Islander

Islander. Why did you start that paragraph with "Back to reality" ? Because sci-fi is fiction, of course.

The locking type bananas are said to give better contact than the regular models, but can be a little fiddly to work with. There is another type, the BFA banana, which is not exactly a banana type, since the contact surfaces are cylindrical, but it makes really good contact. You can see them at: http://www.knukonceptz.com/productMaster.cfm?Category=Connectors# Close-up: http://www.knukonceptz.com/image.cfm?image=assets/productImages/eKs-BP1.JPG

Bjoern, Victoria Falls is in Africa. Victoria, BC is on Vancouver Island, off the west coast of Canada. Just trying to save you some embarrassment when you're talking to the travel agent...

Huh???? Ps. I think it might be too late for some of you Looks like I'd better clarify these references before people think my grip on reality is even looser than usual. Here are a couple of quotes from Wikipedia. First, Alan Turing: Alan Mathison Turing, OBE, FRS (pronounced /'tj??r??/) (23 June 1912–7 June 1954) was an English mathematician, logician, and cryptographer.Turing is often considered to be the father of modern computer science. Turing provided an influential formalisation of the concept of the algorithm and computation with the Turing machine. With the Turing test, he made a significant and characteristically provocative contribution to the debate regarding artificial intelligence: whether it will ever be possible to say that a machine is conscious and can think. He later worked at the National Physical Laboratory, creating one of the first designs for a stored-program computer, although it was never actually built. In 1948 he moved to the University of Manchester to work on the Manchester Mark I, then emerging as one of the world's earliest true computers. Turing Police are a plot device used by William Gibson: In William Gibson's seminal cyberpunk novel Neuromancer, the sinister body tasked with the regulation and suppression of artificial intelligences is called the "Turing Registry", and its agents are referred to as the "Turing Police". William Gibson is a Vancouver-based writer known for, among other things, inventing the term "cyberspace" and the writing genre called "cyberpunk", both in the early 1980s. Most of his novels are set in the near future, when the possibility of an artificial intelligence, or AI, achieving self-awareness is seen to be a definite possibility. Such an entity could be extremely powerful, so the Turing Registry was formed to watch for any evidence of that and to put an immediate stop to it, with the full weight of the law. Back to reality: with the all-pervasive reach of the Internet, if a self-aware AI was able to connect to it, that AI could control many of the systems connected to the Net, so the potential exists for some real sci-fi type problems not that far down the road from here. For all we know, some far-seeing government types (there might be some!) could have already set up a secret agency to monitor developments in this field...

Sounds like a comet or asteroid to me ; right ? No, more like ekpyrotic theory. Everything changes on a universal scale. See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ekpyrotic

Moore's Law is just a trend in the pace of development that has been consistent so far. However, quantum tunnelling and other effects will limit the possible miniaturization of processors fairly soon, unless some quite different technology comes into use. And I wasn't kidding about Turing cops. If an AI network develops self-awareness without any human noticing, it could be too late for all of us.

WAF, I don't need no WAF... No , I set up my place the way it suits me and most visitors like it. Oddly enough, after a while the La Scalas don't look so big, especially the black ones. That's not just in my mind, other Scala owners have noticed it too. Bjoern, if you were on the Island (Vancouver Island), I'd certainly invite you over for a listen. Here's a look at the system in its current configuration. The speakers are about 12' apart (3.6m), but the listening position is 13' away (4m) so the geometry gives good soundstaging. The turntable is in the tall cabinet and there is a Heresy II (on its side) under the TV for the center channel for surround listening. The sub is on the little table.

We'd better have the Turing cops set up before then, before Wintermute can consolidate its power. Or it really could be the rise of the machines...

"The future is already here, it's just not widely distributed yet." William Gibson

Since the La Scala HF section is not a speaker "enclosure" in the normal sense, just a baffle for the squawker and tweeter horns, plus a top and sides, why not just make up a new baffle from a sheet of plywood? That would save the original cabinet and allow you to size the baffle to suit your needs. Unlike cone drivers, the horns have no rear sound to deal with, so there's a lot of flexibility as to how you build the sides, top and back of your HF enclosure.

Hmm, books? Maybe I will try that. Thanks, Groom! And one speaker is on a bookcase. Talk about overlooking the obvious!

"Lasers in the jungle..."

