Islander

Does anyone know the actual length of the La Scala bass horn? I'm assuming one should measure from the woofer itself, perhaps at the dust cover. Does the sound, for measurement purposes at least, stay in the middle of the horn, rather than travelling along the walls? Since the horn is 3 inches wide and makes two turns, one after exiting the woofer slot and one at the rear corner (mirrored at the other rear corner), that's 1 1/2 inches times 2, so if the sound travels in the middle of the horn, that would make the horn 3 inches shorter in effective length than would be measured using the sides of it. Has anyone seen any figures for the effective length? Also, for purposes of setting delay for time alignment of drivers, is the driver's cone or diaphragm the proper measuring point, or is there an "acoustic center" part-way along the horn that should be used instead?

A better phono stage should be quieter than a receiver's built-in phono pre-amp. After all, it cost more, didn't it? Seriously, things like that can and should make a audible difference. Although it's not exactly the same thing, when I moved the system from one side of the room to another and plugged it into a different circuit (one without the computer and microwave plugged into it), the noise (below the music) from the turntable was very noticeably quieter.

The leader of Oingo Boingo for some time was Danny Elfman, who does the music for the Simpsons and has done lots of movie and TV scores. He seems to be very prolific.

The Shure M97xE seems to go well with these turntables and is used by a few forum members, including me.

Shocking! The fine print makes it pretty clear.

If you look at the Arrange-a-Room diagram above, you'll see that I had only one corner available, near the left speaker, so I kept that speaker away from it, to avoid it sounding different from the right speaker, which is along the wall. I used an RS sound level meter and test CD to help find the speaker positions that gave the smoothest bass response and aimed them directly at the listening position for the best treble response. They need to be relatively near a wall, but don't have to be in a corner. Finding the best position for the sub can take a while. I tried four different spots before I settled on the present location.

Nope, you had it right the first time. I guess it really doesn't work online. Maybe it's not funny, at least with too much analysis. It's kind of a Pulp Fiction / Memento kind of structure. Ah, an interlinked joke sequence. Now it all comes together!

Pop music can be great or really not great, but why a song's a hit can be a mystery. Remember 1988? Song of the Year: Don't Worry, Be Happy There was lots of great music released that year, but it was all ranked behind that cheery ditty.

The La Scala low end starts to roll off as high as 100Hz and really drops off around 50Hz. Have you tried setting the sub's hi-cut somewhat higher? Some folks set it at over 100Hz. With my setup, 150Hz gives a natural-sounding bass response with the sub volume level set fairly low.

If you just Google "Technics SL-1350" you'll get lots of info. There's a discussion here that you might find informative: http://www.audiokarma.org/forums/archive/index.php/t-126424.html

UPDATE: gas just went to $1.37 (136.9) a litre, or about $5.20US per US gallon today, here in BC.

Man, it can be tough just trying to earn a dishonest living...

What are you guys grumbling about? Gas here on the Island has been $1.34 (133.9) a litre for weeks. That's around $5.10US a gallon. Good thing I don't drive much and only fill up about once a month.

It's the brick from the 999 bricks joke. I didn't get that one, unless it was just a shaggy dog story without a real punch line. The woman's dog had the cigar.

A refreshing bit of honesty from Simon. However, if making money is the goal, he has a very good idea what he's doing. The show seems to be about wannabe performers imitating actual artists/performers, without any of the originals' scary (to the mainstream culture) creativity and willingness to be different.

Check out kevinmi's excellent Khorn setup (with photo) on this page: http://forums.klipsch.com/forums/t/104761.aspx?PageIndex=3

Hi, I'm not that much a fan of bi-amping anymore because of the negative sonic issues introduced by SS crossovers. My current preferences are obtaining the highest signal purity. I had lot's of bi-amped horn systems in the past. It has it's own kind of appeal of course, but I am done with that aspect. I was initially a bit dubious about running the analogue signal from a turntable through an ADC and then a DAC, with lots of EQing between the two, but the improvement in sound won me over. Maybe the 24-bit processing and 128X oversampling minimizes any digital degradation of the signal, I can't say. Also, I've never had the pleasure of hearing a high-end tube setup, so I literally don't know what I'm missing. I do know my setup really pleases me, as yours does you, and that's what really matters.

