Olorin

I've had a Pronto for years and it's a very competent remote. Programming can be quite involved, but there is a lot of support for it at remotecentral.com. While I've heard of issues with the screens, I've not had any of those kinds of issues myself. It's worth getting the charging dock as they eat batteries like candy.

The KG-2.5V is a competent piece of equipment. What makes you think you'd be sacrificing anything? Get this one. http://cgi.ebay.com/KLIPSCH-KG-2-5-Single-Center-/260746447509?pt=Speakers_Subwoofers&hash=item3cb5b30a95. If you don't like it, sell it, and if you do like it, keep it. Either way, problem solved and mystery over.

Kazackly. A GOOD pro amp is a good amp; they're not all the same. Put another way -- QSC:Behringer :: Marantz:Sanyo

You hit on about three different issues here. First, you're conflating the COST of a set of speakers with the MATCH of the set's members. Those are two different issues. As Roger mentioned, there are guys with under $1K all in who have matched sets, and guys with $35,000 mains who have matched sets. Cost, in and of itself, bears little relationship to how well a set of speakers works and plays together. The third issue you highlight is that you don't think it's a big deal. That's fine -- that's a personal decision. I would respectfully suggest, however, that one person's lack of concern for a thing doesn't make another person's concern for that same thing trivial, silly, or misguided. If I'm reading you right, your core question is really "Why does it matter?" I think I can illuminate my point of view on this best if I can answer your question with a couple questions of my own. Would you hook up your RC-62 II to the left channel and a KG 4.5 to the right channel, then use that as your primary music listening rig? Why or why not? Would you understand someone's preferring to use two matching speakers in a stereo pair? Why or why not? Does it make sense to think of a center channel as the third speaker in a frontal array? If so, is it reasonable for one to apply the same matching criteria for a third speaker in a frontal array that one applies to the left and right speakers in a stereo pair?

[bs] There is a reason people go to great lengths to use three La Scalas across the front, or find a way to use a Chorus II behind an AT protector screen, or pay exhorbitant prices for Academys and KLF-C7s, and that, as a group, the user population has made this kind of choice for years and years. That there is a simple answer that has eluded all of them isn't it.

I'm aware that the EP2500 is the older model, which is why they are available used for under $200 in some cases. Is there a reason why the behringer shouldn't produce good sound quality? Other than the notion that it's a cheap knock-off of a QSC-2450 that's produced with inferior components in order to meet a price point for clubs, bands, and DJs on a shoestring budget, while your Marantz is a high quality piece designed to sound really really good to audio weenies who think paying more for things that sound really really good is a good idea, I can't really think of any.

Not blasphemy per se, but I'm skeptical. Marantz makes a mighty fine amplifier. The EP2500 is gone, replaced by the EP4000. Same innards, new rating and model number. An Emotiva UPA-2 costs $20 more than the Behringer and will give plenty of juice with no fan noise, and I know the UPA-7 sounds really good with my La Scalas. I haven't hooked up the Chorus IIs, though, and they would probably be a better comparison to the KLFs. Anyway, food for thought.

If your goal is the best match, then you get the center that was designed and engineered to match your mains. When things are working correctly, you can't pick out what sounds are coming from the center speaker and what sounds are blended across the entire front array. In other words, the center shouldn't have a distinct character. What it should be is sonically invisible.

I would change nothing until I have over 100 hours of listening to the system to determine what weaknesses, if any, it has.

Ever wonder what La Scalas sound like?

Gotcha. You know, I was a bit hasty and out of line in calling the UPA "inappropriate" for your setup, and it's entirely possible that for your speakers and your preferences in your room, this piece could do the job just fine and be all you want it to be. There really is only one way to know, so I'd encourage you to hook things up and see what you have before making any moves one way or another -- it will give you a lot of piece of mind and it could save you some expense as well.

Well having the thing sitting in your room as opposed to being at the "deciding which amp to buy" stage changes things a bit, doesn't it? If you have the amp already, why are you asking if it's good enough? Why aren't you listening and deciding?

Cost, complexity, and manufacturing efficiency.

That should have said "I might choose a different path," so I went back through that post and cured a pretty severe case of typosis. Apologies for breaking your quote.

Right, you have to match the amp to your speakers' power requirement, and the THX speakers, like all of the large direct radiators, have demands that make the UPA-7 an inappropriate choice. A UPA is plenty for La Scalas. If your heart is set on using Emotiva amps, you want an XPA-2 for the mains and an XPA-5 for the rest of the system, assuming the subs have their own power needs met. Otherwise, your next best bet from a bang/buck perspective is a rack full of 300 WPC pro amps.

