Islander

That's pretty cool! Those were the cleanest insides I've ever seen. So were you two doing any dancing in the desert? That's a different date. They look the right colour for ranch or saloon speakers in a cowboy movie. Running on a tiny battery like that implies that they'd run fine off a solar cell. Now I know what speakers to use after society collapses and there's no more energy grid. La Scala: the first choice of survivalists and hermits! Who like to rock!

I don't want to sound rude, but I've always thought those store credit cards were for suckers. Most of the cards charge a rate of 28.8% and some of them calculate the interest in a way that works out to nearer 32% per year. People always say they took the card for the convenience and that they always planned to pay in full every month, so the high interest would not apply to them. But it often doesn't go quite as planned, and the shop gets rich while the customer grinds her or his teeth. Adding to the non-necessity of store cards is the fact that most shoppers already have one or more bank credit cards, some with rates well below 10%, so why even bother with those money-grabbing store cards? Those little incentives offered with them, like minor discounts and so on, end up costing a lot.

At'll larn 'em!

Even weirder, there was a long period of time when light didn't exist. Cardas makes refererence to it in one of their ads, not that a speaker cable ad is a source of higher knowledge, just adding an audio element to the discussion. The hillbilly physics wasn't for me, it was for the benefit of any hillbilly forum members who might be following this. As for the light existing outside the universe idea, it's interesting and I can't say you're wrong. I already said that gravity may exist outside this dimension. Time will tell, on both counts. Or maybe not...

Hmm, I thought Einstein was the first to postulate distorted space/time. Is your distortion different? You are joking, right?. In the early stages of the universe, expansion occurred due to the extreme (near infinite) pressure in the "cosmic egg", but as the pressure dropped, it was assumed to continue due to momentum of all the masses (assuming it could be described as mass at that point). When it started to accelerate at a certain stage, without any apparent reason, that was when dark energy was suggested (sounds almost supernatural). The question could be, "Was the early universe expanding into existing space, or was that universe all the space there was, so the space expanded with all the mass?" I was referring to the present time, when expansion on a local scale, like we'd measure on Earth, is either not happening or is not measurable. So I think we agree on that point. Thanks for bringing me up to speed (sorry) on light. So it appears that light is not like normal objects. It's always light, travelling at lightspeed, in whatever medium it's travelling through. That makes sense. It's tempting to think of photons in terms of things we're more familiar with, that act in ways we experience every day. For instance, due to contraction of length near lightspeed, photons (travelling at lightspeed) have zero length. As we can imagine, any vehicle with a wheelbase of zero could turn on a dime, or even on a coin of infinitesimal or zero value and size, making mirrors and reflection possible and practical. How's that for hillbilly physics?

Time slows as an object approaches the speed of light. If the object (only photons, as far as we know) is actually travelling at the speed of light, it senses no passage of time at all. To an observer the photon takes time to travel a certain distance, but the photon does not experience that time. Max is perfectly correct.

Those experiments were very interesting. The team was able to slow down light to 38 miles per hour! Slowing down light by passing it through an Einstein-Bose condensate, which was a very dense mass, seemed logical enough. The part that makes me wonder is that the light beam returned to its normal in-air or in-vacuum speed as soon as it left the condensate cloud. What force was able to accelerate those photons to lightspeed almost instantaneously? Sure, they were always travelling at whatever lightspeed was in the medium they were travelling through, so that makes sense, but didn't the photons lose energy when they were slowed down?

Max, that's great that Miles took the time to read your message and respond to it. It's always best to get your info first-hand. So if gravity is a distortion in space/time and a black hole is a tear in space/time, does space/time have a limited and possibly measurable tensile strength? If gravity exceeds a certain value over a certain area, does it cause a tear or puncture? Does space leak out through the tear? Where does it leak to? Gravity is by far the weakest of the four basic forces, much weaker than magnetism, for example. One suggestion that has been made is that gravity actually exists in another dimension, and only some of it leaks or soaks through to "our" dimension/universe, so most of gravity's force is not apparent to us. As for light, I'd counter-surmise that it does exist in the universe, it's just that we slow creatures can't relate to the light-speed lifestyle of photons. Yes, they're very different from all the other particles we eat/breath/walk on/deal with, but that does not make them alien to our universe. Finally, with regards to the expansion of the universe, I've read a little bit on this and it seems to occur on very large scales, possibly between galaxies, so our rulers and kilometers are not getting longer, the other galaxies are just moving away from us.