I've heard some DVDs that are a big step up from CDs, in clarity and naturalness of sound.

Klipsch make speakers for home use, for theatre/club use and for instore/business use that are all well thought of. Maybe they figure they have their fingers in enough pies as it is. As you suggested, speakers for huge concert venues are different from what Klipsch makes at present and it would probably be tough to go up against well-established manufacturers in that area.

Pardon me if this sounds like I'm missing something obvious, but if a system reproduces music accurately, wouldn't it also reproduce movie soundtracks just as accurately? There are some folks who crank up the sub when watching movies, but I'm not one of them. I assume that if the system is dialed in properly, it will make the movie sound the way the director intended. Am I mistaken? Which multichannel amps or surround processors have you found that sound "really fine" on 2 channel music? I'm using stereo power amps for the main speakers and no processing (other than the EQing provided by the Dx38) for 2-channel music listening, since music is my first priority. When watching a movie, I cut in the AV receiver's power amp to drive the center and surround speakers and run the receiver in 'Straight' mode, with no processing, since DTS or Dolby Digital come in with 5.1 channels sounding right that way and the movies sound sufficiently exciting for my needs. Perhaps my electronics are not up to some of the high-end stuff you're familiar with, but adding the surround channels for movies doesn't compromise the 2-channel music listening, at least with my setup. Multi-channel is becoming more important anyway, with all the concert DVDs, some of which have excellent sound that has a depth you can't get with 2 channels, due in part to the higher res of the DVDs relative to CDs. When the budget permits, I may get a multi-channel pre-pro and a 3-channel amp for the surround channels, but as I mentioned, 2-channel music sounds great and 5.1 movies are pretty good too, until the day when I upgrade by getting three more JubScalas, but I'm in no rush to do that. BTW, Mark, have you thought of using a Dx38 as a crossover with a pair of your amps to power Jubilees or JubScalas? That could sound really fine.

This room has 2 JubScalas (they were La Scalas until the conversion 2 months ago and are still in the same location), a Heresy II under the TV for center channel and 2 Heresy IIs for surround at the back of the room. The sub is just to the right of the left JS and the next black thing is the audio rack. The brown things are various tables and cabinets. The ceiling height is 8 feet and the sweet spot is at the left cushion of the sofa in line with the TV screen. The speakers are 12 feet apart and 13 feet from the listening position.

I completely disagree with your first statement. Distortion products from woofers are easily in the audible frequency range and I hear them readily. Some distortion from tweeters is inaudible. The 2nd harmonic of 7500 is above my hearing range these days. "Speed" is not applicable to subwoofers. The sound of "speed" comes from higher frequencies. So, I do agree with the second statement. Distortion from woofers is certainly audible in certain frequency ranges. I'm just saying that as the frequency goes down, so does the audibility of the distortion, to my ears at least. When I put my ear to the sub, I hear something deep, but it needs to be heard with the woofer at the same time to be called music. As for "speed", would "accurate transient response" be a term that sounds more correct to you? If a sub has poor transient response, the sound would be dull when compared to a live bass sound.

Pardon me if this sounds like I'm missing something obvious, but if a system reproduces music accurately, wouldn't it also reproduce movie soundtracks just as accurately? There are some folks who crank up the sub when watching movies, but I'm not one of them. I assume that if the system is dialed in properly, it will make the movie sound the way the director intended. Am I mistaken?

That makes sense. After all, the bass bins are Wood Horns Of Relatively Exponential Specification, aren't they? It's a wonder women allow their husbands to spend hours alone with them.

Many years ago, I read a story, set in Victorian times, about an inventor who came up with a plate that had zero gravity above it. The air above the plate immediately began fountaining upwards in a violent updraft and there was no way to turn off the plate. I don't remember whether it ended in disaster or if he got control of the situation.