Our good friends on the Klipsch board.....

[hemicuda]

Some truth but it's all heresay for the most part. Lascala speakers have a lot more top-end treble and go a little lower from the few pairs I've heard. But they do NOT have the midrange magic that A7 or any other Altecs had. The Lascala is a 3 way design not a 2 way like Altec A7s. The Klipsch use an Eminence woofer and most an EV T-35 tweeter. I think the only Klipsch made driver is the midrange (maybe?). If you read much on the Klipsch forums; you'll see that a LOT of people change the stock midrange from the Lascalas. Also there's a bunch of people putting Altec 511 and 811 horns in place of the original Klipsch tweets/midranges. Why would they do that if Altecs are not as good??? I don't know about the Altecs being more affordable or being the poor mans choice over JBLs either. Neither one was cheap in their time by any means. They were top dollar and ultra hi-quality; Altec & JBL were at the top of their game. Yes, A7 speakers were meant for theaters behind the screens; how do you think they got the name "voice of the theater"??? What they aren't telling you is that the Klipsch Lascala speakers were also designed for about the same reasons; for PA or vocal reproduction and then later refined somewhat for more hi-fi use. Altec A7 speakers are perfectly suitable for hi-fi with minor adjustments to the original design. One is to make the port smaller to extend the lower bass more. Others brace the cabinets more and also rework the original crossovers. Then there is people like me (I have 2 pairs of A7s) that have only unhooked the original crossover and bi-amp them using 2 amps (1 for tweets and 1 for woofers) and then I use an electronic adjustable crossover. This was a big improvement to me. A lot of people think that stock A7s have way too much midrange and I think so too. That's the way they were designed; for long distance vocal intelligibility. Think movie dialogue, etc. But the midrange extreme can be tamed and they can sound REALLY hi-fi if setup correctly. They like big spaces and sound the best in a bigger room. Hope this helps. This is only my opinion. It's all relative and there's always tradeoffs; just the way it is. What one speaker excels at, another fails at and vice versa. I'm sure others will chime in soon. I love my Altecs and everything about them, including the shorcomings and what they excel at too. The benefits of them FAR outweigh their weaknesses. Have a good one.