First, gravity doesn't behave like a string in all instances. Gravity does not speed up the Moon's rotation, it slows the rotation of both the Moon and the Earth. The Moon has become tidally locked to the Earth, like many large satellites in the Solar System have become locked to the larger object they orbit. Wikipedia explains it here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tidal_locking Second, you bring up a really good question about space's "memory". Could it be that space has an underlying structure, like a crystal lattice, for example? Does space have hysteresis, or does flat space represent a lower energy state than curved space? One would think that if space remained curved once it had become curved, then over the course of time since the universe was formed, the warping/curving due to the number of massive objects and the distances they have travelled would be evident in many locations no longer occupied by massive objects. Astronomical measurements would be difficult to calculate, since straight lines would be hard to find. However, there is so much more space than there is matter that it could be that permanently curved space is not that obvious to observers with our current level of technology. At any rate, the question of whether curved space rebounds to its flat state after being curved strikes me as one of those fundamental questions, like Einstein's first ponderings about the speed of light, that could lead science in a new direction, since it questions a basic assumption. Third, you're right that the acceleration of the expansion of the universe is a mystery. "Dark energy" has been proposed as an anti-gravity force that causes the rate of expansion to differ from calculated rates, but even that does not appear to behave consistently over time. Another puzzle to solve.

If your Pioneer receiver has pre outs, you can certainly connect a 7-channel power amp to it. There are a number of forum members doing just that, although some, including me, just use a 2-channel amp to power the main speakers, since that's where stereo music comes from. The receiver power is fine for movies, to my ears. Let your budget decide. Then, of course, you have to choose between Class A, Class AB and Class D amps.

When I was placing my La Scalas, I had only one corner available and it has a baseboard heater along one wall. Since I wanted to minimize any dissimilarity between the sound of both speakers, I moved the "corner" speaker a couple of feet from that side wall, eliminating the heat issue. That way, neither speaker was in a corner. I experimented with toe-in and settled with both speakers aimed directly at the listening position. They're about 11.5 feet apart, measured center-to-center and 13 feet from the listening position. A laser level is really handy for getting speakers into easily repeatable positions. When the speakers were almost touching the front wall, the bass had too many peaks and dips, so I tried moving them out from the wall. The bass got more even until they were about 6 inches from the wall (from the wall to the nearest corner of the speaker), then there was no noticeable change, all the way out to 12 inches from the wall. Accordingly, I settled on 5 inches from the wall. La Scalas look really big at first, but you've probably already noticed that they're not that tall. Over time, they'll start to look smaller to you and your GF, especially if there's stuff on either side of them. They will continue to sound great, however. As for the original crossovers, they have value and are worth keeping, in case you eventually want to sell the speakers to someone who wants them to be all-original. If and when that happens, you can sell the ALK crossovers separately, since they're pretty expensive. Are you using a subwoofer with them? Many Scala owners do, including me. La Scalas have good bass, it just doesn't go all that low, since the bass horns are so small. Seriously. Horns for really deep bass have to be huge and the Scalas were intended to be relatively portable. Klipschorns only manage to go so low by using the walls of the room as extensions to their bass horns.

What, you don't dust your horns and crossovers?

I also was accustomed to listening to LPs on cheap equipment. I found that records developed surface noise after only a few plays, so I would play the record once and record it to cassette, which seemed to last longer. Then, a couple of years ago, I got a half-decent Technics turntable and a Shure M97xE cartridge. I was really amazed! I had no idea vinyl could sound that good. As a bonus, I had a bunch of old LPs that had only been played once. After I moved the system to a circuit with no other electrics or electronics on it, like the fridge or computer, the surface noise practically disappeared, to the point where some listeners thought they were listening to CDs. I'm well aware that my gear is entry-level hi-fi, but it shows me what's possible. Surface noise is not as distracting with vinyl as distortion is with CDs, since it's not in the sound stage, but seems to come directly out of each speaker, kind of like a door's been left open to the street at each side of the stage, so it's not as obtrusive as it might be. Plus, many LPs in good condition, as well as the new Quiex discs, don't have much surface noise in the first place. Having the big record jacket with full-size artwork and legible lyrics and notes is a good thing, too. The thing is, CDs sound that quiet because of the limitations of their 16-bit format. One bit is used for error checking, leaving 15 bits for the signal. That's not enough. When a song comes to its end on a CD, the volume fades gradually to a low level, then just drops off. With a record, it fades all the way into inaudibility, if the recording engineer mixed it that way. The same thing is happening all through the song. The lowest-level information just isn't there, because the CD format doesn't allow it. Of course, CDs are way more convenient. The whole "tea ceremony" of dusting the record, carefully cueing it up before lowering the needle and demagnetizing after lifting it off the turntable doesn't always suit me, especially when I want to listen to some really laid-back music that I may fall asleep while listening to, like Sigur Ros. CDs are ideal then. Skipping tracks or scanning back from the comfort of my sofa is great, as well as knowing that the CD player will turn itself off if I'm off doing something else is good, too. Almost forgot, being able to find used LPs in good shape for not much money means I've been able to collect lots of music. At the moment, my collection is about 60% vinyl and 40% CD. I'm glad I have both formats in my system, because they both work for me.

