Arkansas, from 1985 to '89 - just five years - which was a pretty short run at the time for this manufacturer which had models they'd been building for decades. A lot of people loved the Fortes, and they quickly became the darlings of the audiophile community. Not really on that remark after the comma, LOL.
Fact is Klipsch may well be second only to Bose as the brand some people love to hate, and the high-end guys tend to be some of their greatest dissenters. The badge is often styled as a polarizing love-it-or-hate-it proposition, and those who love them sometimes feel slighted due to insulting comments by some who hate them. Well, that's something new in the hobby, eh? LOL, not. [EDIT: Re-reading this I feel the need to add that I do not consider the "high-end guys" as I stated it to be snobbish or insulting - by far most are very friendly, intelligent and well-informed people with completely acceptable table manners - so no stereotyping was intended - a minority of any group can make some raucous noises.]
For those of us who love a classic Klipsch Heritage speaker, the fervor sometimes engendered by distractors can be quite baffling, to use a good speaker term. However, the mature among us just don't care and those who hate horns in general and Klipsch in particular probably should simply avoid buying a pair, which is not all that difficult an accomplishment. Please feel free to describe how badly my speakers suck. Really. It just sort of brightens my day to have a good laugh.
So, with the bottleneck opened up by the Fortes, I've had the joy of discovering that my Lexicon is a pretty damn good two-channel preamp, just as What Hi-fi? reported after their revisit of the rather long-in-the-tooth model fairly recently. That was nice to find.
Yes, I'm hearing instruments via the Fortes that went missing for my old ears with the 7se II's. It wasn't that I'd never heard them previously, as sometimes is remarked by folks after a speaker change, it's just that it has been many years since I've heard them. For example, I listened to the once-popular Double Vision album by Bob James and David Sanborn this morning and heard some percussive instruments and some keyboard filigree in the upper registers that went missing with the more recessed Paradigms.
However, I'm not going to attempt a blow-by-blow account of everything I've been auditioning since getting these speakers home Sunday night. The improvement in sound quality here has been across the board and hands-down astounding. Bass is articulate and effortless, and the improvement in dynamic response breath-takingly obvious. Mids are more up front, and that is a plus for my aging hearing as is the increase in HF energy. Are they the perfect old man speaker as a customer my current age once told me almost thirty years ago? Maybe so. For me, definitely.
I can't stop listening to them. Recorded music never sounded better to me, and I'm doing the old gotta-hear-all-that-stuff-I-love thing we do when presented with a major upgrade. As I type this, though, on my desk-top PC, I'm listening to the Paradigm Mini Monitors v3 which moved here from the bedroom system. Now at the proper height, they sound great and are a huge upgrade from the various speakers which preceded them in this room.
They were supplanted by the 7se IIs which went from the main system to the bedroom system. The 7se IIs now sit on their stands which in turn are atop a pair of tables, so are more than a foot higher then they were in the living room. Sound much more open this way. So it was a chain reaction upgrade for my three systems, with both pair of Paradigms landing in positions which suited them better. Just meant to be is what I prefer to think.
Finally, for those who asked. The Paradigm PS-1000 subwoofer remains in the living room set to roll off at 50hz and providing that LF heft to which I've grown accustomed. The Fortes have great bass on their own, but for that realism down deep this works very well. It stays.
I have known for the last few years that my Adcom amplification resides higher up the food chain than the Paradigm 7se II speakers, but must admit that I had wondered about the Lexicon DC-1 preamp. After all, not only is it a preamp, but a HT processor, too. On top of that, even if you feed it an analogue signal, the first thing it does is convert that to digital. So how good can it really be? Just how many bottlenecks do I have in this system anyway?
Enter the Klipsch Forte. Mine are the original, not the II, in all their oiled walnut glory. Klipsch built them in Hope, Arkansas, from 1985 to '89 - just five years - which was a pretty short run at the time for this manufacturer which had models they'd been building for decades. A lot of people loved the Fortes, and they quickly became the darlings of the audiophile community. Not really on that remark after the comma, LOL.
Fact is Klipsch may well be second only to Bose as the brand some people love to hate, and the high-end guys tend to be some of their greatest dissenters. The badge is often styled as a polarizing love-it-or-hate-it proposition, and those who love them sometimes feel slighted due to insulting comments by some who hate them. Well, that's something new in the hobby, eh? LOL, not. [EDIT: Re-reading this I feel the need to add that I do not consider the "high-end guys" as I stated it to be snobbish or insulting - by far most are very friendly, intelligent and well-informed people with completely acceptable table manners - so no stereotyping was intended - a minority of any group can make some raucous noises.]
For those of us who love a classic Klipsch Heritage speaker, the fervor sometimes engendered by distractors can be quite baffling, to use a good speaker term. However, the mature among us just don't care and those who hate horns in general and Klipsch in particular probably should simply avoid buying a pair, which is not all that difficult an accomplishment. Please feel free to describe how badly my speakers suck. Really. It just sort of brightens my day to have a good laugh.
So, with the bottleneck opened up by the Fortes, I've had the joy of discovering that my Lexicon is a pretty damn good two-channel preamp, just as What Hi-fi? reported after their revisit of the rather long-in-the-tooth model fairly recently. That was nice to find.
Yes, I'm hearing instruments via the Fortes that went missing for my old ears with the 7se II's. It wasn't that I'd never heard them previously, as sometimes is remarked by folks after a speaker change, it's just that it has been many years since I've heard them. For example, I listened to the once-popular Double Vision album by Bob James and David Sanborn this morning and heard some percussive instruments and some keyboard filigree in the upper registers that went missing with the more recessed Paradigms.
However, I'm not going to attempt a blow-by-blow account of everything I've been auditioning since getting these speakers home Sunday night. The improvement in sound quality here has been across the board and hands-down astounding. Bass is articulate and effortless, and the improvement in dynamic response breath-takingly obvious. Mids are more up front, and that is a plus for my aging hearing as is the increase in HF energy. Are they the perfect old man speaker as a customer my current age once told me almost thirty years ago? Maybe so. For me, definitely.
I can't stop listening to them. Recorded music never sounded better to me, and I'm doing the old gotta-hear-all-that-stuff-I-love thing we do when presented with a major upgrade. As I type this, though, on my desk-top PC, I'm listening to the Paradigm Mini Monitors v3 which moved here from the bedroom system. Now at the proper height, they sound great and are a huge upgrade from the various speakers which preceded them in this room.
They were supplanted by the 7se IIs which went from the main system to the bedroom system. The 7se IIs now sit on their stands which in turn are atop a pair of tables, so are more than a foot higher then they were in the living room. Sound much more open this way. So it was a chain reaction upgrade for my three systems, with both pair of Paradigms landing in positions which suited them better. Just meant to be is what I prefer to think.
Finally, for those who asked. The Paradigm PS-1000 subwoofer remains in the living room set to roll off at 50hz and providing that LF heft to which I've grown accustomed. The Fortes have great bass on their own, but for that realism down deep this works very well. It stays.
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