JJkizak

How high is your attic? Can you put up a 17 footer with a rotator? Antenna direction is critical for long haul stations. Do you have a metal roof? Roofs do not help, trees do not help, buildings do not help, mountains do not help. Elevation works. Your wasting time with the pre-amps because the noise figure is usually worse than your tv tuner. Noise figure is everything. If you can find a pre-amp with about a 2.0 db noise figure you got the world by the butt. The only time you will get a good signal with the stuff you have now is when the propagation is "ducting" the signal which usually happens about twice a year for about a two day period. All of the tv stations are using UHF channels for their High Def stuff. Well lets see, 100 miles line of sight would require you to be 1000 feet higher than the general terain. You would be in fat city then. If you can find some old military Parametric amps (400 to 960 megs at 1.8 db noise figure at 10 megs bandwidth) Your receiver quieting at 20 db (no sound noise discernable)would be about -106 dbm. I would come over and drink beer with you then. JJK

There is a previous post on page one that talks generally about specs. By the way a "Tachion" travels faster than the speed of light. JJK

Toslink cables are available from info@lifatec.com in lengths up to 98.5 feet. I believe that's the "E" mail address but the URL is lifatec.com. JJK

Having installed two lengths of 50 ft Toslinks and also two 50 ft lengths of coax(RG-6 quad shield one way signal) I did notice some amplitude differences but I have not nailed down any huge differences. The coax did seem cleaner but not sure. Sorry I can't add any more. But I do seem to like the coax better. JJK

While industry takes great pains to match impedances and reduce VSWR in the IF & RF world the audio world does seem to lack thereof. In the old telephone exchanges 135, 75, & 600 ohm wire was used and the patch cords were all matched to the wire. If I buy a Denon receiver and a Klipsch subwoofer who knows what the actual impedance is throught the entire frequecy range of both units on both the input verses the output. So I have a Denon receiver with the LFE output of 75 ohms at 30 hz, an inteconnect cable of 72 ohms at 30 hz, and the klipsch subwoofer input of 74.9 ohms at 30 hz, with no pads to smooth it out as in RF or IF, tell me what happens to the transfer of the 30hz signal. And that is at just one frequency. Multiply that by how many different brand names of all components involved---electronic chaos. JJK

Richard had it right---"The Commitments". Very well done with fresh stuff. JJK

If I get the black SF-1's can I paint them mahogany? Starfleet Command says no black speakers. JJK

Whatever happened to coathangers? JJK

Have you tried ordering the CD version at Amazon.com? Save you a lot of trouble. The price and learning curve on the software mentioned is not easy. I know, I have it. JJK

I use the MY-HD 120 tuner card and can record to the hard drive and/or JVC D-VHS VCR with no perceptable loss in quality. If you do any video editing you can render your pictures (slides) into HD quality and show it back with sound on the Tuner card system with stupendous quality if the pictures are at least 2000 x 2000. If you have the Cineform codec you can capture the videos from the JVC deck and convert them to avi files for editing and the MY-HD files can also be converted. The new JVC HDV-Mini DV deck can also be used. All of this stuff works using the 19.4-7 meg data stream (same as the networks use to transmit there HD data) and that's why you cannot see any difference in quality from what you see on the networks. MY HD-120---www.digitalconnection.com Cineform---www.cineform.com JJK

First please delete the first two posts which posted by hitting the carriage return key. I recently purchased a Denon AVR-983 7.1 receiver to upgrade my K-horns and Cornwall center speaker to 7.1. My old amp (Denon DRA-365R) was coupled with a Kenwood equalizer (EQ-70) which was in series with a Hughes expander (AK-100) in the tape jacks on the back and the tape switch on the front of the amp was on. With the new amp installed the sound was very "non-low end" and lower total output than the old setup. Talked to Denon and they said the best way was to use the "pre out L & R front" jacks and feed the old amp. So I hooked it up that way with the old amp feeding the K-horns and the new amp feeding the center speaker. (I don't have the surround speakers yet or the woofer). Everything came alive and I was happy again loosening up the nails in the rafters in the house. Just going by "earball" the low end on the AVR 983 was about 15 db down at max level output compared to the old amp. Don't understand why because the new amp is rated 90 watts continous per channel and the old amp 55 watts per channel continous. I will continue to use the new amp as the surround control unit and fill-in and the supply for the LFE. The setup for the new amp had the LFE separate and not combined with the front speakers. James J. Kizak

What is the typical price of the Denon 3805? JJK

FM transmitters use phase modulation which is sensitive to amplitude input. So with a typical movie sound track with huge gaps between sound information thing sound OK. Then the commercial hits with "0" dynamic range and continuous sound information driving the transmitter into the red hot mode (more power in the sidebands)and everything sounds loud even though the driving levels are legal. This also gives the transmitters about 3 db more range in the viewing area. JJK

Yes you are probably right. I read somewhere that the big movie companies are backing the blue-ray stuff and thats why. Someone will figure a way around it. JJK

At this time the alternatives are few. D-VHS (JVC-$619.00) HDV-Minidv (JVC-$2000.00) The quality of the D-VHS is absolutely staggering. Don't even equate it with VHS. The blue rays will debut at about $2000.00 with built in anti-copy hardware. (NO COPY AT ALL). The red rays assumably will be OK. You have another alternative. Check this site: www.digitalconnection.com. They have a computer HD Tuner card (yes you have to have a computer) called the MY-HD 120 which is absolutely outstanding with remote control to record HD to your hard drive or by firewire to the D-VHS unit. If you have a Video editing system such as Sony Vegas 5 you can take HD-WMV files, render them to 720 x 30P, and put the file into the MY-HD file and view spectacular HDV. You can also take still pictures in the 2200 x 2200 range and render them in Vegas 5 at 720 x 30p for slide shows that will blow your mind. That HD-WMV file you have can be rendered in Vegas 5 again at 720 x 30p and shown via the MH-HD tuner card. I have a Sony KV-34HS510 HDTV that I use all the stuff I mentioned above except the Mini-HDV recorder. You of course I assume already have a projection or large HDTV setup. The MY-HD Tuner card will feed anything you have. ($300.00). The web site I mentioned also has extensive articles on HDTV and the why's and wherefore's. Unfortunately I listen to my K-Horns backwards as the TV is on the wrong side of the room. I'm working on it though. JJK

I have updated my profile. The room has three doorways, fireplace, and stairwell. It is basically acoustically horrible. The Horns phase up just in front of the fireplace. The center channel is derived from the left and right channels. Of course with the future 7.1 this is mute. The equalizer is up +8 db at 30 hz and 20KHZ and -4db at 400HZ. My Hearing limit is 40HZ - 14KHZ at around 100 db output. My CBS test records indicate sounds bouncing all over the place. All I am interested in is what model speakers to use for the sub woofer (I can't hear it but I can feel it) and the side speakers and rear speakers. The 7.1 units I am looking at are the Yamaha, Denon, and Sony.

I have the 1965 (yes, they still work fine) corner horns and center channel and wish to upgrade to a 7.1 system using these speakers. Which model subwoofer and rear and side speakers are reccommended? JJK