Well, only sixty-five years or so passed between the first heavier-than-air flight and walking on the Moon. Technology can advance unbelieveably fast. However, in terms of inventions that changed daily life, our grandparents and great-grandparents probably experienced more change than we ever will: the invention of the radio, the telephone, television, flight, automobiles, artificial satellites, space travel (mostly for machines, but many humans have been off the Earth and some have stepped on the Moon), computers, microwave cooking, the Internet. Do you think we'll live to see a comparable number of significant changes in our everyday lives?

I'm using 1974 La Scalas, updated with Sonicap capacitors and CT125 tweeters. With their big 2'x2' (60cmx60cm) footprint, spikes are not really needed. The La Scalas have good dynamics to start with, but driving them with a Yamaha MX-D1 amp with 500Wpc gives them realistic dynamics even at low volume. I don't know how loud they'll go, I've briefly turned the volume up until my ears hurt a couple of times and there was lots left. I like the clarity and detail, being able to hear backup singers' intake of breath, being able to tell that the drummer has two bass drums, one there and the other one beside it, right there. The Klipsch speakers make music sound like music, not smooth background "sonic wallpaper".

Nice sounds, and the hand crank was interesting.

Re: your first sentence: ????????? Re your second and third sentences: Are you saying that interstellar travel only becomes practical for non-corporeal beings, who have either evolved to that point or have the technology to become temporarily or permanently non-corporeal? Do you anticipate humanity developing such technology in this century? I'm guessing you've seen the movie K-PAX.

So the metric-threaded spikes that came with your speakers don't fit the inches-thread holes on your speaker feet? Are you able to order inches-thread spikes, perhaps on the Internet? I was not aware that any Klipsch speakers came with spikes. If actual spikes are hard to find, you could just get some 1/4" nuts and bolts and grind one end of the bolts into points. How are you enjoying the sound of the RF-7s?

Fritz is right. Nearly all modern AV receivers let you set the speakers to Small or Large. Large sends the full frequency range to them, but Small sends everything below the selected cut-off frequency to the sub only or to the sub and any speakers that are set to Large.

I'm using a pair of Heresy IIs for surround in my system. They're located up high near the back wall, one on top of a bookcase. When I toed them in toward the listening position, the volume went up by about 3dB and the treble response was much better. However, they're still horizontal. I'm wondering whether it would work if I mounted the speakers on risers, but with the risers backwards, so the speakers were aimed down towards the sweet spot. First, would the risers fit that way, and just as important, would they be stable, or would the speakers be tippy due to being front-heavy? A speaker bouncing off my head during an explosion scene would be way more impact than I'd be looking for...

Very cool!

Good point! That would explain why we never see any of those big-headed TV and movie stars in the running for Nobel prizes...

Space, or even just our galaxy, is a really big place, with many planets. Trying to find the grain of sand on the beach that has a flea on it might be easier than finding the planet with all the Klipschsters on it. As for assuming that any advanced civilization would have all the inventions we have, there's no guarantee on that one. They could have interstellar travel, but not have the radio, or the wheel, or even fire. After all, if our atmosphere had much less oxygen, fires would be hard to light and wouldn't happen naturally. If it had lots more oxygen, they'd be really hard to put out, causing everything to be quite different here. Those are just basic examples.

Congrats! Thanks for sharing your first impressions.

fritz, you may want to read Ages in Chaos and Worlds in Collision, both by Immanuel Velikovsky, in which he attempts to explain why large numbers of bodies of tropical animals have been found frozen in the Arctic, among other things. His work is controversial but interesting. One explanation of why Atlantis has never been found is the theory that it is Antarctica and that it was located in the south Atlantic until there was a slippage of the Earth's crust that sent it to its present location, where the buildup of ice obscured any evidence of human habitation. Check out the Piri Reis map. There is evidence that humans (or pre-humans, at least) lived on the island of Britain as long as 400,000 years ago, while the earliest evidence of human occupation in Ireland goes back to only 8000BCE, because the last ice age scoured any remains from the island when the glaciers advanced over Ireland. Who knows what civilizations existed before the last Ice Age?

The latest scientific thinking on time travel suggests that it would not be possible to travel back to a time before the first time machine was in operation, so unless someone has built one and kept it secret, we're not likely to see any "time tourists" for a while yet.