Islander

Cute shot! Thanks for sharing.

Since the runs may be long, 12 gauge should be a minimum size. As well, in-wall wiring has to meet certain code requirements for fire safety. Proper in-wall wire is not expensive, but having to open the wall or run the right wire later sure would be. CL-rated wire is usually used. More info here: http://www.audioholics.com/education/cables/understanding-in-wall-speaker-video-and-audio-cable-ratings Here's some in-wall wire in various sizes: http://www.knukonceptz.com/productMaster.cfm?category=KL3%20Kable

The Jubilee and JubScala use an electronic processor/crossover for EQ and time-alignment and are basically an LF horn sitting on the floor with an HF horn sitting on top of it, in open air. A simple concept that works really well. If you look at my avatar, you can see the K510 tweeter horn sitting on the La Scala cabinet which forms the bass horn.

So that's about 500Wpc? I'm sure it sounds great, with real authority and no clipping, ever. [Y][H]

If you really like the look of a wood base, you can get one for a Technics SL-1200 (or SL-1210, if you prefer black to silver) from KAB USA, in walnut, cherry or maple. Scroll to the bottom of this page to see them. Also lots of other Technics info. http://www.kabusa.com/frameset.htm?/

"Grey market" is a term that's used with several types of products. Photo gear is available in some markets in both grey market and domestic versions, with the grey market stuff being cheaper but not having any official warranty. Some New York photo retailers state clearly in their ads that their product is official US and comes with a full manufacturer's warranty. Motorcycles are another area where the grey market appears, with (for example) rare Japanese-market models being sold through certain "import" dealers in England because those models are not imported by the manufacturer. A dealer warranty may be available, but getting parts is always problematic. Sorry to hear about your bad experience, rogert.

When I switched from the K400/K-77 mid-hi combo to the K510/K-69A tweeter, there was a very real improvement in several areas, mostly clarity, low-level detail retrieval, fuller stereo effect, to name a few. Since at the same time, I also went to bi-amping through the Dx38, it may not exactly be an apples-to-apples comparison, and 3-way to 2-way is a big change, too, but in my room every listener including me found the new horn/tweeter combo to be a big step up in sound quality and realism. The time-alignment helps, too.

So is the 510 horn a miniature 402 in almost every way, or are there significant differences other than size between those two Jubilee HF horns?

I guess he'd never heard of Cinesphere, the spherical IMAX theater at Ontario Place in Toronto. The sound there is actually very good. It was probably one of the first IMAX theaters.

I remember it being around in the Sixties, when "wood-burning sets" were a popular gift item. Most efforts weren't bigger than 8" x 10", though. Those speaker panels are very impressive!

Durian, an offensive smell and an offensive weapon in one prickly handful...

This last forum software "upgrade" seems to have been a step backwards. I hope the next update/upgrade sorts things out.

Tim, your grammar and spelling was never commented on. I'll comment that it's not the worst I've seen on this site. The point was that when all the text is in a single block, it's hard to read. If you hold Shift and hit Enter twice at the end of a sentence, you can break your message into bite-size paragraphs that are much easier to read. There are lots of blue-collar workers on this forum, including me, and I don't think any of us consider ourselves to be low-lifes. As for being from Maine, some of our most respected members are from there, so don't be offended by a simple comment (which has also been addressed to other posters when they leave their message in a big clump of text) asking you to break your message up a bit. Speaking for myself, I've learned a great deal on this forum and owe any ability to sound knowledgeable to the experienced members who've shared what they know with the newer members. I hope you choose to stay.

I think all speakers need a sub to assist with the bottom octave or two. Oddly enough, some report that adding the sub improves the midrange somehow, plus it brings in those subtle reverberance sounds that give you a feel for the size of the performance space.

Precisely correct. People clip their amps quite a lot, on peaks. Most of the time they are unaware that it is happening because of the transient nature of the signals involved. Hey, artto didn't say that, I did, on page 2 of this discussion.

