efzauner

50 and 60 inch RPTVs are no longer 5K. But yes, it is amazing at the price drop. The first Sony RPTVs came out in summer 2003 and prices dropped by almost half 2 years later. By getting rid of the darn projection tubes and upping the volume, they have managed to drop the price. As for RPTV, yes it is a projector in a box, but a bloddy huge box. Think of the cost involved of making that big box: huge injection modling tooling costs, Cost of the big display class, shipping all the parts to the manufacturer, floor space for manufacturing, labor in assembly. Compare that to a small projector made on a conveyor belt. Compare the cost of shipping a 60' rptv from asia vs a small projector. Factor in at home warranty repair for a year or two as well.

The problem with furniture -(and matresses too) is that it is very easy to make identical products look different and avoid direct price shopping. HT furniture is still a premium product and you wont find deep discount at big box furniture stores for a while. Can't wait for China to get in the market. Have you seen what they did to the office chair market? I also recently purchased a real wood veneer bedroom set for my 8 year old daughter. Made somwhere in asia. I paid less than what I paid for cheap paper veneered locally made kids furniture a few years ago.

Where are you? I travel to Boston regularly.

Be very carefull, using a lab journal to collect experimental data is patented. It is a method patent called "method of permanent data recording on cellulose fiber by organically controlled dye indicator"

Actually, many high end car speakers are rebaged Vifa, scanspeak, etc. there is nothing fundamentally different between a car speaker and a home speaker except for form factor and some resistance to moisture. Car tweeters will use Neodymium magnets because they are much smaller. Some High end mid/woofers also use neo magnets. The Klipsch in wall line would probably make very good car speakers, except the horn tweeters may be harder to mount. Many home speaker companies such as Boston, Polk, JM/Focal, CDT and others are quite successful in car speakers. Note that most Bose car systems do use separate woofers and tweeters. But I have thought of using the small cubes mounted up front in the dash. They may work well with a xover freq of 200-300 hertz, with in door mids and a real subwoofer. The big problem with car systems is speaker placement, time allignment, separation of the bottom door mids and in dash tweeter, reflections off the dash and windshield etc. It is really a bad environment for quality sound.

Why waste your time with tin? Why not electroplate GOLD?

Some cars like the new Honda Odyssey have a noise cancelling sound system. I wonder if these would help? Er, no, would need one serious subwoofer in the car capable of 10 hz!

Why can you not do in wall wiring? There are many ways to do this. You can remove baseboards and run wire behind. You can remove door moulding and run wire between the door jamb and 2x4 and then up to the ceiling. etc. You can run wire behind crown moulding. You can even run wire up corners and put a small moulding over it. The only thing to watch for is that there are usually 2x4 running horizontally half way up the wall between studs. If you have a drain pipe running down from a second floor or a vent stack running up there is usually a clear path in the wall beside the pipe. You can put wire inside heating ducts. You can put speaker wire under carpet! There also is flat speaker wire you can put on the wall and then put wall paper or re-plaster and paint over it. Do not be afraid to make a few holes in the wall and patch them up again. The best time to do this sort of thing is when you want to paint/renovate anyway. At least the you have paint to match. But even if you have to make holes in wall when you are not renovating, you can still get away with painting just one wall. You are doing this for the long run, a little more effort now will pay of later. How much is your HT system worth? is it not worth the extra effort to run wires properly?

The pictures of the back looks like they are the same speaker. The wood grain is identical... Probably just a mistake by the seller.

How dead is your old receiver? Just the Power amp? If so, then you can still use the phono preamp and use the preouts into your new receiver.

Oh yes, and my I add that the beautifull blonde's dad had a pair of Khorns. I am not sure which pair I miss most, hers or her dad's

Oh, yes, and another one. Visiting a laser lab at my local university and, simultaneoulsy putting my hand thru the beam and asking "How powerfull is this laser?" Good lesson. I did not do the same thing while visiting the nuclear fusion research lab a few months later...

Um lots over my 44 year life: In no particular order 1: deciding the extension cord made up of a coil of telephone wire(the stuff on poles, not in your house) was too long and cutting it with a pair of uninsulated plyers while it was still plugged in. 2: Heading down the stairs and realizing in mid air that I had just removed the temporary construction steps and the oak steps where not in yet. 3: spending hours installing a high end car audio system with mega watts, electronic cross overs etc and instantly blowing a set of high end tweeters because they where connected to the mid outputs. 4: Finally in bed with the drop dead gorgeous college girl I was chasing after for years and telling her that we had to stop because I just started dating someone else. 5: Having listened to my dad when he said : "Son, never sleep with a woman that you would not marry"... and staying a virgin for more than half my life... 6: Breaking up with the beautiful blond with the Belgian accent and the rich dad because she did not provide me with enough intelectual conversation. Darn, where was the Klipsch Forum back then?

I am assuming you are talking abou the shielded coax from your HT receiver to the amplified active subwoofer. In that case the gauge is not important. This is a low level signal, not a high power signal.

