JJkizak

K-horns work best on the long wall with a center channel. The minimum accepted corner wall length is 4 ft. but mine has an open doorway on the one side leaving me with about 2 ft. on one wall past the speaker or about 4 ft including behind the speaker. But what it comes down to is whatever floats your boat. JJK

Although I am not a huge fan of Consumers Reports their reports on the "HDTV" fiasco do help to sort out all of the PR and inuendo. I really haven't seen any other publication do as thorough a coverage on what is going on. JJK

I have also read that the major movie studios have hedged their bets in the contracts they have signed. Kind of like "Puts" and "Calls". So for them it's a win-win and for us it's a loose-loose. JJK

The articles I have read said there is no difference in the viewing quality of both systems. JJK

Check the AVS forum about the lines, click on the HD reception and then your city and you will find answers about cable, satellite, and OTA. JJK

efzauner: I was just hoping that someone smarter and more motivated than I would experimemt with this stuff so I could just buy it and listen to the results. You know, add a little magic device like a crossover network to enhance to the max everything in the path. When I installed Dean's crossovers the affect was substantial. They cleaned everything up, balanced everything better, and improved the Cornwall better than new. I assume a lot of this was because of new components and newer design methods. I could also drive them a bit louder than before. So if silver wires or coat hangers make it work better, why not? The electronic history of the coat hanger is prolific, especially with Muntz tv's. JJK

My main problem is understanding how much of a change in resistance, capacitance, inductance of the wires causes a change in the response of the system. Is it minute quantities or more substantial. I would like to see this in charts or graphs as to are we splitting hairs or logs. This would be a kind of benchmark for all speaker systems. In other words how long the wire is, diameter, insulation type and thickness and even the metal composition of the wires, connectors and screws, what effect on the amp and crosover circuits. Does it make a difference? Why doesn't Klipsch have anything to say about these subtle anamolies? Or does it affect the sound by .00000000000001%? If I throw an audio 20 - 20khz sweep on the amp and measure the ouput of the speakers with a corrected mic and throw that on a scope what do I get? What happens when the wires are changed? You should see it on the scope if it's a good one. theoretically it should be flat oooops, not so with K-horns, well then what do we really want, to match the factory spec or make are own that is perfectly flat? Many variables crop up out of the woodwork. Even the test setup which would I assume would be different for each man who sets it up. And then at different levels. Way too many parameters here. Pure science bumping heads with ears. JJK

I still believe it is a characteristic impedance thing reacting with all of the variables from the amp , crossover, tweeter, squawker, and woofer. If someone could put this on a five trace scope with a variable rate audio sweep so it would plot the resultant freq response and impedance with different setups for different wires, different crossover components, different drivers, and provide a wealth of information on just what effect these changes have on the results. JJK

Speaking of remotes, there is a new clorox sanitizing spray out which I haven't tried yet. I wonder if it will work on tubes. JJK

I love this coat hanger thing. I'm still laughing. They make them in Mexico you know. Maybe we could get some custom made ones in different colors. JJK

Well maybe we should start a "shopping for electronics school". We have to learn how to second guess the PR people. I always take my reading glasses so I can read the info pamphlets and make sure I don't have to visit the latrine and subvert my line of thought. Then you have to say to yourself, is that the optimum picture quality you are seeing or something special or something screwed up screwing up a good tv. And then, you have to say to yourself this quote by one of America's most famous oraters: "A man has to know his limitations", "Do I feel lucky enough today to purchase this tv?" Well, maybe I misquoted.

Anyone seen the prices on those touch screen remotes lately? I looked a few years ago and got scared away. I remember somewhere between 3 and 6K for the man that has everything. JJK

I have the folowing remotes: 1...HDTV Sony 2...JVC DVD player 3...LG-3510A HD tuner 4...Key Digital Component Switcher 5...MY-HD 120 computer card 6...Denon 7.1 Receiver 7...Denon Stereo Amp 8...JVC D-VHS vcr 9...Sony VHS vcr 10...Sony TV They are all piled on the coffee table. Woe is me. JJK

Motherboard based sound is more prone to this problem, also bad connections. Sometimes bad ram chips will do this. JJK

The channel 2 thing is turning out to be a pandora's box. Many people having a problem OTA with this channel with only a UHF antenna. Also they say that channel 2 is for temporary usage. JJK

Best place to check is the HD reception area on the AVS forum, Baltimore thread. You will probably have to purchase an OTA HD tuner as the Satellite one won't work. Neither will cable. The Quality issues as discussed on the AVS forum give OTA the edge over cable and satellite as they recode everything at their wim and they get their signals from the same satellites. The TV stations download the signals anywhere from 24 megs per second MPEG2 data stream to 50 megs per second. After you read all of the threads on that forum you will be annoyed and confused and be sending letters of complaint to your congressman/senator. JJK

