JJkizak

There is one critical factor that has not been discussed here, and that is the frequency response of the listener's human ear. Mine is 40HZ to 14KHZ on a good day. Anything occurring above 14K may be affecting someone else's perceptions but not mine. Therefore a difference of opinion. Same with anything below 40HZ as I cannot hear 39HZ at all. Yet I have a sub woofer that goes down to 27HZ. The only thing that the sub woofer did for me was even out the nodes between the K-horns. It also helped out the low level listening characteristics. It did not provide more bass as the K-horns had it in the bag. And also "how do you listen to the music" . I crank it up as high as I can, usually about -11.5, to simulate a small tight rock or jazz band. What I would like is about 5 more tweeters per K-horn so that when that Zilgin cymbal is hit I hear it, and there is no doubt about it. There just is not enough generated power in the high end. That's what my ears tell me. Somebody else would say there is too much. JJK

Nicholtl: I edited my original post. Am I cool now? KKL

While refinishing the K-horns noticed the stamped in wood (I guess) serial # vertically between the access cover and the rear edge of the wood. Then noticed it was also stamped into the top and bottom cross brackets on the back fastening the backboard thingy. JJK

And also did you select the DVI position on the monitor? Some of the newer TV's have 10 positions to select. JJK

You can also use male/female extension cables from Radio Shack. JJK

Dean: 350 mcm wire is about 1" in diameter (many strands woven together)and is rated at about 900 amps at 480 vac. (roughly) By the way, I was funnen. JJK

Why make something simple hard? Use the 12 gauge wire and forget about by-wiring. If you can only obtain 24 gauge wire then by all means by-wire. JJK

Thats why in high power RF applications they use larger tubular lightweight center conductors such as Hardline and Styroflex. In Sonar applications they use a big wire feeding Magnostrictor 5000watt elements. JJK

Maybe I should run some 350mcm. But then again the weight of the wire would colapse the speakers. But would that be impressive or what? Hi-Fi man killed in his home by falling hookup wire. Wife questions the use of 4000 amp wire. I love this forum. JJK

1. The best turntable and cartrige that you can afford 2. You will need a pre-amp if it's a magnetic cartridge 3. M-audio or Audigy sound card 4. Sony Sound Forge 7.0b (burns to cd) 5. Sony Noise reduction 2.0b 6. DVD or CD burner. Inkjet printable DVD or CD discs. 8. Printer to print on discs. 9. Instructions: a. Clean records carefully b. Play record one time fully thru c. Set Forge options to 44kc sample rate. Then record using the remote at 8 db down to prevent clipping. d. Use "click and crackle" remover in Forge, then use the volume to bring up to about -1db. Use delete to edit out any thumps or flutter at the end or beginning of the track. e. Play again from Forge and listen for clicks and pops and if sections are noisy highlight those sections and run click and crackle again. f. Run clipped peak restoration in Forge. g. Bring volume back up to within 1/4DB of "0" clip point. h. Note if one channel is lower in volume than the other and if so match it to the other channel in Forge. i. Play entire track again and listen for huge pops or defects. j. If the defect is in one channel only use the channel repair in Forge to sub the good channel into the bad channel at the highlited area only. If the defect is a large pop expand the timeline in Forge at the pop then very carefully highlight only the pop and then right click and select "cut" on both channels. The cut will usually be imperceptable to the human ear. If the bass or treble are lacking open the equalizers in Forge and adjust for same on the repeat fly function. k. There are a million other repairs that can be done which I will not get into here. l. If you think its good enough to burn hit burn cd in Forge and leave the disc open for the next song. There is a talley on the Forge menu to tell you how many minutes the song is and how many minutes are left on the disc. Continue adding the songs one at a time until the end then make sure you select close disc on the last song. m. Print pictures and text on CD. n. It ain't as easy as you think. JJK

I can see where bi-amping would make a difference but bi-wiring? No-way. JJK

Both the HD-DVD and the Blue-ray will be out this year. There are some Blue-ray's available now but at about $4000.00 each. The HD-DVD's will be considerably cheaper. Probably at least a year before even the disc's are available. Just keep buying them and put it in the same stack as your reel to reel, 8 track, cassette, VHS, Beta, VHS-C, S-VHS, CD, DVD, HD-DVD, D-VHS, Mini-DV, Blue-Ray, DVD Audio, ------------------------------------------------------------- JJK

