Olorin

Nope, on or off makes no differece. A K-76V from an Academy is just a K-76 from a Forte or a Quartet with a bucking magnet glued on the back of it.

That's the bucking magnet and it's what makes the speaker video shielded, so if you're not using a CRT set, you don't really need it any more.

Stereo only for that unit.

Nicely done, Dave.

Yes, I understand your situation. I calibrate monitors all the time, and the fact is that there is no average set of settings for your average device from any monitor. They share behaviors and tolerances, but individual units will swing from optimum in different directions and different amounts yet still be within tolerance, so you have to approach each device as an individual, determine its base characteristics, and drive it toward standard. Improvement doesn't have to cost a fortune, and I can quickly see three sub-$100 options that will make things better. Seeing the first two is easy -- they were identified earlier in this thread. Yeah, I cheat sometimes. ;-) In order of decreasing cost: 1) The calibration device laager linked one post above yours. 2) Avia or Digital Video Essentials DVD. 3) Download standard test patterns from the web, burn a DVD of them, do it by eye, and accept that you've done the best you can with what you have. I suspect option 1 is the best one. I also recommend starting there if you can swing it -- once you make any improvement at all, the law of diminishing returns sets in, and spending money to make the next incremental improvement gets harder to justify to the non-nuts. Most spouses fall into the non-nuts category, and you've indicated you've got one, so you have to decide how to balance all the tensions. O

I'm sorry Michael.

Pan seared, blue cheese crusted rib eye steak with garlic roasted asparagus. Get a 1 1/2" thick boneless ribe eye steak and bring to room temperature. This is important. If you cook it cold it will suck, and you will be sad. I just remove it from its packaging, put it on a plate, and set it in the oven where the dogs and the inevitable fly that got in the house can't get to it. Yeah, the glamorous life. The stuff they don't show you on the cooking shows. Let some butter soften on the countertop while the steak hangs out. You're going to need your broiler, so arrange your oven racks accordingly. Line a cookie sheet with foil and prep your asparagus by breaking off the tough ends. Drizzle extra virgin olive oil over the asparagus and press out one large garlic clove or two small ones. What, you don't have a garlic press? For Pete's sake, get to Bed Bath & Beyond a drop the fifteen bucks on one of the most valuable weapons in your cooking arsenal. If you don't have a decent French knife, a pepper grinder, and a garlic press, you don't get to call yourself a cook. It's lilke calling yourself a mechanic and not owning a socket set. Oh yeah -- oil and garlic and asparagus. Mix them. Use your hands -- don't be a wuss, real cooks use their hands -- and rub it all together. The garlic will migrate to the bottom against the foil, so pick it up and distribute it evenly over your asparagus. Set aside. Put your cast iron skillet and the asparagus in the oven and turn it on to 500 degrees. A few before your oven reaches temperature, you'll start to smell burning garlic. Don't sweat it -- that means you're doing it right. Take the asparagus out and wrap it in the foil; set it on the stovetop and let it keep warm. Set the cookie sheet aside, and if you did your foil peoperyly you don't even have to wash it the cookie sheet, just let it cool and put it away. Rub each side of the steak liberally with the softened butter. Yes, with your hands. Remember the dry hand/wet hand technique? It's really handy. Har har har. In a couple minutes you'll have 500 degrees of thermal goodness in your oven. Once you do, turn a burner to medium high, put on your mitt, and put the skillet on the burner. Turn your hood on high -- there's going to be smoke. Salt and pepper the exposed side of the steak and put that side down on the skillet. You only get 30 seconds with that side down, so use that time wisely and salt and pepper the up side in the skillet. After 30 seconds, turn the steak. Don't flip it -- TURN it. Turning uses tongs. Flipping is done with a spatula. Flipping is for burgers, and flipping ruins steaks. Don't flip. Turn. This side also gets 30 seconds down, then turn the steak again and put it in the oven. Turn off the burner -- you're done with it. Put your foil-wrapped asparagus back in the oven on the bottom shelf. After two minutes, take the skillet out of the oven and set the oven to broil. Turn the steak and press a liberal amount of blue cheese onto it. If you felt fancy you could have added some pepper, a tiny amount of basil or herbs du provence, and maybe even some bread crumbs to your blue cheese to really make it crust up. Otherwise, just plain blue cheese is good enough. Put it under the broiler and leave it there for a time. At two minutes your steak will be medium rare but your cheese won't be browned yet, so you have to decide what balance you prefer there. Take the steak out and immediately move it to a plate to rest for about two minutes. Open a beer if you haven't already. This meal screams for a nice dark ale or, even better, a porter. Sierra Nevada makes a fine porter that goes very well with this. Take your asparagus out of the oven and plate it. Eat. Enjoy. When you have a bite or two left, cut it up and share it with the dogs. They love you, they've been patient, and you know they'd do the same for you.

I have to come back and thank you again for this post. I shared this with some of my coworkers and this was the subject of a 15 minute conversation before a plant-wide meeting today. This topic actually held the meeting up for about five minutes, so you deserve kudos for that if nothing else.

Six degrees of separation . . . I bet you know somebody who knows somebody who can buy this in a PX and ship it back. Try it. I dare you.

Even better answer than mine.

