damonrpayne

The Pals = awesomeness incarnate. Treating the room now.

Ouch is right, these things are a HUGE PITA to make!

Can anyone post a more or less "clean" BS button photo or rendering? I wish to use it in some reviews instead of "stars".

48" tall. I thought the bass was punchier in some of the songs I know extremely well, but I'm chalking this up to psychological expectation until I get around to measuring. I intend on building another one for the other side. I have a down firing sub so hopefully I'm not just robbing myself of corner loading in that case...

I have a friend who just bought some RCW-3 to put in various rooms of the house he is building. His ceiling has the plywood engineered ibeam trusses. He is wondering if he needs to build some kind of baffle or enclosure so that: 1) The entire space in each particular truss is not effectively the speaker enclosure and vibrating into other rooms 2) He builds an approproate enclosure size if need be Can anyone help out?

I pre ordered it from amazon today, we'll see how it sounds.

Perhaps as soon as Thursday...

I dug out my copy of Master Handbook of Acoustics, 4th edition, which I can appreciate much more today than when I first got it. At any rate, the math for 1d (and probably 2d, if I follow correctly) QRDs is in here, as is the math for Primative Root Diffusors (ala RPG skyline). I'm going to be working on an application such that you can see an example QRD plan, and then tweak the min and max frequencies you'd like to diffuse, and generate a plan for building said QRD. I think I'm going to test this out by building a large period 1d out of stain-grade wood for the back wall of my room. I thought I had read somewhere that the width and depth of the arc of a poly cylindar diffusor affected what frequencies it would diffuse, but the book contains no math related to cylindars.

I look forward to Thursday nearly every week, even Thursdays such as today when I had a crown redone in the dentist chair and my face is still numb. I have several people who report to me at the office, and quite a bit of "real work" to do besides. Thursdays I work from home because being away from the phone and not in my chair is the only way to get any heads down work done. For the past ten years I've been a heavy headphone user, mostly to block out noise at work and help my mood. I'm extremely conservative with volume to protect my hearing. Since building my current media room, though, I've mostly forsaken the headphones. On Thursdays I move whatever I need to work on to my laptop, take it downstairs, and let the P-39F rip for nearly eight hours. I find that lunch, bathroom breaks, and so forth is enough to keep me from getting fatigued. The music doesn't get my full attention, but it's great. Thursdays are the days when I can listen to an entire symphony, or both halves of NIN "The Fragile" back to back, and so forth. Last winter I had my CWIIs upstairs, and on Thursday's I'd move them over to be on either side of my woodburning fireplace. I'd start a big fire and brew some coffee and move my big chair as close as I could stand it. Since I really enjoy the technical aspects of my job these days were heaven. While the P-39F are superior in every way, I'm for sure going to miss the fire on winter Thursdays. I clearly need to start working on a livingroom system. What about you guys? Do you ever work from home in front of a stereo, or do you have a good audio setup in your workplace?

I saw the CD set at Best Buy yesterday, anyone tried that yet? I came super close to picking it up.

I'm reconsidering wood on stands for the front early reflections. I was going to roll with the "stuffed" masonite idea for above the listening position and the back of the room above the popcorn machine. I can always, uh, donate them if I change it to something else. What's your favorite food DrWho? I'll make you a series of 5 course gourmet meals to entice you to come back and remeasure, reposition, remeasure....

I just had a chance to look at some Sony and Samsung models running 1080p/120hz. They were showing the BD for Spider Man 3 and some previews from the upcoming Hancock BD. Absolutely freaking scary, in a good way. Motion was much more natural (that's the whole point of 120hz) and the images were as realistic as anything I've ever seen. When I can get a 1080p projector with 5ms or less lag (gaming), better than 10k:1 contrast, 120hz refresh, good color performance, and low fan noise, I'll be upgrading!

Uh, oh, Toshiba, better call the: I believe they are "Taking their ball and going home" by refusing to join the BD party.

The track sounds decent, I'll have to hear it on a real stereo system when it's out. Matching the black album is a tall order.

I'm using an Aragon 2005 for the P-39F and it's a great sounding amp, more than enough power. I am only running 5.1 now but I plan on moving to 7.1 eventually. When I do so, the P-39F will be running on Bryston monoblocks (or perhaps an Aragon 8003 if I can find one) and the 2005 will be sticking around for the center/surrounds. I do a fair bit of 2ch listening on the 2005. It sounds great, by which I mean, it doesn't have a "sound".

Awesome, I'll try to remember to friend you guys up tonight before I play Soul Calibur IV

This is a reminder for myself to post some listening impressions of Dave Mallet's recording of Stephen Wayne Foster. In short, I described extremely specific impressions of the recording and the nature of the sound stage; his subsequent description of how the recording was actually done perfectly accounted for what I heard. I'm curious to hear anyone else's impressions who may have downloaded these tracks?

Greg you have PM.

