Kriton

Forrest, I still remember your first introduction to Whitacre - I have since met the man, and sat through a mastercalss with him, and the story makes the music even more fascinating - and that stuff is still sublime...I was happy to pass it along. Simpler times without all of the corporate sponsorship, just the hotel breakfast nook, Mike Colter with the wild hair and Crites swapping out crossovers...Remember when that was the pinnacle of experience? K

Hey all, I have been lurking for a while and saw this thread, and I was going to try to get away this year - ya'll just kept setting the gathering my daughter's 1st and 2nd birthdays! I would have my *&^$ handed to me on a plate if I skipped the b-days right now, but I was will to make a run on the 3rd b-day (or bring her with me - I already have her Heresy stereo set up for her...). However, I too miss the GoatRoper and that crazy drive to get out there...I would definitely be up for an unofficial Hope gathering sometime soon - good chance to meet up with SETI and SeaD and the boys... So count me in. K

That is the cool thing about straights - you can buy one at a local flea market for $5 bucks, and is it is not warped, or chipped, you stand a good chance with a little time or sending it away to be honed, that it will be a good and maybe great shaver - I have used electrics, BIC's I even have one of those vibrating monstrosity Fusions somewhere, and I have never gotten as good or as close, or as satisfying a shave as with a straight... Go check the website I posted, look at the information for newbies tab, just full of good info! If you are still interested, let me know and we can work something - I used this morning a pristine Joseph Rodgers & Sons, Cutlers to their Majesties, Sheffield England made razor that I have reasonably dated to approximately 1873-1890 as it still has its original vulcanite scales (handles) - which are a precursor to celluloid and eventually plastic. How many devices around your house that you use daily from the century before last? Except for Colter of course - he probably drives something that old, collector that he is... K

They are all over man! It has gotten very popular in the last few years, beleive it or not - whether it is the nostagia or saving the landfill - it is pretty hopping right now. There are several major commercial makers of straight razors these days - one is Thiers Issard in France, and the toehr is DOVO in Solingen Germany. You will pay a pretty price for the TI's, but the DOVOs are reasonable. Most of the best razors are decades old; there were hundreds of makers in Solingen Germany before the war, and we bombed the place back to the stone age, so the only ones who survived were DOVO, who bought up everybody else - I beleive that is the story. We even have a few "honemeisters" who can hone up anything - pretty extensive community. Go to the BST forum on www.straightrazorplace.com fourm - you may be able to pick up a shave ready razor just liek your grandads - just be forwarned, it is not necessarily cheaper than a BIC - you start collecting all kinds of stuff, strops, hones, scuttles, more and more razors...it is potentially addicting...kind of like speakers! A few more good sites are www.shavingshop.com and www.classicshaving.com - Take a look at straight razors on Ebay and you will be surprised - PM me if you have questions! K

Shawn, I have the full set of Nortons, couldn't do it without them - those little RedTrader hones are just too damn small. I also have a 12k Chinese, and the various Tony Miller pasted (.5 and 1.0) and hanging strops...Got the RAD and HAD and BAD, well BAD. Not as difficult as it seems, gives great satisfaction when done well, no plastic in the landfills and only cuts me when I am careless...not a loftly goal at all, just one of those things you have to commit to, and wack away at - men for thousands of years used straight edged razors to shave, and most of that knowledge and the father-son training has been lost in less than a century - sometimes new isn't necessarily better? But I don't need to tell a bunch of Klipsch Heritage guys that... K

Hundred year old NOS straight razor here boys, evey single day. Henckels Friodur, Joseph Rodgers & Sons, Geneva Cutlery, Solingen Revisor and Wade and Butcher, and a new Thiers Issard in the rotation right now - looking for a sweet modern made straight from the likes of Robert Williams or Mastro Livi in the near future. I hone my own, and have probably 60 of the buggers right now, English, German, and French and a very few American made. I got really tired of all the blades and electrics giving me terrible razor burn, I get a closer shave with a straight, a historic blade, and the experience - once learned - is relaxing and fun...My daughter loves it when Daddy shaves... Don't believe me, go look at all my obsessed compatriots over at www.straightrazorplace.com - K

