efzauner

balanced hookups are for long runs and are designed to reduce noise/interferance pickup. You will not gain anything if your pre and power amp are sitting on top of each other. Do you have a noise problem?

Did you think of turning the "L" into an equipment area and/or storage closet? I have the same problem, with the sump at the front left of a 12x18 room that will eventually be the HT room (after the laundry room, mud room, kitchen... is renovated) My idea was to hide it under a stage/Subwoofer raised section.

It is not easy to find a side by side comparison of Bo$e vs another brand at most dealers: the dealer contract forbids "denigrating" the brand. In other words, if you do a comparison and tell the customer: "Gee, the Klipsch speakers do sound better than the Bo$se" you risk loosing your dealer contract.

I do find one of the weak links is the rather flimsy quick connects between the crossover and the speaker, especially over time. If you have the back open I would certainly look at improving the connection. Soldering is a good way but be carefull not to damage the tinsel, or drop hot solder on the cone or rubber surrounds!

At audio frequencies you don't care about cable characteristic impedance. Especially at subwoofer frequencies that are under 100 cycles per second. You are doing fine with your Monster cable. Overkill really.

Jeff, Just use the link I gave to the AWG chart. 14 guage is about 2.5 ohms per 1000 feet. that equals to 1/4 ohm for 50 feet. 12 gauge is about a third less. 14 guage will still be fine for background listening. You are not going to puch more than a watt or so average anyway.... Why could you not find thicker gauge in wall wiring? It is readily available.

you obviously did not google it. took 3 hits to find http://www.historicphotoarchive.com/rep/heathkit_aa151.htm Enjoy.

This is surely going to be amazing. They do make the best speakers in the world, the article says so, right? Just imagine all those top notch engineers now putting their talents towards the auto industry. I just can't wait to get my hands on one. It does make incredible sense, the similarity between speakers and active suspension is incredible. Both are basically electromagnets, and the DSP control circuitry is the same. Hey maybe they will even use the same paper mache! It does a super job in speakers to dampen cone resonances, I assume it will do the same to dampen suspension. That's how they can get rid of shock absorbers!

OK, here is the low down on distribution chain and why your local dealer cannot easily get any product he wants. First let me say that once a customer came into my store and asked to buy PSB speakers. I told him I dont cary that line... but could I interest him in some Paradigms... He said he wanted PSB and if I could get them. I explained again that I am not a PSB dealer. He got all upset because he though I could just get whatever I wanted and sell it. I asked: Does your independant Buick Dealer sell Ford? No, Does your Honda Dealer sell Accura? No. Because the dealer signs a contract with the manufacturer that defines the terms of business. He got all upset and left. So back to audio. When a dealer signs a contract with a manufacturer he promises the following: Cary adequate demo and inventory, advertise, know the product and accurately represent it, and support it. The key items are adequate demo, inventory and advertise. The rest is determined by the kind of support the store wants to give. So Klipsch and your local dealer agreed to sell a particular line of speakers because: 1: This what he believed he could sell in the area, 2: He had the finances to purchase demo stock and inventory to carry enough of the line. 3: He had receivers, amps etc to properly demo the products. 4: He was willing to spend money on advertising the product. Klipsch will also deterine how many dealers they want in a particular are. It makes no sense to have too many dealers because that leads to price wars, and if dealers cannot make enough profit, they drop the line. We all like competition and capitalism, but dealers must be in business in order to compete! So, there are a few reasons why you may not be able to get a higher end Klipsch speaker from your local dealer: 1: He does not think he can sell enough to justify the investment in demo, inventory, advertising, higher end receivers etc. 2: Klipsch already has a dealer in the area and also does not think that the market can support more dealers. 3: Dealer may already have a higher end line of speakers, and again cannot justify carying a second high end line. Sometimes your dealer may be able to get the product from a "competing" store that does carry it, but this is rare, and only if they have a good relationship. But both stores will want to make some profit, plus you will still want a discount, plus there is shipping costs, and then there is the warranty issue: your local store is not an authorized dealer and if you move to another area and need service, your invoice will be useless. This just adds up to too much effort, problems, etc for too little money. bottom line: Try to talk to the owner of you store, let him know you are serious, and maybe he can do something for you. Another distribution tid bit: Manufacturers are a bit in a bind: they can grow 3 ways: 1: have your dealers sell more, But you are tied to the dealer's growth rate 2: sign up more dealers, but this adds competition, price erosion, and risks alienating dealers and they drop your product 3: introduce more products: different price/quality: Synergy, reference, heritage etc. Or different markets: Ipod, PC speakers. etc. The natural progression for manufacturers is to start small and sell a limited product line thru smaller specialty dealers. As they grow, they increase the number of dealers, dealer profit declines and at a certain point the manufacturers have no choice but to move to big box stores much to the chagrin of the smaller store. They try to have one product line for small dealers and another for big box but this does not alway work.(eg Yamaha HTR vs RXV. arguably the same product with different label, or Sony and Sony XBR) Eventually the small dealers find another manufacturer to sell and drop the original product line.