Balsa wood! Why didn't I think of that... Since the results of DrWho's measurements seem to indicate that there's not much going on in my ceiling due to some irregular shapes already being present, I'm probably going to go the wood route for side/rear walls when I get back from vacation. There's one ceiling place that will get the masonite treatment. My reading in a tiny bit of spare time today seems to indicate that the size of the arc will matter so I have to look up those equations. I'm going to look into borrowing a table saw with the lazer for precise cuts and digging through Master Handbook of Acoustics for the prime number theory QRD calculations. Stain-grade wood will surely still be cheaper than buying RPG products.

You make some sense there. I HOPE I made it clear that I believed the heirs of PWK would do nothing to betray his legacy and that, though I've not had the privilege to hear it, the Palladium would make him proud. I was, perhaps a bit more boldly than others, mainly trying to pry some clear statements out of those who were there. I am also at a loss to explain why this generaly straight shooting and verbose gaggle of geeks seems suddenly speechless. Dave -Just to add to my previous remarks and comment more directly to what you said: Jim Hunter, who has heard them, and knew PWK for a lot of years did say Mr. Klipsch would be proud of them. -I'm not the only person who's heard the P-39F in the same room with other various speakers to come out and declare they are worth the price premium. I'll leave it to these un named folks to step forward.

Ok Mr Mallete, I'll just make some inflammatory statements then, and perhaps I can tease out some more meaty dialogue [6] I think the K-horn is not as good as the P-39F, and I'm talking about the 60th anniversery K-horn, which I think is quite a bit better than the "normal" Klipschhorn. The small changes made to the Khorn in the past 15 years add up to a more modern and better sounding product than someone's 20 year old Khorns with perhaps an upgraded crossover. I do not like the lisening rooms at Klipsch When I heard the Jub, it was in a mono setup in Hope and Roy had just gotten a passive crossover working, so with those caveats in mind I would certainly take the P-39F over the Jubs I've heard. I think people would argue that the Khorn is better than the P-39F and rationalize ANYTHING they could possibly think of to "prove" this. More than one person suggested to me that folks who are used to having the best would rather not have to run out and spend $20k in order to continue to have the best. I just framed my picture of PWK posing with the Jubilee. I was going to put it in my home theater but I thought it'd be a much better conversation starter in a more prominent section of my house. This said, I think the hero worship of PWK (a GREAT man, no doubt) goes a little too far sometimes. SET12, who was a ton of fun to talk to when he came over, made a statement that's very much stuck in my head. He said that the audiophile hobby was really an "aging group". Think about why that might be, I've been mulling it over for a few days. Whether or not this has anything to do with why young people don't seem to be getting into audio, I've an observation I'd like to resurrect: some folks are simly luddites. The LP is better than the CD, Reel to Reel is better than LP. Tubes are better than solid state, which is better than digital. Film is better than megapixels. The K-horn has simply got to be better tha the P-39F because it came first. Any time a flaw is pointed out in something older, it is shrugged off as an excusable trade off that's necessary in order to get <<fill in the blank>>. Your tubes can't reproduce bass is answered with "bass isn't important"; your vinyl has noise is answered with "noise isn't important", Your speakers have serious measurable distortion is answerd with "that's part of the sound I go for", so on and so forth. All the engineers in their labs increasing power, or lowering distortion, or increasing sample rates, or reducing cabinet resonance, or matching runs of Left/Right drivers, or changing horn curves, or exploring exotic materials or inventing new topologies are wasting their time . Does it disqualify me as an audiophile if I think engineers are probably making things better every few years? Am I deluded if I think I can hear the difference? Am I the only audiophile who'll admit that at age 31 I can't hear as good as I could at age 16? On the Audioholics forum I shut down someone trying to invent reasons why the 802D vs. P-38F test done by Klipsch was not valid. I think some of the things said here (not in this thread per se) fall along the same lines. Whew! I feel better getting that off my chest. Is there anyone I haven't offended?

This is the third time I've had people over to hear the P-39F. It seems like people are much more forthcoming with their praise in person. Since folks seem to be worried about some sort of "fallout" or that they're betraying the memory of PWK I won't mention anyone's feedback. I have to admit, this is one of the many times in past years where the reaction of the Klipsch community has left me scratching my head in confusion.

DrWho and I went to Home Depot again, and it seems we're extremely skeptical that the variuos foam products would have the level of reflectivity they'd need to be useful. Anyone else have thoughs on materials that are lighter than wood?

DrWho thought the room was a little on the dead side, but there are surprisingly few acoustic issues. I have a 6-month plan for room treatments Some day I'd like the surrounds, bookshelves for rear surrounds, some bryston monoblocks, etc. Not this year.

Thanks to everyone who came, those who didn't, your loss! One of the most fun aspects of gatherings like this is hearing different music people bring. I have several things I need to buy now. DrWho stayed on for quite a while today doing room measurements. This will be my focus in the months to come. I'd be willing to host another event given enough demand!