Vandersteen 3A Sigs vs Klipsch Forte III

tomic601"Since the spatial info is encoded in the signal, somebody walk me thru the physics of how a big baffle improves the image ?
you do get the bounce off the panel and the back wall is 100% distortion...."

No it is not 100% distortion because recordings are made, mixed and mastered to be played over a loudspeaker in some kind of room except lousy recordings that are made to be played in a car although I am not sure that is common practice in the industry today.

Someone mentioned somewhere, that they put a dampening substance inside the horn throat to reduce coloration or resonance. I highly recommend against that. It should all be from the exterior of the horn. 

@tomic601 

No math required. In my particular experience, it's very easy to hear. I'm not saying wide baffles are inherently better at imaging. I'm sure the opposite is often true, but my experience tells me it's not a universal rule. Some of the best speakers I've heard, regardless of price, have massive baffles. Anyway, I agree that in the case of Klipsch Heritage speakers, great imaging isn't exactly their forte. 

@heardthat, I do apologize......this thread should be about you, but, I am sure you are enjoying the readings. Always, MrD.

Actually, I just dropped into the website and it appears that the 3A Sigs are still being manufactured. $4795 the pair. Lots of upgrade paths for owners of all the models, too.  

I assumed that treating the Klipsch tweeter with dampening material meant on the exterior of the horn. (although I once stuffed the horn with small wads of packing foam to tame them).  All that did was...obvious.

When I opened my EPIC CF-3’s once I was surprised to discover that all the internal wiring was run-of-the-mill speaker wire, perhaps 14 gauge. 

The native efficiency of Klipsch does offer a degree of practicality in terms of finding a suitable amplifier - meaning that one doesn’t necessarily need “gobs” of power on tap to make them show their stuff.  I used a Cayin A35T integrated amp with mine for a while and that was a “mere” 35 watts in triode, 16 watts ultralinear - which I preferred to use 90% of the time. 

Now, along with tube amplification, class D offers considerable price/value sonics for any brand of speaker out there.