Here is a good explanation of Dielectric absorption and some models. Should be easy enough to put into a xover simulation to see what kind of output distortion (linear of course!) it causes! http://www.national.com/rap/Application/0,1570,28,00.html Note that it really only applies to caps charged with DC for a long time. I dont think it will affect ac very much. The additional caps and resistors models seem very small. I may try to simulate it. Bob? Any comments?

JBryan AWG (american wire gauge) is a standard. The smaller the number, the thicker it is, and the lower resistance per unit lenght it has. Therefore, yes, 32 gauge copper wire has much more resistance than 10 gauge. About 162 times more resistance. You can find an AWG table in many places on the web... here is one http://www.komeil.com/awg.htm Find AWG 32 and it says 162 ohms per Kft or 1000 feet. So divide 162 by 1000 and that gives 0.162 ohms per foot. For a 10 foot cable run, you have 10 feet per conductor, and you have 2 conductors. That makes a total of 20 feet. So 20 x .162 is about 3.24 Ohms. You can figure out the other ones yourself. Keep you speaker wire resistance at less than say, 5% (this number is debatable but a good starting point) of your lowest speaker impedance and you should be fine. For most stereo installations, the speakers are 5-15 feet away, with maybe 20 feet of cable. I find 10 gauge a bit big to work with, I prefer 12. So 20x2x1.69=.067 ohms. That is 1.7% of the resistance of a 4 ohm speaker and you should be fine. Remember that the speaker voice coil is nothing more than a very long copper wire with about 4 or 8 ohms resistance. So adding .1 ohms is not gonna make much difference. The amplifier output also has internal resistance. So keep things in perspective. Without some basic electrical or electronics knowledge, how do you know that using AWG 32 magnet wire will not harm your system? From an electrical point of view, it will not harm it, but it will sound like crap because of the added resistance. I would also be concerned with the fragility of it. It would be easy to get the conductors caught on a sharp metal edge, scratch of the thin insulation and cause a short. There are good reasons why you don't see this stuff sold for speaker wire. You cannot simply blindly experiment with all sorts of odd configurations. Speaker wire has 3 basic characteristics: resistance, inductance, and capacitance. Blindly play around and you don't know what you will get. There are actually some very high cost exotic speaker wire that have inductance and/or capacitance high enought that it can harm cheap amplifiers. here is another good speaker wire web site: http://www.roger-russell.com/wire/wire.htm

Magnet wire is simply solid copper wire with a thin enamel insulator that can withstand higher heat. It is used for winding coils such as electromagnets and inductors. Any electric motor, transformer, speaker, crossover, darn even your door bell has magnet wire inside. Some fancy high power handling speakers will have aluminium wire to reduce weight, or even wire that it rectangular instead of round so that it is very tightly wound and can conduct heat better from the inside to the outside. When comparing AWG, solid wire has a slightly lower resistance, maybe a percent or two. The difference is negligible I believe.

