Klipsch makes great speakers. Very dynamic, very accurate, something that audiophile speaker lacks severely.
Never heard the original "heritage" series (K-horns, Belle, La Scala, etc.), but based on my own speakers which are build around the design principles at least of the Belle Klipsch (mids and tweeters horn, drivers + x-overs are completely different; bass horns are very slightly "tweaked," and close to the original), I certainly agree on the above - insofar also we're dealing in both cases with fully horn-loaded speakers as a design basis and point of reference. I'd say the sound of horn here is denser, more present (yet wholly relaxed), and of with a wonderful ability to effortlessly convey complex material.
They ring a lot compared to beryllium drivers though. Which is both a pro and con.
Klipsch speakers "ringing" I'd wager has more to do with the horn construction and materials used than that used for the diaphragms, though the overall potential of the sound here originated is of course also influenced by the compression drivers as a whole. The original Klipsch horns sport relatively thin-metalled walls, and I imagine they can ring like bells at certain frequencies. I remember though reading of Art Dudleys ventures into modifying a pair of Altec Valencia's he had purchased, where he found damping the mids horns on the backside to have its flipside, so to speak, and robbing the horns of some of their sonic virtues - so much indeed that he found the tweak initiative here to be less productive overall. Same, in a sense, would apply to the man who build my speakers, and how he finds particle board (MDF) to sound "dead," and instead uses a particular kind of plywood to accommodate his preference. Though not beryllium vs. titanium, if this comparison even applies, the inclination towards killing most of the reverberating nature in materials, sometimes to counterproductive effect, is still the prevailing one. That being said, the "ringing a lot" of horns, just going by the reading of it, doesn't appeal to me. Some of JBL's "über"-models, like the K2's, now seem to me slightly on the pale and lack-and-substance side of sonics after being used to listening to horns made of stacked plywood (and a different compression driver). The JBL's here may sound "livelier" (some would say "splashier") in a sense, but to my ears quickly turns into a character less natural and too much "in the way." Oh well, there's livelier, and then there's "livelier"..