Actually, you can convert to JubScalas using the much smaller K510 horns, which will give you a reasonable facsimile of the "402 sound". However, most people go to bi-amping with active crossovers at the same time, so it can get a bit complicated and expensive. Anyway, here's a picture of one of my JubScalas, a 1974 La Scala with a K510 horn/K-69A tweeter on a Plexiglas stand. This is the right speaker. The left speaker has its tweeter offset to its cabinet's left side, of course. With the stock La Scalas, I sometimes had the impression that the musicians were all sitting down. Having the tweeter on top of the cabinet puts all the players back on their feet. The upgrade improves the sound in many other ways, too.

Check out Tripp Lite Isobar Ultra protectors. They're commercial-grade metal-bodied surge supressors with filters between pairs of outlets, so you can keep noise from one component (like a CD or DVD player) from reaching your other components, as well as having the incoming AC filtered. They're not expensive, and in my case the TV had visibly blacker blacks after connecting it to the Isobar Ultra.

The single connection is all you need. You can connect to both inputs for a 6dB gain in volume, but it's very unlikely that you'd need that much. Since a y-connector costs under $10, you could buy one and see for yourself. I've never seen any reference to reduce hum when connecting to both inputs. Are you getting any hum now? The only time I ever got hum from my sub was when I used a sub cable that was defective. When I re-installed the cheaper cable that I was using before, the hum went away.

Well, ears do have upper limits in what they can receive and relay to the brain. I can recall noticing at rock concerts that I was hearing a quite distorted sound when standing near the stack of speakers. When I started wearing earplugs, the sound was a bit muffled, but the distortion was much less, so it wasn't caused by overdriven speakers, but by my overdriven ears.

Ego may well be a factor in the decision to buy a 600hp car, but a bigger factor would (or should) be that a 600hp car is a lot of fun to drive. It also makes passing much safer and less dramatic. I've never driven a 600hp car, but I rode my 130hp motorcycle for years, and it was a lot of fun. Nowadays, of course, they're up to 180hp, and they're probably even more fun.

Nothing like a pair of big Macs! Looks like you've got some major headroom. Are those for the Scalas, or will they be used with your big speakers? Hmm, headroom. I guess that's why those amps need to be so tall... [:^)] []

Lotsa watts and the ability to drive low-impedance loads. Most better-quality amps will indicate what range of speaker impedances they can work with. The Yamaha MX-D1 amps, for example, can drive any speaker from 2-8 ohms. I assume they'd also drive 16 ohm speakers without difficulty. Some of the Crown pro amps can drive a dead short, or 0 ohms, if I understand it correctly. Beyond that, low distortion, high signal-to-noise ratio and high channel separation figures are good things to look for. Usually, more money buys better numbers and hopefully better sound.

Of course unused watts cannot be heard. The point is that the power in excess of what's needed for most of the music does come into play during musical peaks. Dr. Who can provide actual numbers, but sharp transients like drum rimshots and other percussive-type sounds like piano notes (I'm sure you're aware a piano is a percussion instrument, what with its hammers hitting its strings) need surprisingly high power to reproduce them accurately. That's when those watts are being used and can be heard, making the music sound closer to "live". If the amplifier does not have enough "excess" power available to reproduce musical peaks as they were recorded, the music will sound compressed. Since most people are accustomed to compressed recordings, especially CDs made in the last decade, the effect is not always obvious, but once you hear a system with adequate headroom, the difference is hard to miss. Not only that, the attack of sharp notes will be "rounded off", since the amp didn't have enough power to kick the speaker's diaphragm as hard as the drumstick hit the skin or the piano's hammer hit the string, making notes sound dull compared to live music. High-sensitivity speakers let lower-powered amps do the job more easily, so Klipsch owners usually don't need 500Wpc, but certain models, like RF-7s, seem to work best with lots of watts available, in spite of having very high sensitivity ratings.

If the differences are small, it could take a while to be sure which set-up you like best. Maybe try a week or two with each one and take notes. If you're getting listening fatigue, that could mean that's not the set-up you want.

Has anyone tried one of the new Ortofon 2Ms? They're a moving magnet type with various models (red, blue, bronze and black) and have been getting good reviews.