Go get out your pitchforks, I’ve done a sacrilegious thing. . .

hi @last_lemming,  thanks for posting this.  I'm intrigued.  Acoustic treatment in my listening area is simply not an option.   So equalizer could be a possible solution, even though I'm really resistant to add another component in the pipeline.  

Please allow me to ask a stupid question.  Can you use the remote control to power on/off the unit?  I couldn't tell by looking at the pictures.  Thanks!

Over 40 years in this annoying obsession that masquerades as a hobby and I would decry equalises and the like as tools of the devil. Until. I had a music room built, I upgraded my system to what I wanted.  I plugged it all in and disaster, it sounded terrible. I spent two years, hundreds of hours at the local mens shed, built bass traps that half filled the room and spent nights pulling out my hair isolated in the spare bedroom. The bass was uncontrollable. Until. I installed a minidsp between my pre and power amps. Now no bass boom, no walls and doors rattling, no neighbours writing to the council.  Does it decay the purity of the signal, would it measure less brilliantly, I don't give a ? it sounds superb, I can at last feel the bass from my 200 watt hybrid tube amp and 2 subwoofers, hear the unbelievable soundstage created by my Audio Physic speakers, hear levels of detail from my CD transport  and network bridge, tell the difference when I change the settings on my R2R dac. So technical purity and  distortion figures below a bats audible range are great, good music is better.

Xcool,

You can’t turn The unit on or off, however you can turn bypass on and off and you can turn and control all the different EQ settings which also have presets, on and off with the remote.  So basically you can sit in your chair and mess with all the different EQ frequencies to get exactly what you want and then save it to a setting so you can recall them at any time should want to adjust it for something else without ever leaving your chair. And yes all the EQ knobs rotate to the different settings when you press the EQ remote, however the audio signal is not flowing through the EQ knobs as I understand it. 
 

All I can say is I’ve always questioned an EQ in the audio chain, but in this system it only makes it better without compromising all the other things that audiophiles love to cherish so much, and if the EQ does compromise the quality of the signal somehow, I can’t hear it.

@last_lemming

I like this post. There are no "right" or "wrong" answers here. I can certainly appreciate your affinity to your Loki Max. Tailoring the sound to your liking, effortlessly, and on demand checks a lot of boxes in the plus column.

Klipsch speakers are high on my list of speakers that actually deliver what they promise. I’m quite familiar with Klipsch speakers (I have a mono K’Horn in my loft built in 1958), and have been providing performance modifications to Klipsch speakers for several decades. We recently completed what we refer to as a Level II upgrade on a pair of Forte IIIs. At this level, we focus on keeping the speaker "All Klipsch" with all factory-installed crossover components, drivers and input terminals remaining intact. Dampening horn bodies and speaker frames (including passive radiator), replacing factory cabling with "real" speaker cables, and eliminating spade/lug connections with direct silver solder connections offers tremendous bang for the buck in sonic improvements.

I’’ll save you labor pains and just give you the baby: If you heard a pair of these side by side compared to a pair factory-stock Forte IIIs, I sincerely hope you have on a pair of Depends when you listen for the first time. If taken to a competent shop, expect to pay $700-$800 fo have this work done. (Assuming $200-$300 of the budget for competent speaker cables). If you’re handy with a soldering station, you can do the work yourself. Or, at the very least, a DYI with $20 worth of Dynamat and a couple of hours applying the material in the right places will pay sonic dividends many times the investment.

I am 100% in support of your application of the EQ in your environment. I would also consider (for about half the price of the investment you have in the EQ) extracting a new level of detail, transparency, warmth, imaging, increased dynamic range and less fatigue than you thought possible from your Fortes. You’ve got "big boy stuff" delivering the energy to the Fortes. It’s time to consider a modest investment in a very substantial sonic improvement.

And, I promise, you’ll like your EQ even more than you do now.

Good it works for you. Lose the sacreligious part. And the sacrilegious  part. The religion is suspect. I reserve my pitchfork