32 gauge? Why on earth? 32 gauge stranded or solid has about 0.165 ohm per foot. For a 10 foot run you will add 20x.165=3.3 ohms of resistance to your setup! That is HUGE. If your speakers are 4 ohms, you are lossing half the power in your speaker wires. No wonder your bass sounded muddy, your damping factor was reduced considerably. Am I missing something here?

Hello Why use magnet wire? In terms of conductivity, there will be no difference between equivalent gauges of stranded and magnet wire. However after conductivity, or overall resistance, the next factors in speaker wire is the distance between conductors. Zip cord is has almost an ideal separation. Capacitance goes up as the wires get closer together and inductance increases as the wires get further apart. This is also why 10-12 guauge is also the best. 8 gauge is thick and has thicker insulation and therefore the wires tend to be further apart and have higher inductance. So the question is, how are you going to run the 2 individual conductors? The best thing to do would be to twist them. However, the bottom line is that there is no advantage to using magnet wire, and many disadvantages, one of them being that it is stiff, and if you get a kink, it is hard to remove and tends to weaken the wire and it then breaks easily. There is a very good analysis of speaker wire at www.audioholics.com.

Having said what I did about service, I do agree to support my local shop if they are at least competitive. They do not have to be the cheapest. This fine for HIFI specialty gear, but let's be honest, I do not think that Samsung or Sony, or Toshiba really supports the small shops very well. They all know that Big Box is the future. They also have very little loyalty for the little store so why should you be loyal to them? Why is it OK for Samsung to make a business decision and sell thru big box because it is more profitable, at the detriment of the little guy, but when you decide that it is better business for you to shop internet, then you are a bad guy? Same thing goes for the buy American (or buy Canadian for me). All the big US manufacurers outsource to China to make more profit, but if you buy something made overseas you are being unamerican... The Sonys, Toshibas, Samsungs etc dont care who sells it, as long as they are making profit. They are all trying to reduce the number of distributors they sell thru to cut costs and overhead. That is the only way they are going to survive against China! Getting a bit off topic, but you get the idea. lets stick to debating good sound instead of world economics!

Getting after sales service should not be a problem. Find out who does local service for Samsung. You can find this from the Samsung website, yellow pages, or even call a local dealer that is the authorized dealer for Samsung. If the internet dealer is an authorized dealer then Samsung or the authorized service center will honour the warranty.The only down side is that if the local authorized service center is also the local dealer. He may not give you good service, especially if you shopped there and purchased online. I know of a local specialty audio/video store that has been the only authorized repair center for Sony for 30 years in a 100mile radius. A big box store then opened not 5 minutes away and signed with Sony. Guess what? The specialty dealer was so pissed that he told Sony that he was going to refuse any warranty repair of products sold at the big box store! Luckily he had enough clout and the big box store was mainly in the furniture business and was not big on audio/video yet. As for shipping to and from the repair center, most 27inch and up TVs are covered by an at home warranty. They dont want stuff damaged in transit by you. For a nominal fee they will pick stuff up from your home. Why carry a $3000 TV to the shop on your own for repair? After the warranty is out, who cares? Samsung Authorized service doesnt care where you purchased it from if you pay for the repair. Interesting note: Costco often imports greymarket goods and the manufacturer does not honor the warranty, however Costco has their own warranty and will cover the cost for repair by the authorized repair center. The only issue is if it is grey market and there are parts that are not imported by the manufacturerer, you are outa luck. Even things like service manuals may not be available for grey market goods.