Wondering if it would do any good to upgrade the crossovers on 40 year old K-horns. Would you not have to upgrade the speakers also? Why not just buy all new speakers? Then you have to upgrade nothing. JJK

I first purchased a Samsung T165 over the air HD tuner and it instantly smoked. I got a replacement and found out the following: A. When used with my Sony KV34-HS310 HDTV the 16.x 9 HD signals all come in a bit on the dark side and there is no provision on the tuner for adjustment of same. you have to constantly go back and forth between the tv set and the tuner to adjust the brightness and contrast. B. There is no adjustment for color saturation on the tuner. Some stations will loose color saturation when switching from analog to digital. More adjustment required. C. When viewing analog 4 x 3 stations the aspect is incorrectly displayed on the tv---its a bit longer in the horizontal plane and makes circles look oval and people look fat. D. The tuner runs very hot and cannot be placed in a confined enviornment without an external fan. I already had an MY-HD 120 computer video card with DVI daughter card which had none of these problems plus I could record perfectly to the computer hardrive to my hearts content. I then traded away the Samsung tuner to my guru buddy and purchased a MDR-200 HD tuner and it was fine except it was pretty slow on changing digital channels. I still use the computer to record and also to record to D-VHS. The link is www.digitalconnection.com. JJK

I use a crummy Kenwood 1985 linear tracking turntable with an Audio Technica cartrige. Boost up the mag cartridge signal with a Radio Shack 4 channel mixer. Then run it thru a JVC JX-S700 selector to the computer with Sony Sound Forge 7.0a at a level of about 8db below clipping. Then I run the Click and Crackle remover maybe twice sometimes and maybe more on certain selected areas, then make sure there are no clipped peaks. Raise the level to maybe 1 db below clipping on each channel. If the bass or treble is lacking I have the choice of three different equalizers in Forge and can adjust for base, mid range and treble on the fly. Then recheck for clipping and if there is clipping use the clip peak restoration tool. Sometimes there are some very humoungous pops which I highlight out after expanding the timeline then cut out. The cutout is undetectable by the human ear. Sometimes one channel is messed up so then I use the good channel as a replacement for the bad channel and no one can tell the difference. Sometimes if the record is off center on the hole you will pick up a lot of wow and with a lot of work this can be somewhat repaired with pitch changes on highlighted areas on the fly. If there is a lot of hiss the noise reduction filter works miracles. The record must be played thru one time prior to recording if it is older and warn. If your really good you can use Sony Acid Pro bass and Drum notes and augment the bass and drum tracks in Acid Pro. This will give it the huge increase in bass and trebble presence as a cd disc. And while your at it you can render it out to Dolby AC-5.1. Anyway when I get done with the final recordings they are extremely clean and juiced up. Bottom line is you have got to have the stuff to do this. JJK

To the best of my knowledge those artifacts vary from station to station depending on where the broadcast is originating from. During the olympics there were several instances of that very short pixelation during every scene change and its probably due to the satellite feed but it rarely happens on Monday Night Football. All broadcasts are transmitted with the MPEG2 19.7 megs data stream and thats why the new "HDV" format was created as it is the same quality as the networks are broadcasting. Cable, Satellite, and over the air tuners are all different as in our ego oriented system of doing things everyone wants his own system and could care less about any other system. You will also get artifacts from a poor signal however they will occurr at any time, not just during a scene change. One of the previous posts have also said that bandwidth is at a premium. If you get those artifacts on all of your channels you have a problem. JJK

The sound pressure level of your room is very important as if you exceed it distortion will prevail. The K-horns are going to work best in about a 25 x 25 ft. room with normal 8 foot ceilings and a center speaker fill in for stereo. (1935 Bell Labs test) Your room (as mine also) puts limits on the K-horn's performance./ Thats why I had to go to an equalizer to boost the 30 to 60 hz range (8 to 12 db)and reduce the 200 to 400 hz range (2 to 4 db). If you drive the K-horns flat you will be dissappointed. They are designed well enough so that you can really pound on them without distortion. You really don't even need a subwoofer with the equalizer as the subwoofer I use is just a "node" eliminator and low volume augmentation device). Remember I can only hear from 40 to 14khz. I couldn't hear 39 hz sound if a one million watt amplifier was in my ear. Those K-horns should be loosening the nails holding your house together without a subwoofer. JJK

