Islander

Well, artists have to be compensated for their work somehow, and the music model of more sales = more popularity = more money is one that's worked for a long time. I haven't had a chance to read the David Byrne articles and I buy all my music in the form of physical media, LPs and CDs, so maybe I'm not up to date with current trends. Do you have an alternative way of satisfying the needs of both the artists and their fans?

I was surprised that I got 15 out of 20 correct. That may be a cross-section of English society, but there were a few "interesting" types in there.

Hang down your head...

Paintings and sculptures (and photographs, for that matter) are physical objects that almost always have a price attached to them. When you see a painting or sculpture in a museum or a collector's house, a price has already been paid for it, sometimes a very high price. Accordingly, royalties would be redundant. Music, however, is performance art, and you either pay to see the performance (you have to pay the piper) or you pay to own a recording of the performance. In either of those cases, someone has worked hard to develop the skill and creativity to produce something worthwhile and unless the artist has his own recording company (some do), royalties or concert tickets are his only income, other than sponsorships, lines of clothing if he's a rapper (but sometimes with rap the music is just to promote the other lines of product) and maybe t-shirts. To see the best paintings and sculptures in the world often means a trip to a museum or gallery an ocean away, but you can have a recording of the best musicians in the world for less than $20. Sure, it adds up if you want hundreds or thousands of recordings, but that's life. Hundreds or thousands of concert tickets aren't cheap either...

The W indicates that the speakers were built in 1981. As for whether they're a good deal, that would depend on the price and the condition. The K-55V driver has an Alnico magnet and is preferred over the later K-55M by some, while others prefer the M model. Both sound good. The 1981 model will likely have an AA crossover, which is also popular, unlike the short-lived AL unit, which was used for only a year or two in the early 1980s.

Working barefoot in an animal pen indicates that he had a pretty casual approach to many things, safety probably among them...

The 535 is the three-way theater version. The home one that almost all Jubilee owners have bought is the two-way version. It's a custom order, so it's not on the Klipsch website. The home Jubilee uses the 535 bass bin, but the K-69 tweeter is fitted to the K402 mid-range horn, making it a two-way system that sounds really good, from every report on it that I've read. Some have the smaller K510 horn on top, which is the one shown in the picture of Paul Klipsch standing beside the first home version of the Klipschorn Jubilee, or Jubilee for short, or Jube for very short. Most people prefer the K402.

Well, that clears things up! I thought you were a man belittling women and thinking I was a woman. I felt I was vicariously insulted and simultaneously emasculated, all by the one word "sweetie". Silly me! Your avatar of a masculine silhouette may have misled me. Anyway, back to audio and the topic at hand. There's always a way to get a decent-sounding system, even in rooms that don't really seem suitable at first glance. Surround and even main speakers can be wall-mounted, freeing up floor space. Even the subwoofer doesn't have to be on the floor. I have mine on a small table, which gives a smoother response and reduces the amount of sound going into the floor, which is my neighbour's ceiling. There's a free program called Arrange-a-Room, which you don't have to download (you work on the site and then save your arrangement) and that allows you to experiment with speaker, furniture, and even wall placement. It's at: http://www.bhg.com/bhg/category.jsp?categoryid=/templatedata/bhg/category/data/arrangearoomtest.xml If your TV will be off to one side, having it in one corner and your listening position in the opposite corner at the other end of the room might work best. As well, all your components should be compatible sound-wise, but not necessarily cost-wise. The reason is that you may decide to upgrade your system over time, and there are lots of folks here who'll have ideas on how you can spend your money. Do you want a simple system that you'll be happy with, or do you want to have a serious home theater a couple of years down the road? For instance, if you get a higher-end sub, you'll enjoy it now and continue to enjoy it when you upgrade the other parts of your system to match it. Your room is reasonably large. If you like music and movies at medium to high volume, a small system might not be adequate and could cause you to replace it soon, so it would not be money well spent. Since I'm not familiar with the Reference Series (my system is all Heritage), hopefully someone else will have more specific advice for you. You might want to re-post this in Home Theater, since that category gets a lot more views and comments. Another question is whether you'd be comfortable buying used, or really like to have all new stuff. Klipsch speakers tend to sound good for a really long time, so buying used can be a sensible way to make your budget go further. Finally, welcome to the forum! Take a bit of time and educate yourself to all of the possibilities that are discussed here. You'll have your speakers for a long time, so if you wait a few weeks before buying, you may be happier in the long run.

