Olorin

I had one. It was a hoot, but I lost custody of it in the divorce, so I might get another one to keep the Land Cruiser company. The Germans build some really, really good cars, and IMO/E the Z3 is one of them. If I were you, I would get it, drive it, and have a metric buttload of fun with it. How many more trips around the sun do you figure you have, anyway? Use it, love it, and when you're tired of it, sell it. No regrets. If you never get tired of it, no regrets either.

Someone had to say it because they begin and end the list of "best all-around Klipsch speaker." Several different Klipsch speakers do several different things better than the Forte II does, but the Forte II does everything well, and no other Klipsch speaker is as good at that as the Forte II is.

Based on another post I read here it was the Buffalo devices that got me hot on this. After just briefly looking on the Interwebs I quickly changed my tune. Seem nobody like them. The attractive thing was the price. Seem like this might be one of those cases where you get what you pay for. At a minimum get yourself a USB drive and back your music up. For less than $100 that is cheap insurance. I was so bummed when I lost all my music. What a pain to redo it all. That's good information! I was looking at the Buffalo just because I use their broadband router with the Tomato firmware and it really, really rocks. Download rates are 4x the old Linksys on the same connection . . . shame their proficiency in the broadband router apparently didn't carry over into the NAS box. For a while I've used a FireWire drive to carry stuff from home to work, and work is indulgent, so I have a 1 TB external drive on the Mac here that has everything on it that the home Mac has . . . everything that doesn't violate work's AUP, anyway . . . so I do have some form of backup. I think I may just software mirror a couple of 2 TB drives inside the Mac Pro case. It's orders of magnitude better than what I have, and the drives can always go into a whatever-box later on down the road.

Thanks! These are great! I hadn't realised that high-pass filtering was essential. I thought that you could just be careful with the source material and keep the volume down with ultra-low content. That adds to the expense a bit, and is something I know little about. Nice catch on the high-pass filter; I misspoke on that in my earlier post and have edited. An HPF doesn't have to cost more than $100 -- you can do it with a BFD or DEQ if you can pass at 20 Hz or above, while the Behringer MIC-2200 can get you 24 dB at 15 Hz if you chain the inputs and the Reckhorn B2 goes all the way to 10 Hz.

Forte II.

Well put, Gary. I've learned two things from this thread -- one, that Greg and Al need to get a room, and two, that I can avoid a whole lot of drama by going the P.Audio route. It might not sound as nice as either of the wooden horns, but then I won't get in the middle of a bunch of clawing and smeared lipstick either.

That looks like a trip to the medicine cabinet for some Advil. Yikes!

You're welcome Rich! I hear ya on the getting it done part too. I've looked at these kind of casually and I gravitate toward a two-bay D-Link or Buffalo Technologies enclosure that will do NAS, DLNA, iTunes server, and torrents. I'd love a larger unit that can do RAID5, but the price from two-bay to three seems to take a disproportionate leap, and then going larger starts getting into real business hardware costs, so I wonder about just mirroring two 1.5 TB drives and calling it a day. That's still a few hundred bucks all-in though, and I know it will prove itself inadequate and not-scalable in the space of a year or less, so all this dithering means this project just hasn't climbed up the priority list high enough for me to stop wondering and start buying. I'm sure I'll readjust my thinking as soon as the 300 GB drive in my Mac Pro that holds all of my 1200 or so albums in Apple Lossless decides to crap out.

I haven't done this yet, but one thing I can say for certain is . . . NERDS!!

Interesting. So what's the trade-off? If TH are highly efficient, go lower, are smaller, and easier to build, what do they give up? and thanks for the corner horn sketch! I was wondering if one could modify the MWM design to increase the flare to 90 degrees and make full use of the corner. Have you built this one before? They are tapped quarter-wavelength resonant enclosures, so low frequency extension still means big boxes. They don't go lower for the same enclosure volume than other designs, and they are not necessarily easier to build. They have a narrow usable bandwidth, usually less than three octaves, and you almost always need a low-pass filter to prevent overexcursion when the driver unloads at the corner. Their ONLY advantage is that, when properly done, they are very efficient in their passband. Hoffman's Iron Law is still made of iron. If you're really interested in tapped horns, it's worth your while to invest some time in the collaborative tapped horn thread at diyaudio.com. Bring lunch; you'll be there for a bit. EDIT: Not low pass filter. HIGH PASS filter. Duh. Thanks for the catch, psg.

Very interesting thread over there! Forgetting about the Tuba 24 (since I meant the Tuba HT) what is a recommended easy build for low end extension? say to 20 Hz? I don't need anything over 80 Hz for home theater (and as a sub for Klipschorns). A Spud? Is there a real measurement of the Tuba HT somewhere? Thanks! A SPUD is good, and so is the Lab12 tapped horn, and so is the Volvotreter 20 Hz tapped horn here and here. The Lab12 and VT tapped horns have the advantage of being open source and may or may not be a friendlier form factor than the SPUD, depending on your space.

Regarding "La Scalas don't make bass" -- those folks have also never played Porcupine Tree's "Metanoia" or anything by Bela Fleck, especially "Flight of the Cosmic Hippo." I haven't been through everything those two artists have done yet, but I have yet to find anything that sounds less than fantastic in either of their libraries.

I sure wish the "open in separate window" option for links was the default -- links should always open in a new window or tab so you don't lose where you are in a forum discussion. I don't know why every forum admin in the world except this one gets that. Cool vid.

Oh come on now. A CJ 5 or CJ 7 can't hold a candle to an FJ40 no matter what part of the world your standing on. Anyone except a Jeep owner knows that. ;-)

I say this is the home audio equipment variant of a Jeep owner and a Land Cruiser owner arguing over who has the more capable rig while they're half a country apart, and they'll absolutely never put them on the same trail and see what's what. Same kind of masturbation, different kind of porn, and completely equal in usefulness and product.

The jbell tapped horn at diyaudio.com might be your cup of tea.

You've gotten good advice up to this point so I won't re-answer most of your questions. All I'll add is that Heresys do indeed make excellent surrounds for your La Scalas, and I will dogpile on the capacitor refresh. It helps.

I was starting to think you might be a dick, but thanks to this post, I don't have to wonder any more.

Making declarative statements of subjective truth and labeling them "facts" is just silly. I don't even know that I'd classify that as an opinion, it's pretty much a fact.

I guess we can watch and see who gets the bugs worked out first!!! Dennie I think I can guess who you'd put your money on.

Heresys are a fantastic start if you don't mind paying $350 a pair and being patient to do it, but I think you just can't beat the KG series for bang/buck. Start with a pair of KG-x.2s and a used Harman Kardon receiver and a $35 Toshiba DVD player, then later add a KG-2.2V center and a pair of KG-1.2 bookshelves for surrounds. Consider DIY for the sub or one of the Dayton kits from Parts Express and you can easily be on target and well under budget.

You can on the 354. It's first alluded to on page 40 of the owner's manual and explained in detail on page 55, bottom paragraph of the left column.

With Audessy Pro, DNLA, and XLR out on all channels, so will Emotiva.

Consider the Emotiva UMC-1 or the Integra/Onkyo Pro offerings.

I'll just leave this here, then. Brian May on NPR