My living room is 13 x 24 roughly and the K-horns are in the 24 ft. corners with a Corwall center speaker. I uses a Denon receiver with an equalizer for the left/right speakers only. The sweet spot ends up on the opposite wall in the center. After installing the RSW-12 subwoofer the bass filled in at most of the leaner spots in the room but picked up some boominess in the sweet spot. The low volume performance was really enhanced with the subwoofer. I also use a Hughes expander with the equalizer. With the addition of 4 SC-1's on the rear walls for the 7.1 stuff and another Denon receiver for the rest of the channels the sound pressure level gets a bit annoying when cranked up to full volume. Too many things start to vibrate. Playing the old CBS test records indicates that the glide tones are all over the place but the frequency response is very good. I can only hear from 40 to 14khz on a good day. If your into the 5.1 or 7.1 syndrome where you have to sit in the center of the room +-1 inch your marble floors basically suck. The previous setup you mention must be almost totally dead in the upper range for it to sound ok. In my opinion if the K-horns came with 10 extra tweeters I would have them. When a drummer clobbers a cymbol for real the one tweeter doesn't make it. Get some nice thick rugs and an equalizer for the left/right front speakers and place them at the 30 ft. corners and start experimenting. JJK

After bringing on line my new RSW-12 subwoofer I noticed a definite improvement in eliminating the in-phase nodes around the living room. I picked up a little boomyness at the triangular wall point on the opposite side of the room. I also picked up some shelf rattles, window rattles, door rattles and antique plate rattles. The plywood backing on the stairwell came loose. Something is rattling on the opposite wall but I can't find it. Starfleet command said something and I couldn't hear it so I shut it off. But it was satisfying for me. JJK

There is another unit available that might be an alternative called MDR-200 on digitalconnection.com. It has adjustable black level when switching to HD channels to make up for the loss in brightness which sometimes occurrs. All of the scaling options are also correct, not like the Samsung which incorrectly scales the 4 x 3 analog channels. Anyway you will probably be stuck with what they provide you. On changing the black to Maple or whatever if the finish is wood or vinyl you can apply a product called "BAnd-It" available at Lowes. It is very thin wood veneer with hot glue on the back. You install it with a hot iron set on cotton and once it's on you can't chisel it off. It's wood so you sand it and finish it with standard stain etc. It is 1/32" thick so you can't see the edges. The edges are rough trimmed with a Stanley knife then sanded with 220 grit paper. You can easily bend the grain length-wise but not accross grain. I just finished 4 SC-1's and they are beautiful with maple stain and clear coat. I also covered the grill cloth with a tobacco colored open weave decorated flower cloth and hot melt glued it over the black cloth in the same areas that the old cloth was melted on. This was all done to satisfy Starfleet Command. JJK

I run a Denon 983 for the processing and LFE channel and center channel and surrounds. Denon old stereo amp with equalizer to the left right front channels. The master volume on the 983 controls all channels. JJK

The problem with going through the wall is how many fire breaks did the builders put into the wall and how many other wires are there for you to drill into? If it is an outside wall it is crammed with insulation. A nice small cheap plastic duct (two piece that snap together) which you can paint to match the wall. JJK

Gold is primarily used for flashing the inside of waveguides to prevent corrosion. It is used on Monster cables because it looks nice. Gold is also used on the inside of Styroflex High power RF transmission Lines. Other high power uses are chrome plating over nickel plated Buryllium. By the time the steel RCA connector starts to corrode in your amp its time to upgrade anyway. The type of material in the connector for audio purposes is tantamount to shoveling sand against the tide. JJK

Amazing. We used to construct our own cables (RG58, RG59, RG62, RG 6, RG 8, etc. After installing the connectors we would sweep them over the range required into pefect teminations and if the waveforms were not good we would toss the cable into the garbage. Found out that if even a few of the coax shield woven wires were a bit mixed up it would put frequency dips into the range of frequencies the cable was supposed to pass. JJK

There is a new product sold at Lowes called "Band-It" which is super thin vineer "actual wood" with hot melt glue on the back. It is applied with an iron set at 400 degrees F "cotton". Try a small piece of it and see if it sticks on your surface. If it does it finishes and looks great. Iv'e tried it on some composite finished wood surfaces with finished surface with great success. And if you put the grain lengthwise parallel to the edges it will bend easily around a 90 degree edge. It will not bend the other way. It looks as good as anything I have seen. JJK