Why would you need to reset your sub, depending on whether you're listening to music or to a movie? If you set the sub to integrate properly with your main speakers and to have as smooth a frequency response as it's able to give, it should be right for both. Bass instruments will sound the way they were recorded and movie explosions will be as loud as the director intended. There shouldn't be any need to pump up the volume for movies if your sub is up to the job.

Here's a pair of Klipschorns a little closer to home, and the price is better: http://www.canuckaudiomart.com/details/75960-1975_klipsch_klipschorn_speakers_walnut_lacquer/

Sweetie? There are some women on this forum, but I'm not one of them. Hope you're not disappointed. On second thought, I hope you are disappointed... As for speaker size, I was joking. Whatever sounds good to you is right.

Does anyone remember these mockup photos someone posted last year? The short one is with the 510 horn and the tall one would enclose the 402 horn, as well as conforming to the golden ratio in terms of height of the upper and lower sections.

First, you have to get over your prejudice against huge speakers... []

Has anyone noticed that the colours between alternating questions (white and gray) are sometimes white and beige or white and pale yellow? When I click on the page again, it's back to white and gray.

No air is even better, which is why Tara Labs charges tens of thousands of dollars for their sealed vacuum "The Zero" interconnects. When carefully questioned, though, the company admitted that there is not hard vacuum inside the cable sheaths, more like the low air pressure found atop a 20- 25000-foot-high mountain. All the same, they are reputed to sound very good...

Is the level of all your speakers set to match, using the receiver's test tones? When watching some movies, you'll find that there are long periods when there is little or no sound from the surround speakers. The action takes place on the screen, so the sound is mixed to keep your attention there most of the time.

Malaka? Not sure about the spelling, but I used to work with two Greek Cypriots and they used that word fairly regularly, in a joshing sort of way. In England, it's a fighting words level of insult, similar to "jerkoff" in the US. In Canada, and possibly the US, wanker is a joke word, with a meaning and level of insult similar to "twit". A Toronto-area new music station, CFNY, called their baseball team "The NY Wankees" and their playing field "Wankee Stadium", which shows that it's seen as more humourous than offensive here. EDIT: Wow, j***off must be a rude term in the US, since it just got censored!

Rickie Lee Jones first (self-titled) album on LP or CD. Songs 2, 3 and 4, Night Train, Young Blood and Easy Money have good acoustic bass, as well as interesting soundstaging with drummers at various distances and positions and moving chimes. As well, her slurred phrasing is a good test of intelligibility for any system. For rock music, The Cure is pretty good. The Lovecats has a good acoustic bass intro, while Close to Me has an electric bass intro plus handclaps. Both songs are on The Cure Greatest Hits, along with Lullaby, which has a really deep bass line running through most of the song. Those tunes will show how realistic the system can make the music sound.

First, I don't believe entertainment is a waste of time. Some entertainment (well, maybe not all that much from Hollywood) is art, especially music, and I've never considered art to be a waste of time. Second, if you think entertainment is overpriced, and some certainly is, just don't buy it. Prices that are perceived to be too high don't justify stealing the product. Wedding photographers run into this all the time. It used to be standard practice to let the happy couple take home a set of proofs so they could choose which pictures they wanted enlarged for the wedding albums. Not any more! Clients will take home the little 4x6s and scan and print them for their friends. The prints won't be pro quality, but they'll be cheaper and be "good enough" for cheapskates. Then people see these machine prints and are told they were done by a pro, even if they were printed at Wal-Mart, which sure doesn't help the reputation of the professional photographer, so he loses on both present and future sales. Entertainment, like most other things, is priced according to what the market will bear. If no-one grumbles at least a little bit at the cost of a product, it's likely underpriced. If no-one buys it, it's overpriced. It's as simple as that. Sports stars also make buckets of money, but someone is buying all the tickets that pay them.

I'm curious, too, but I suspect that wrapping banknotes around the cables (in the amount of the kit's price) would have an equivalent effect and I'd save on shipping at the same time. As well, I could always experiment with coins (does copper sound more mellow than silver, for example) in various denominations. We've got loonies ($1 coins) and those hybrid bi-metallic twonies ($2 coins) up here.

I turned mine on its side. It works just fine. I'm usually directly in front of it and sometimes lying down with my feet on the same side as the woofer, so it all works out. It's not dead center below the TV; the top edge of the squawker is dead center and I figure most of the dialogue comes from the squawker and tweeter, so that makes it effectively centered.

The blue-accented screen happened to me a few times, too, but when I'd click back onto that page, it would be copper-accented again.

That's why I own Lascallas.

Good article! Thanks for posting it.

If not everybody's hearing the hiss, could it be that there was a bad batch of CDs pressed, while most are okay? Has anyone returned a CD to get it replaced?