I am sure you guys have already seen and discussed this *ad nauseum*, I had heard it already was sold, but apparently not - http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=320230084120 Do you remember the Twilight Zone where the Penguin just wants to be left alone, so he can read all the books in the library? If someone would just give me a good set-up, a deep chair, and a cold lifetime supply of the beer of my choice, plenty of needles and push the food under the warehouse door - I think I could spend a long time just going through this archive one record at a time...But like the Twilight Zone, I would emerge looking for new caps or replacement tubes, and everyone would be gone! K

"Don't you *make* me hurt your dog mister! K

OK, the first song of the set - "American Girl" - Isn't that the song that the last victim of Buffalo BIll is singing right before she is abducted in the Silence of the Lambs? I don't think I will ever be able to separate that song again from the movie - But I enjoyed the rest of it - Great game... K

My quote of Mr. Cooney was only to show that Sunfire is not above hype in their claims, just like any other manufacturer - so unless someone has actually torn their Sunfire down, or Mr. Cooney wants to weigh in about the nature of balanced connections, there are still two opinions out there, so new purchasers need to do their own research, if they need to get to the bottom of it... I personally didn't hear an improvement with xlr versus RCA, I bought them because of the *promise* of better sound, just to be sure - I ran my gear with RCA's for a while before the xlrs - and the difference to me was negligible, to my ears - and the RCA's I was using were el cheapo ratshack interconnects too. SO, again, anyone's mileage may vary...The xlr snake idea is great, as I have cables everywhere...I recommend forprice and build the Blue Jean interconnects, you can get them anyway you want and good lengths too. I bought the Sunfire equipment for the same reason that I bought Klipsch, for the man that made them as much as the sound - I respect both these guys tremendously, and have shown that with my equipment. Not trying to run either down, just mentioned what I had read. I also read that the President of France was a shemale too, don't make it true - just makes it the Internet. One of you tech guys tear your Sunfire up and tell us definitively! Hey here is another obeservation - I have the 400~7 and TGIV, right - the TGIV has outputs for Front(2), Rear(2) Center(1), Rear Effect channels (2) AND Side effect channels(2) and subwoofer out (.1) for a total of 9.1 possible channels (yes, I know the read effect and side axis "channels" are really just matrixed front and rears, but stay with me here). The 400~7 only has inputs for 7.1 (no side axis inputs or outputs) - Why make the TGIV with 9 and the top amp with 7? Never was able to figure that out... K