You have a few options. If your a computer nut you can purchase the MY-HDTV 130 card which is outstanding quality and also 5.1 sound with toslink outputs. I have this card in my computer and it has about 10 different outputs to satisfy your needs in NTSC or PAL. It will perform over 35 ft cables and remote control. You can also purchase one of the LG models which are very good. They tend to boost the overscans a bit compared to the built in tuners. I also tried the Samsung T165 which smoked then I got another one. It distorted the analog pictures so I gave it to my guru buddy. I also had an MRD 120 which lasted 1 year. Your antenna must be better than with the old set as the digital stations are not transmitting a lot of power. The AVS forum will give you all the info you need. JJK

Since my occupation as a maintenance man I have found out through the years that the more maintenance that is performed the worse the performance---within limits. But the little tweaky stuff you do (dusting, push in loose connectors, etc) doesn't hurt anything unless you burn your little pinky on the tubes or the 100 pound amp falls on your toe. The statement above refers to normal careless maintenance people, not the super great maintenance people that are hard to find. I assume that you are in the super great category. You might also check the cable runs for mouse eating damage. They like the taste of the insulation coverings on the cables when they are starving. Do you have a tube pin straightener? Nothing like trying to push in a tube with the pins lined up in the wrong holes. If you clean the tubes too much then you risk wiping off the nomenclature then you have to guess where it goes. I hate when that happens. Chassis nomenclature also. JJK

That's hilarious. No one can purchase a Bluray disc until March and they already won? Lets wait until 2007 before we declare a winner. The info I have is that the original orientations of who is tied with what have escape clauses to "hedge their bets". JJK

I might add listening to Fox the other day on some football game in 5.1 that the center channel seemed to have a hole in it until the announcers would speak, then their voice was exclusively in the center. Also all of the commercials came from the center channel only. JJK

Craig: OK, I'll give you a break. I told my buddy to hold onto that old tube Fisher with power derived center channel that I gave him (still works) as he could get a lot of money for it on this forum. My other buddy said tubes are better and I said give me a break. JJK

I used tubes from 1950 thru 1985 and the only thing that impressed me about them was how bad they were after I converted to SS. I used tubes on the Dewline Troposcatter heavy com and radar systems by the bushel full and was extrtemely thankful when the conversion started to SS. What a sigh of relief when the first GE SS taxi cab vehicle radios were installed. Those radios reduced maintenance by about 99.9 %. What a sigh of relief when the test equipment was upgraded to Hewlett-Packard stuff. We used some pretty exotic stuff and the calibrations would hold for 6 months instead of 1 day. What a sigh of relief when the Air/Ground radios were upgraded to SS. Reduced maintenance by about 95% What a sigh of relief when you didn't have to wait 4 hours for equipment to warm up and settle in for optimum performance. If I had saved all of those rotton tubes that went out in bushel baskets I could have sold them to all of you tube nuts and been a millionaire. JJK

The center channel might have been inspired by Bell Labs when running tests in a 25 ft X 25 ft room (or was it 30 ft x 30 ft) and did test a center speaker with the K-horns but I can't remember if it was 1935 or 1955. It was stated that with the speakers that far apart that a fill-in was needed. Somebody has to have that article somewhere as I remember reading it in a magazine. Maybe Popular Science or Popular Mechanics. Then again it could have been Stereo Magazine. JJK

efzauner: Thanks. My initial intention was to apply those VHF/UHF techniques to the audio problems that the peoples on this forum so often become submerged in as a possible explanation of the amp/wires/crossovers/speakers enigma. It would be interesting to see some top shelf test equipment monitoring 5 distinct sweeps of impedance performance of the tweeter, squawker, woofer, crossover and amp all at the same time on an oscilliscope, if in fact that it could be done. Possibly a nice active, expensive computer controlled crossover would be the result. JJK

I guess Bell Labs/Western Electric was all wrong then by utilizing 600 ohm patchcords (all of there mainframe interconnect hookup wire had 600 ohm characteristic impedance at audio frequencies) They also used 135 ohm patch cords for land lines (audio frequencies) and 75 ohm patch cords for Multiplex patching. (12khz to 12mghz). But I guess impedance doesn't matter at audio frequencies. One thing that was not mentioned when a 20 db pad is inserted is the noise level is also reduced 20 db. Every industrial electronic setup on receivers that I have seen has had a 20 db pad in the front end to eliminate VSWR and cut the noise by 20 db. I guess PWK was all wrong when he published his papers on how hard it was to maintain a constant impedance throughout the frequency range of the K-horn. He actually then pretty much said the impedance of the K-horn was a compromised figure. JJK