hi all There are a par of LaScala industrial bass bins in Ottawa (Kanata) available. If any of you want to bid and win, I would be happy to pick em up and hold them until you can make shipping or pickup arrangements (They will sit beside my own laScalas until then). I live near Montreal and would be able to pick em up the week of Nov 21 http://cgi.ebay.ca/Klipsch-La-Scala-woofers_W0QQitemZ5828398599QQcategoryZ14993QQssPageNameZWDVWQQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem

used to own a store...Sold Alpine, Pioneer, Clarion. All quite good. You wont go wrong with the low end Pioneers, and never had a return on a Clarion. but the Alpines have a really nice MP3 file search and scroll feature and change mp3 songs real fast. You probably wont find any aftermarket in-dash changers. One good option is to get an in in dash MP3 cd player and copy ten or so cds to a single MP3 cd. That way you will have lots of songs on one CD AND you will keep the originals from getting scratched up. If you wife is like mine, the CDs get tossed onto the seat and all scratched up. I have an Escape with an in dash CD changer. I changed the in door speakers to better aftermarket units with a dome tweeter. The sound improvement is amazing. The in dash changer is not that bad actually. I could not change it because it is a company suppled leased vehicle. Most fords fit 5x7 drop ins even if the spec says 6x8. Mine fit the Polk Momo 5x7 but the Carbon series will do fine too. I would be happy to help you some more.

Best selling according to who? Is there a reputable non-biased market study to back this? Or is it more Bo$e BS?

What about my idea: Take a Lascala, cut of the top, and lay it on its side. Then take the K400 and shove it in the top doghouse opening, and take the tweeter and put it in the K400 opening? Your heard it here first. My idea, my patent and copyright. Or what about LaScala top section, with 2 12" K22 on each side? This would be 4 feet wide but only 1 foot tall

I dont understand why everyone always seems to talk about HK, Denon, Onkyo, yamaha, but very rarely Pioneer or Pioneer Elite. Why don't they seem to get any respect? Audioholics have a very good review of a low cost unit: http://www.audioholics.com/productreviews/avhardware/PioneerVSX-815ReceiverReview1.php I have also seen some excellent reviews of the Elite models. I used to own a audio/video store and the Elites where sounded much smoother than the Yamahas. They would be my choice for a new receiver...someday when the kids are thru college!

I have a different opinion on this. You did not mention what you where selling. I am assuming your retail outlet is NOT going to be selling TVs. So you do not need the best HD plasmas. Unless you are going to get cable or satellite to display cnn in HD, a standard definition 42" plasma should be fine. Look for good brands like LG that are not premium priced. You should be able to get them on sale at Best Buy or others. Cosco has some nice Pioneers and even Sanyos for very good prices! I dont know of any real 1920x1080 native resolution plasmas anyway. I really do not think that any customer is going to say or think: "My my, they dont even have expensive HD plasmas. The whites are a bit yellow and the de-interlacing and 3-3-2 motion pulldown is not the best. I wont buy here"

Actually, DVD players that can handle DVD-Audio and/or SACD will mostlikely have 5.1 channel analog outputs. Unless something changed in the last year, those 2 formats are never outputed on the digital/optical 5.1 output. Too worried about direct digital copying. I do believe that some of the high end Pioneer Elites DVD-Audio/SACD players had some for of digital outpout that could be plugged into a Pioneer Elite receiver to eliminate the audio interconnets. Other high end gear probably has similar capability

For anyone wanting to make a cornscala now is your chance. A pair of K55/K400s and K77 for sale on Ebay in canada. 2 hours to go. and only $130! Xover is also there

This is how its done. You make some garbage, a nice web site. Pay for some ads in magazine and post links to them. Go to a show and rent a room (the photos from the Bristol show look like they are in a hotel room, not a show floor booth). Now you are ready to bamboozle lots of people by selling them off the back of a truck. In the last 2 years you would not believe how many people came into my store asking us to help them hook up these "Theatre Research" speakers that they got a great deal from of the back of a truck... Just unbelievable. I told them all that they where had. If they had only shopped around in legitimate stores they could have purchased something much better for the same price, or much cheaper for same performance... and with a warranty as well.