Well actually - the thread over on AVSforum, is for owners's of the Sunfire equipment, and most of those guys know this stuff like the back of their hand. There are several threads which indicate an improvement in sound using the balanced cables, but there are also folks that beleive that the signal is not truly a balanced signal. Not that the Sunfire manual would ever be a little misleading, like when it states that the 400~7 amp can put that amount of wattage continuously into 7 channels? This was the response in 2004 by a Sunfire engineer when pressed for an explanation: >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> 01-07-04, 08:37 PM Originally posted by cajunlab Alan Cooney, Maybe you can settle the issue regarding the Sunfire Cinema 7 Signature. How can Sunfire claim 2800-CONTINOUS watts (400x7) when ohms law will not allow that from a 15-amp circuit? Your response is appreciated. Great question. The Cinema 7 Signature spec is really a holdover from our Cinema Grand Signature, which can do 5x400 continuously. I want to revisit that spec for the 7-channel amp, since I doubt it's truly capable of doing that into all seven for an extended period (even with the amp plugged into a two foot, six gauge power cable tied directly to your breaker panel and with the line fuse wrapped in tin foil to bypass it -- kids, don't try this at home!) without any output falloff. I must admit that I'm a bit embarrassed that we weren't more rigorous about this. It's probably more like any five of the seven continuously with the same sine wave driving every channel under test. I expect that Bob just overlooked the 'continuous' detail when he reused some of the text from the five channel amp spec sheet. We'll look into it after we all get back from CES. Now with that really straight response being said, I feel compelled to add that a 'continuous all channels' rating is really a ridiculous spec anyhow. NO ONE listens to one of our amps with a single, in-phase sine wave driving all channels at full rated power. NO ONE (for anyone who does, do you still have windows in your house? Can you hear anything with your shredded eardrums or your melted speakers?) Seriously, though, for ANY real-world music, motion picture soundtrack, or noise source, the program content mostly isn't in phase or correlated among the channels. You really can run listenable real-world material at full power on all channels CONTINUOUSLY with this amp. All day, all week, all year. No problem. That's what our amps are made to do. And they do it extremely well, generating gobs of power into more difficult loads and with far less heat than anything on the market. Lab ratings for big amps like this really should include some sort of SOA/time-based curve -- rather like other high-power equipment such as arc welders. I'll think about that as we will revisit the spec (there's finally a use for that, "specifications subject to change without notice" line in the fine print) and make it more appropriate. Again, I wouldn't get too wrapped up in a spec that's only meaningful under lab conditions. The Sunfire Cinema Seven Signature will deliver a truly effortless and dynamic 400x7 all day long in your listening room. Regards, Alan Cooney Sunfire >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>. NOW, with the understanding that I purchased and OWN the equipment, I was merely pointing out that there was a different opinion out there on the balanced ins and outs, not that it should matter except for those folks who don't want to spend a jackload for cables. OH, and I agree with Mr. Cooney (above), gobs of power for my use, even if they can't do 2800 watts continuous (400 watts into 7 channels), and even though my *manual* says it can... K

Hey, haven't been on in a bit and wanted to throw some 2c in about the XLR-RCA debate with these SUnfire components - I did a lot of research before pickign up my set, and it was my understanding that the Sunfire TGIV XLR's were not really "balanced" - that essentially they were just tied in behind the rear panels to the same putput as the RCA (hence why the plugs are right next to each other) and that you would receive no advantage over using one or the other kind of cable - I use Blue Jean cable XLR's for the sake of argument (and because they were cheap and well made) - but I don't think that there is an difference either in noise control or signal. I beleive the discussion on the TG's balanced output was on avsforum.com? Just what I recall. K

Not scary, but pretty damn cool - I like my 400~7; and I can tell you anthing you want - The present amps I think are just repackaged 400~7's from everythign I have seen. New front plate for them, but it is the same guts. K

Oh crap, when I think of that first machine - good grief, I am running a full bandwidth fiber optic broadband, dual core SLI rig with a little better than a terabyte in multiple striped RAID array, dual flat panel monitor on floating arm, blue-ray/DVD sweetness, 4gb overclocked ram, with water cooled Zalman lusciousness, two POS music and (family) picture servers (doing double duty as a game server), with wireless repeaters all over the house, 3 printers, two scanners, dedicated digital camera for light box photos, and that is just in my man cave! It is all just too crazy. No wonder I just buy old worn out used big box heritage speakers, I can't afford the *really* good stuff... Just kidding! k

That looks familiar - except we would leave the "computer lab" and put something really filthy on it about some teacher and let it scroll a thousand times...hehe, I was such an anarchist. K

Ok, I guess I am a bit younger then some of you guys - when I was in highschool - we had those lovely monochrome TRS-80 Radioshack computers, where the coolest thing that you could possibly do was write the small program that would allow you to print some offensive saying over and over again on the green screen. (goto line 10, repeat) College, at Syracuse, they had DECwriters, no monitors, and the funky language called APL (freshman weed-out course) to manipulate blocks of numbers in different spatial references, and the noise from all those DECwriters in the bowels of the halls at 3 in the morning was deafening. Never could figure that language out, still have the workbook and screw around with the problems occasionally. Only computer I owned was an HP11C RP calculator, programmed every physics equation I could into that thing, then forgot what all I had programmed into it, rendering it useless... Post-grad, bought my first computer from a company that had retail stores, CompuAdd, remember them? Out of Austin TX too as I recall, a 286 SX small form factor, dual 5.25 and 3.5 floppy drive ,16 meg. ram (an upgrade), 20 meg HD, and *gasp* a color vga monitor - I was stylin' - with my Panasonic 1284 daisy wheel printer, I was making noise in my efficiency apt. till all hours - paid total over $2600.00 for that system, as I recall, and that was in 1989-90 or so...ah those were the days... K