My UPA-7 arrived Monday. Monday was a busy day, so I didn't get it hooked up, and then yesterday was another busy day at work followed by working the sideline for a local high school varsity playoff soccer match. I finally got it hooked up and running at about 8:30 last night. My adventure began with an adventure. When I got the UPA all hooked up and ready to go, I turned it on. It powered up, went through POST, went active . . . and powered down, powered up, went through POST . . . and powered down . . . lather . . . rinse . . . repeat. You can imagine I was fairly concerned. I checked all my connections, and then for grins decided to start pulling them off one by one. I started with the remote trigger cable. Got it in one. I use a wall wart to provide signal voltage for the remote trigger, as the Harman/Hardon AVR-235 doesn't provide a remote trigger. (It's about the only thing I don't like about HK.) It is a 6V transformer with a proper 3.5 mm jack on the output side. Well, even though the manual and the label on the back both say "6-12V," 6V doesn't convince the amp it needs to stay on. The remote trigger is out of the loop until I can locate a 12V transformer. First impressions are positive. The UPA-7 replaces a Harman/Kardon PA 2100 40 WPC amplifier for the La Scala mains, and it offloads amp duties from the HK AVR-235 amp section for the Heresy center and La Scala surrounds. I was only able to play about an hour of music last night and no movies. First off, the HK PA 2100 is a little guy, but he's no slouch. It is a fine, fine amplifier for La Scalas and other highly efficient speakers, though it doesn't quite have the juice that a Chorus II wants. (One of them bridged per Chorus is another story, however.) I was never dissatisfied with either the quality or quantity of sound that the HK/La Scala combination could produce, except at the extreme edge of sanity, where things would fall apart. I haven't pushed the new combo to that edge yet. However, at moderate to somewhat loud volumes, I can tell that the UPA has that extra bit of grunt. There is a bit more clarity and detail all the way up and down the range; growling bass guitars have a little more growl, sparkly bits are a bit sparklier, and hard-hitting drums hit a little harder. I've seen a lot of live shows in small venues, and had college roommates who played in band for which I would run the board, and though I don't play any more myself, members of my do. I know what instruments sound like, and the level of realism is now just a notch higher. All in all it's an incremental improvement, roughly of the same order of magnitude that going from the HK receiver's amp section to the HK 2100 outboard amp was. Was it worth $600? For the difference in sound alone, no. However, there are other factors. I have two extra channels that I can use to drive subs, and that has value as I may be able to avoid buying a $300 pro amp. It will take less rack space than buying two more PA 2100s, and the risk is lower than getting a used PA 5800 with an unknown history. In short, if I had it to do over again, I might choose a different path, but I have no regrets. If I have to go from the La Scala setup back to the Chorus/Academy/Quartet stable, the UPA will be plenty, so odds are good this is the last mains amp I will ever have to buy.

If you took awesome and rubbed it until it began to moan, stroked it until it started to purr, and squeezed it until it screamed -- THAT's what Forte IIs sound like.

You can, but when you've taken the time to program your remote with macros for startups/shutdowns for all your various sources, the last thing you want to do is push the button on the remote and watch everything power up except your amp, then walk across the room to push the button.

If your receiver doesn't have a trigger out but it does have a switched outlet, get a 12V wall wart from Radio Shack and it will work just fine.

No.

Turns out there was a weather delay somewhere along the road, so it's not even in California yet. Nothing to do but wait. I suppose the truth is that if this is the very worst thing that happens this weekend, I'll have had a pretty good weekend, so no big deal in the grand scheme.

It appears FedEx will fail to meet its delivery commitment and there will be no new toys for me this weekend.

Appearance is certainly one of the criteria, but thing about using solid wood panels for enclosures is that they resonate and impart a sound of their own. That's fine for sound PRODUCTION, but the goal here is sound REPRODUCTION. That means you want an acoutically dead enclosure, and that means plywood, MDF, or OSB. If you can't use pretty plywood, covering an ugly but sonically inert material with something pretty is absolutely the correct approach.

Yes, it was the best way to test the amp in isolation.

The perfect surrounds for your setup are either more Forte IIs or Quartets. However, both of those come with some practicality challenges, so sometimes some less-than-perfect surrounds end up working better when all the factors are considered. In your case, the small KG series speakers -- 1.x and 2.x -- are terrific fall-back options. They can be had fairly inexpensively on the 'bay and on Craigslist with some regularity, and many users here have reported success in using these with the Forte/Academy combination. They're also small enough to hide on a shelf or literally hang from the wall. Some of them came with wall-mounting provisions built in; I forget if they were keyholes or omnimount attachments, but a search of retired products on the main site would give you that info . . . and so would the seller's photos on eBay. Your Academy is the perfect center for your Forte IIs -- if it physically fits, don't even think of messing with that. People unhappy with the Academy either need monsterous output that the Academy just can't give, OR they are trying to use it between anything that isn't a Chorus, Forte, Quartet, or another pair of Academys and they are experiencing tonal match problems. I can't ever remember anybody posting that they were unhappy using an Academy, within its limits, between the speakers it's meant to be used between. As for speaker wire, I'm a fan of the 12 or 14 gauge from monoprice.com. They also have good prices on banana plugs for the ends. Length is basically unimportant -- "long enough to reach plus enough slack to let you move things around a little" is the general formula.