voxr3m

It's a preamplifier, not a receiver. No fancy digital displays on this one. [] Why is it that the gain on two different subwoofers of the same model is so different? Both set up the same way. Both located in the same position.

It's a Rotel RC-1070. http://www.rotel.com/NA/products/ProductDetails.htm?Id=10 There are two line outputs on the back and one volume knob on the front to control them both.

I have an earlier RW-10 sub and the gain on its line-in input is a lot less than that of a newer RW-10 I recently tried. For instance, I can set the volume knob on the sub to max and it still won't keep up with my RB-61's. On the newer RW-10, I only have to set it 1/3 of the way and it's already matched with the speakers (measured using a mic and RTA). The line-in on the sub amp and speaker amp are both fed by the same output on my preamplifier. Preamp line out 1 - > Speaker Amplifier Preamp line out 2 -> Sub Line-in Is there a way to boost the gain on the line-in input? There's no problem with the sub. If I turn the preamp volume up the sub gets loud enough but consequently the speakers play even louder. Suggestions?

Just wanted to ask you guys, there's no worrying about clipping with an amp this small?

The aim isn't to improve the sound absolutely, but rather to improve it relative to what it would've been had you used an inferior wire to connect your speakers. Your goal is to minimize the inevitable loss you get when you have to place your speakers further away from your amp, as most of them usually are. If you have to place a speaker some distance from the amp, you'll want to make sure whatever wire you put in between doesn't make things any worse then they have to be. Naturally the best way to do this is to use as thick a wire as you can to minimze loss without becoming overkill. The so called maximum performance of a setup is still limited by the internal wiring of the speaker or amp, but at least in using the thicker wiring in between source and speaker, you've done your best to eliminate another "bottleneck." It's a matter of convenience really. Ideally you'd connect speaker and amp directly with the lowest resistance wire you can find. But that's not practical, so using sufficiently thick speaker wire in between is as good as we can get.

It did not get by Klipsch....they caught on, and in fact have upgraded their LaScala's for example to be wired with monster cable instead of the familuar white lamp cord. Same with the internal wiring of some of their Reference subs.

You're right about the signal being AC. The electrons quite literally go back and forth. I'm not sure about what you're asking with the low frequency signal, but there are not seperate signals running through your wire. (i.e. There are not seperate and distinct treble, mid, bass signals running through the wire all at once.) What you really have is one overall signal representing the waveform of the music being amplified. From fourier analysis, you can see that this overall signal is composed of all the frequency's present in the music together (i.e. your overall sound wave is simply the low, mid, and high frequency added together.) When this overall signal gets to your speaker, your crossover works to send only the higher frequency components of the signal to the tweeters, and sends the lower frequencies to the mid and bass drivers. The speaker crossovers essentally seperate the signal into it's treble, mid, and bass components if you will. They "know" how to seperate based on the crossover network. The cutoff values for the filters are deteremined by the values of the capacitors, inductors, and resistors used and in particular, where and how they are placed in the circuit to form the crossover as a whole.

I'm curious. What did they tell you about bose speakers?

Thicker insulation? I'll buy that. Might come in handy next time you want to expose your system to the elements. But whoa, time correction? Now how does that work? Please explain so that I, a simple minded electrical engineer, may understand this fascinating phenomenon. []

agreed, maybe even before this weekend is over. Better put on my fire proof suit then. [H]

The IFIs work great as near field monitors. You'll be fine as long as you're not a basshead.

I've never heard of that one before. Nice. []

1. The speed of sound has nothing to do with the 'eveness' you're talking about. If your speakers have low enough an impedance, the resistance of your speaker wire may contribute appreciably to the frequency response and loudness of the speaker. This will cause the speakers to not sound as they should. If you're using too thin a wire, then having unequal lengths will cause your speakers to behave differently from each other, making the problem even worse. If the wire is significantly thick enough, then the length won't matter as the wire resistance should be negligible compared to the impedance of the speakers. 2 and 3 speakerfritz seems to have covered. 4. Frankly, there is no difference between 'brand name' monster wire and your ordinary lamp cord if they are both the same gauge. Copper is copper as long as it's free of impurities. I think it's foolish to pay for 'brand name' wire and companies like monster reap tremendous profits from their wire simply because they've managed to convince enough people that they're wire is somehow better. Radioshack brand is fine. I've used it and it's as good as any more expensive wire. Do not let salesmen convince you that wire A is better than wire B simply because it's brand A. If it's the same gauge and conductor material, then you're basically looking at the same wire.

Creative makes a similar decoder I believe. I think you'll be able to use that to get surround sound from your xbox.

If you use an ohm meter to measure the resistance across the speaker's terminals (not the speaker as a whole, just the driver/woofer) you're measuring the DC resistance of the voice coil. Since the voice coil is just a wire, you're essentially measuring the resistance of a wire. But this DC ohm reading isn't what people refer to when they talk about speaker impedance. Impedance is the AC 'resistance' of the voice coil and varies with frequency. While a speaker might be rated 8 ohms, it's actual value may only be 8 ohms at a select few frequencies. At others, it may go below or above that rating. You'll need more than a simple multimeter to measure the impedance as a function of frequency if that's what you're looking for.