Well, I dont think that is fair if we give you the answers, that would be cheating. However, what do you know about inductors, resistors, and capacitors at very very low frequencies and very very high frequencies? (it's a trick question for the resistors) If you know this answer, then you can solve the circuit. If you do not know the answer, then you need to study your class notes some more.

I just hooked up my XM roady in the house yesterday. It is very easy to set up, and the antenna aiming is not that critical. I dont have the in house adaptor, so I just stuck the antenna on a metal filing cabinet. The choice of music is astounding, and the built in FM transmitter is strong enough to be able to receive on any FM radio in the house! However even with direct connection to my receiver, the quality of the sound is just crap. Sure, no noise etc, but it is compressed like hell and I need to boost the treble like crazy. The quality is worse than good FM, I would say almost AM like. Definitely worse thatn 128kb MP3. The music and radio that my digital cable provider Videotron sends is much much better. It is such a shame that such amzing technology ends up being wasted. I was kinda prepared for that, but got it anyway, I am driving to Boston on Tuesday and music reception along the way is bad, let alone the lack of choice. Ditto for the drive from Montreal-Toronto, which I do regularly. Anyway, I recommend it for background music, or where there not much choice of FM reception. I will report back after my trip to Boston

This is not rocket science. Here is what I would do: Take speakers apart so that you only have the grill, without any fabric backing. Spray paint with high adhesion primer and then with your favorite house paint. If you already painted them, you can try to strip them. 3M has what they call Safest stripper. It is gentler than the normal strippers, but still test it on a small hidden area first to make sure it does not melt anything. You can replace the fabric, it is just dust protection.

There seems to be many Heatkit W-5M tube mono amps on ebay lately selling in the $300 price range. I have a pair, but need to restore them first and that is a longer term project. What is your opinion on them? Compared to other vintage stuff in the same price range?

just go to http://home.pacbell.net/drakcap/ and scroll down to the link

oops. My Bad...

I http://boston.craigslist.org/ele/141130753.html

99% of the heat will be convection as the hot air rises. Very little will be from reflection/radiation from the tubes. If the heat can still get out, I would not worry to much. As long as it is not uncomfortable to touch.

Frankly I have the Led Zep Early days CD and some of the songs are real bad. It hurts to listen to them. Any thing better would be great!

It is not necessarily the dealers fault. Speakers generally have 50% markup ( one of the few items along with accessories that actually make money- if a store sold every piece of electronics at full MSRP, they would not make enough profit to survive...but that is another story). You can probably blame Klipsch for keeping the price high. Borders do still exist as a barrier to trade and information. Only in highly competitive commodity markets, like DVD players, TVs, etc will Canadian prices be close to US x exchange rate. The reverse happened a few years ago with cars, because of the high exchange rate, it was cheaper to buy a car in Canada and ship it to the US. There was a huge gray market of new Silverados going south! With electronics having new models every year, you can juggle prices more often, but most retailers do not like huge price decreases. Why would a store want to cut the price on a set of speakers? It just cuts into their profit and you will have lots of customer comming back to complain and get rebates! Cutting the price by 20% will not increase their sales by 20%. The marketing term for this is elasticity of demand. The demand for speakers is inelastic: Cutting prices will not increase sales enough to compensate. I dont like it either, but it is reality.

This has been discussed before: Consumer electronics is a mature market like many others. A handfull of big suppliers distribute thru huge retailers. The high fi guys go thru very small upmarket specialty stores. The middle guy gets squeezed. He wants to sell to the mass market but is outmanuvered by the huge chains, and the big companies dont want to deal with him. The middle guy gets squeezed on the bottom by the specialty store. Same thing with the manufacturers. You have the big guys, the little guys and the ones in between. I fear that Klipsch is one of the inbetweeners. They are not high end enough to be considered esoteric, yet too small to be very successfull in the mass market chains. They do not seem to get the respect of the HiFi crowd. You see several speaker companies including Klipsch introducing, or re-introducing high end products. Paradigm did it with Signature. Although Paradigm is really one of the big boys how. A further problem is the house brand speakers. It is hard to cut prices on a HT receiver, but you can cut prices on speakers, better yet, put together a HT bundle with a big brand receiver and house brand, made in China speakers, and advertise at a huge discount. We all know people who buy Blose because they recognise the brand, but think that Polk, Paradigm, Klipsh, Monitor Audio etc are unknown brands. They therefore do not differentiate between a house brand ad a good quality name brand speaker. Same thing in cars: You have the big three, and then the very specialized like ferarri etc. The Volvos, Sabbs etc get squeezed out. Big electronics companies are at fault: They have commodized the market. Consumers are at fault as they refuse to buy unless there is a deal to be had! Only the retailers and manufacturers who manage to create consumer demand, and differentiate their product thru service (the small retailer concentrating on custom installs) technology or advertising(like Blose!, like it or not) are surviving. Of course you will always have a boutique market with high end gear and accessories, but that is tiny compared to the Sony/Pana/Samsung triumvirate. Ha! the fun world of consumer electronics!