PWK Sound Lab Tour

My tour started off with a visit to an anechoic chamber used to test the speakers. This was an eerie and amazing experience.  Then it went into the Sound Lab where I was able to hear music played from some amazing speakers. After this the tour went across the street and covered Klipsch’s discovery of the importance of horn  s for sound reproduction.  The museum has a record of the decades with images of the developments Jim Hunter, leading the tour talked about the transition from radio being a solitary exercise listened to on headphones to speakers.  The only really good sound was in movie theaters.  Klipsch aimed to have home speakers be as good as movie theaters.  He was given an unlimited budget by Coolidge to develop the 555 Bell speaker – sells today for $5 or $10000 on ebay.  He was only beaten by two people – Tesla and Edison in the development of the cartridge.  He liked to try the competitors’ speakers and Jim Hunter, who led the tour showed an example of a speaker which Klipsch had attached to a horn and greatly improved the sound in terms of both projection and quality.  Klipsch tried to patent the corner horn and was told to take a number as there were many corner horns on the market but his is the only one which survives.