Horns are the real thing, although some uninformed types may deny it...

La Scalas, especially black ones, start to seem smaller as time goes by. They're not very tall compared with lots of speakers. Mine looked huge to me at first, but now they fit right in.

Thanks for the clarification, pauln. I was under the impression that almost everything (space, energy, light, but not time (at least so far)) comes in quanta. Light comes in photons and not any smaller units. Space comes in tiny units too (sorry, I don't know what the smallest voxels, or volume elements are called), maybe the Planck length or some multiple of it. So small, at any rate, as to make space appear continuous on most usable scales. That's my understanding, but I'm happy to update it to current thinking. On the other topic, if an object, however briefly, exceeds the speed of light in the medium it's travelling through, is that not FTL travel? UPDATE: Just got back from a local bookstore, where I noticed a book called The Trouble with Physics, by Lee Smolin. He also argues that the current theories are too esoteric and that string theory in particular is probably not testable in any way. Looks like physics is in a state of ferment, after years of little advancement.

Those look stunning and classy at the same time! How do they sound?

Those MBLs look weird from any angle...

Then there are the MBL 101Es. To any Dr Who fan, they look like a pair of Daleks, and Daleks are always trouble.

Did you hear the MWM/402 setup indoors or outdoors? A single or a pair? Were they noticeably better than the Jubilees, or simply different? I suspect they'd need at least a night club-sized room to sound their best, so that set of speakers really will have to remain a winning-the-lottery fantasy. My condo's on the big side, but it's still an apartment.

The deal with Klipsch speakers is that the drivers chosen are the optimum for the application. With La Scalas, for example, I've often read that substituting a "better" woofer for the K-33 will result in worse sound. Eminence makes quality drivers, many of which are used in professional applications. The K-77F is made in the Phillipines to match the specs of the earlier tweeters. Klipsch makes very good speakers which represent good value in terms of their price and sound quality. If they were much more expensive due to more expensive components, but sounded only slightly better, their price/perfomance ratio would not be as good. Individual owners can and do make improvements, not all of which are successful to everyone's ears, but the factory has to work with what is practical and salable.

Good one, Max! I applaud your effort to poke holes in a theory that pokes holes in other theories. As I understand it, relativity states that C is a constant in any given location, but not necessarily between locations. However, recent experiments have been able to slow down light to very slow speeds, something long thought impossible. As well, there are instances of faster-than-light travel, if only for extremely brief intervals. This occurs when cosmic rays (which are also particles) enter the Earth's atmosphere. They travel at the standard speed of C in the vacuum of space, but C in atmosphere is a little slower. Since the particles have some mass, however slight, it takes a little time and space to slow down, during which they travel in excess of the speed of light. I have to ask about your y and z vectors for time. In my experience, time only moves forward, although I can visualize it going backwards. So far, though, I'm unable to visualize time going sideways or up and down. It seems like a novel concept. As for continuity, space may be described as non-continuous on the tiniest of scales, like quantum-level scales, but aren't time and space generally continuous, other than in sci-fi stories or maybe near black holes? I'm not sure whether that question is for you or for Miles.

Of course, we shouldn't forget Jessica Rabbit: =

Claude, you may have been thinking of Lee Aaron. She is totally hot, as well as being a great singer. She was singing rock a couple of decades ago, but has been singing jazz for quite a while. This is the video you had in mind: = and some more jazz: = = and a couple from 1989, when she was the Metal Queen (best at higher volume): = = Lee played a date here in Victoria with her jazz band in 2004 and she was really good. I'm hoping she comes back soon.

You're right, pauln. Einstein found the limitations in Newton's work and for some time now people have been finding the limitations in Einstein's work. No theory of physics or anything else is cast in stone and none so far explains everything. New discoveries, and more importantly, new insights, continue to advance our knowledge. Which is correct, the Big Bang theory or the Ekpyrotic theory? We don't know at this point, but fresh thinking will be required to find out. Maybe neither theory is correct. Time will tell. Turner, the University of Chicago cosmologist, said inflation theory has been so successful that it has killed all competing theories. But inflation doesn't address the idea that there might be other dimensions. Interest in this wild notion has grown among cosmologists in recent years. In textbooks a century from now, Turner believes there will be one of the following two paragraphs: "A hundred years ago, people were so desperate to try to understand how to put it all together, they invented additional spatial dimensions. What were they smoking?" Or: "A hundred years ago, people were so provincial that in spite of much evidence that there should be extra dimensions they refused to accept it."