There has been an argument in the past about whether the signature 400~7 actually can out out 400 watts per 7 channels, or whether it is something less - as I recall the thread (and this is probably on another forum) the math just doesn't work, that the claims of 400 into 7 channels were confirmed by a Sunfire employee as "possible inaccurate" etc. You can check it out yourself, I believe it was at AVS Forum - At any rate, and even knowing this, I bought the 400~7 and have never looked back. At any rate - I have the 400~7, and regardless the intended output, I have never broken a sweat with my HT, with a full 5.1 Klipsch Reference 7 collection, it is a turn it on and forget it kind of system. I have had (just for fun) the current system and a pair of Cornwall 2's as side effect channels, and a pair of Heresy 2's as the rear effect channels, and cranked the whole system and the 400~7 didn't even blink, not for one second. And it was loud and not timbre matched, and glorious. With speakers as efficient as Klipsch are, it doesn't seem necessary to me to have a monster amp to push everything, But it sure helps when you have every blasted input and output crammed with cable. YMMV. K

Diz, You have a PM. K

Bill, I am on it! Tell me (generally) what part of town it was in, I bet it ends up on Craigslist or at Trader's village, and I might be persuaded to go just to find out. I had a storage locker broken into in the Midcities a couple of years ago, and the police were negative (-) help - if they can't make the news and there is no blood, you haven't got a chance. Unless it is Military Gun Supply and you drive through the front doors! K

OK, nevermind - what is the thread doing in ANNOUNCEMENTS? Good grief! Thanks - K

PM sent as back-up. K

Aaarrrghghg - dammit! You all would have to plan this on my daughter's (first) birthday - I would be there with bells if I could boys. Just not fair. Really. But...if a toss up between Colter's baby blues and these...well... K

Uh, yes...the audio was decent - I tried both setting the discrete DTS and the DD, most notably the gun fire was exceptional - a lot of dialogue, so the full extent of the formats was not utilized to fullest extent, but the sound track was very good. Explosions were a good sub challenge. K

Strange and disturbing film - saw it over the weekend. It has that disjoint and rather disconnected narrative that a lot of foreign films have in my opinion. The few special effects that there were, were magnificent - in a Hellraiser sort of way. There were no real explanations about the creatures or the tasks, and the real world seemed more fantastical and perilous than the "other" world. I thought the captain made an excellent sociopath, but there was no real back story as to why he was the way he was, or the larger historical context (except brief mentions), why this martinet would cart his wife into a war zone, why she would really have had anything to do with him other than she had "been alone for too long"...Just a lot of questions, why the toad was the way he was, why the King didn't send anyone to look for the Princess, what was up with the baggy skinned dude and the feast, why why why. The peasant being hit with the bottle was early and pretty graphic, and not expected. Went down hill from there. I caught some of the not-so-subtle parallels with the fantasy world and the real world, but they were just obscure and off putting to a large extent. The awards for graphic design, etc. though, I believe were well deserved. I guess I expected more of a coherent story from Del Toro, the direction (Del Toro) was slick and excellent - the writing (also Del Toro) was not. Interesting movie, certainly one of the best foreign films I have seen of late, but disturbing. NOT for children, and only a FEW adults. K

Hey - If it is rubbery, it ain't the magnets! First, the drivers have buck-mags on them to prevent TV interference, so if they were to hit, they wouldn't really hurt anything, but I will tell you that I have had mine pretty far in and they haven' hit anything. I think what you are hitting is the foam dampening material, which is a tempurpedic like egg crate material that is in all of the 7 line (at least in mine). Stick a flashlight in the port an see if you can see anything move when you screw the feet in but at any rate, it shouldn't hurt anythingif you strike that material, unless you push it up so far it blocks the ports. K