I thought you would chime in here, so I held off. :-P To merkin -- you can do the calcs, build the jigs, and make your own horns, and you might do 5% better than his horn for your application. Meanwhile, you could have bought his horn six times with the time and effort you spent. Once a Tractrix horn has achieved a 180 degree flare it's done, so just buy his, lop the ends off it to fit, and call it a day. I've heard his horns, and you won't be sorry.

Just two comments . . . I'm a Gen-X'er, as are a few others here. I'm sure we're outliers, but we're here. There's also a vinyl resurgence going on among the twenty-somethings right now, so not only is all not lost, but there is a continuum being maintained. It's only as grim as you want to see it being. As for bailout funds . . . on second thought, just one comment. One can of worms is enough.

Best way to solve this is to crate those puppies up and send them to me. If you regret the decision later, you'll know you've made the wrong one.

That's Emeril's "essence" seasoning mix right there, and it's good stuff. If you like it, you like his jambalaya, which is also an easy one-pot meal. Recipe here. This takes me less than an hour in the Dutch oven now. Now this one isn't quite one-pot, but it is my favorite super-quick meal. Blackened salmon. You need two filets, a cast iron skillet, the Creole seasoning, and some canola oil. Oh yeah -- a good hood fan or cross-flow ventilation, otherwise you're testing your smoke alarms. Put the skillet in the oven and heat it to 450 degrees. While it's heating, lay out your filets on a plate and dry them with a paper towel. You're going to season the filets with the seasoning, and I have best results using the wet hand/dry hand technique. I'm right-handed, so the right hand is the dry hand. Take the lids off the seasoning and the oil (unless you have a drizzler -- drizzlers win) and put about a half teaspoon of oil on each filet. Rub the oil on the filet with your wet hand to coat the whole side, then use your dry hand to season the fish to preference. Me, I don't want to be able to see the fish through the seasoning. With your wet hand, flip the fish over, and repeat. Wash your hands now -- you're done making a mess of yourself. When the skillet is hot, take it out of the oven and place it on a burner set to medium-high. Swirl about a teaspoon of oil in the skillet. You may get just a little smoke and that's just fine. It's also why you don't use olive oil here -- way too low a smoke point. Set the fish in the skillet and give it two minutes on the stovetop. Set the oven to broil. Once the fish has had two minutes in the skillet, turn it over, then put the skillet back in the oven under the broiler. Two minutes there and you're done. You can also do this with mahi mahi, but since it's a denser fish you need another minute per side. The technique is also perfect for ahi, but I wouldn't ruin a good ahi with heavy spices. It's best unseasoned and served with a little green onion/ginger/sesame oil/rice wine vinegar sauce. Serve with the side of your choice. I favor steamed broccoli, but garlic roasted asparagus is also nice. That essence is a great dry marinade for anything you want to grill. About a tablespoon of it shaken up in a ziplock back with a pound of chicken livens things up nicely.

That's an excellent article. Thanks for sharing it.

Looking good Dave, the rescue is nearly complete.

Yep, that was unfortunate. But, that's what, three games out of four played where we gave up an early goal and had to play from behind? You can only pull that rabbit from the hat so many times, and our boys tried it more than one time too many. Still, I'm proud of them, and happy that they took us as far as they did. Congratulations to Ghana are in order -- they played well and earned the win.

It's not my intent to criticize, only to learn, and I apologize if I came across attacking. If the measurements are known (and they are), and the T/S parameters of the woofer are known (and they are), it's a fairly simple thing to plug the numbers into Hornresp and see what comes out. Just like with WinISD and subwoofers, the horn sims make it much easier to identify opportunities for improvement and see when the design is "done" than going through iterations of making sawdust and listening. ;-) If you're happy with it, that's what matters. I think what you have there is a fantastic idea, and from your impressions I'd take it that the idea held through to execution. The thrust of my questioning was really toward the objective, predictive, and measurement aspects of it. Cheers!

If my memory is right, and I can't say it is, it's 3" from the baffle to the back of the speaker, where the flares travel at 45 degrees. Then the horn turns 90 degrees and a distance of 3" is maintained between the sides of the doghouse and the outsides of the horn for 6" or so, and then the doghouse sides turn and flare to meet each other with an incidence of 60 degrees where the mouth is about 24" x 24". If you were to unfold the horn, you'd see basically a conical flare that starts at 13" x 6" and expands to ~24" x 6", has a 6" step at ~24" x 6" where there is no flare, and then expands to ~24" x~24" over a length of ~18". My question concerns how you calculated those distances and angles to build the modified horn.

The biggest, deepest, loudest, badassest sub you can fit in your room and afford. I'm serious. Building or buying?

Yeah, I have a family reunion tomorrow . . . have a feeling I'll be spending a lot of time in a corner of the park checking my phone. ;-)

How did you calculate the spacings? Did you use Hornresp?

Congrats on your new pup! I know how you feel about German Shepherds -- lost Gracie last summer. I still miss her and believe she was the best dog I've ever had the pleasure to have live with me, not that I don't love Minna, who now rules the roost. She's a very different dog from Gracie, but they share a love of their pal Riley. Your new guy looks like a charmer. I hope you'll have many happy adventures together.

I agree with dtel.

We play Ghana on Saturday the 26th; coverage begins at 2:30 PM Eastern on ABC.