Islander

When she said, "Your speakers are way too big!", Dirk Diggler replied, "Everything I have is way too big! It all matches!"

Thanks for the correction. If I'm telling a story, even a good one, I like to know if it's BS or not.

Or airport moose?

But do they have urban moose?

There's a story that someone once attached a JATO unit to a Chev Impala. It appeared in the Darwin awards. The car apparently reached a speed of 350mph, which was barely manageable on the straight, but eventually a curve appeared and the car left the road, embedding itself in a rock face. There wasn't much left of the driver, other than a few teeth...

This scam has been around for a long time and was even the subject on an investigative journalism TV program (60 Minutes, maybe, I forget) in the early 90s. If it's the same group of people that were operating in the 90s, it's a Chicago-based operation that sells cheap speakers that are made to look expensive. The white van guys are actually given sales courses, so if you listen to their pitch, you'll notice they seem to be better salesmen than the average truck driver and helper. They pretend that they have an opportunity to steal the speakers, due to a mistake on the shipping order. They're willing to sell them to you at a bargain price (in 1990 dollars, it was typically $1500 speakers for $300) to make a few bucks before continuing on their delivery route. Since the buyers think they're dealing with crooks and have no contact info, there are no warranty issues for the sellers and no need for (or expense of) a retail store. The speakers, and now the HTiB sets, are not stolen, they're just really overpriced. However, if someone buys what he believes are stolen goods and then whines that he was cheated, it's hard for me to have any sympathy. If you buy something from a crook and he turns out to be dishonest, why are you surprised? What did you expect???

Sure, the name is really hokey, but the sub is not bad looking. Maybe it even sounds good.

Among forum members, the Big Three for receivers seems to be Yamaha, Denon and Harman Kardon. The people who use them seem to like them. As well, there are at least five forum members using Yamaha receivers with outboard power amps. They work well as pre-pro units as well as receivers.

HII indicates Heresy 2s, which were built between 1986 and 2005. If the binding posts are mounted in a round plastic recess, or cup, they'd be 85-89 models. If it's a square cup, they'd be 1990-2005 models.

Sounds like you have fine gear to make a home theater you'll be happy with. I'd suggest starting with the La Scalas near the corners and the sub somewhere between them. Dead center may sound logical, but that may be worst for resonances. Subs usually sound best when they're in a "non-symmetrical" location, which includes not pointing directly at the wall it faces. You can toe in the sub. You may have to try a few different spots to get the most even bass response, with the fewest peaks and dips. When I was positioning my Scalas, I toed them in directly to the listening position, then tried them closer and farther from the front wall. Almost touching the wall gave uneven bass, while 6 inches out (measured from the corner of the speaker closest to the wall) seemed pretty good. I pulled them out to a point 12 inches out with no improvement, so I settled for 5 inches from the wall (14 inches from the wall for the other back corner of the speaker). You may be sliding them around for a bit before you find the ideal spot in your room. If you put old towels or blankets under them, they'll be easier to skid around without marking up the floor. You'll want to run the sub from the receiver's sub out, so you have more options in setting it up, like setting its level and high cutoff with the remote control. You'll need to set the cutoff on the sub itself as high as it goes, then adjust it from the receiver. Have fun!

Which hi def Yammie, and is it better than the 5-disk Yammie unit for sound or picture?

Old? It's still on the air! I watched Dr Who on Monday on CBC. It was a 2-parter and he'd turned himself into a human in England in 1913 to hide from the Family of Blood, a group of dangerous aliens (is there any other kind?) and the first part ended with them finding him (cliff-hanger!). We're into the second season with the current Doctor (the Tenth Doctor), David Tennant, who plays the part well. Christopher Eccleston, the Ninth Doctor (two seasons ago) was kind of high-strung, playing the Doctor sort of like Denis Leary, without the rude language but with the "close-to-the-edge" attitude. After a few episodes, you'd want to tell him to lighten up a bit, it's Dr Who. Anyway, you picked a cool screen name, Mike. More info at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dr_Who

I think "evil genius" is an oxymoron...

Cool! I may check into a DVD.

Actually, I think that Yamaha receiver has a graphic EQ for the center channel for the purpose of timbre matching to the mains. On some models, you match it by ear, but on the higher-end models, the YPAO can do it automatically, using its mic at the listening position.

Did anyone else see Stevie Ray Vaughan on PBS last night? The show featured clips from performances at the Montreux Jazz Festival in 1982 and in 1983, at the El Mocambo in TO in 1983 and on Austin City Limits in 1989. It was all good, but the Austin City Limits part may have been the best. The sound was great! As it happened, I also had a Rough Trade video cued up, so I was able to watch and listen to Carole Pope, Kevan Staples and the band during the membership appeals. A pretty good evening.

I can't speak for other brands, but Yamaha AV receivers have a 7 channel stereo setting that works fine with 5 speakers and should also work with 4 speakers. 7.1 receivers can drive 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 or 7 speakers equally well. I've driven 7 speakers with my 2005 model RX-V750, but now use 2 Heresy IIs for surround, so it's a 5. 1 system. Then I added a Yamaha MX-D1 amp to power the La Scala mains, so now the receiver is only driving the Paradigm center channel and the Heresy II surrounds. Every setup sounded fine and was within the receiver's proper operating limits. The usual Dolby, Dolby Digital and DTS surround modes are also available, as well as some proprietary Yamaha modes. The 7 channel stereo mode sends the left channel signal to the left speakers, right channel to the rights and a blend to the middle. It's intended for parties and background music, but even for regular listening, it suits certain 2-channel sources, depending on the material and my mood. For serious listening to 2-channel material, I just switch to "Straight" mode, which bypasses all the processors. In that mode, I'm listening strictly through my best amp (the MX-D1) and my best speakers (the La Scalas) and the sound is noticeably better. I'd recommend you go with an AV receiver. It will have 5 to 7 channels to drive your speakers with no impedance issues and you can add speakers in the future whenever it suits you. That way, you have lots of flexibility now and down the road as well.

So you already had the ticket booth? Talk about home theater done right!!!

Yeah, a pair of Jubilees with a scrim in front will still sound way better than almost any other speaker anyway. Since I have no wife to deal with, life is simple in many ways. Last night, on the BBC show Shameless, a guy getting married, without being divorced from his first wife (who ran off with another woman years ago), commented, "Bigamy? That's having one wife too many. Monogamy? Same thing." But he was a drunken waster, so what does he know?

Absolutely Mike, the first time Roy played them for us in Hope I was thinking a floor to cieling scrim frame of wall colored cloth would be the bomb[] I'm working on a cookie cutter room layout that will involve floor to cieling scrim on every wall to hide all of the acoustical treatment and rear surrounds and all that. The coolest part about it is that you can implement some pretty awesome dramatic lighting behind the scrims. Isn't hi-fi all about removing every "veil" between the performer and the listener? A scrim might look good, but a purist/audio geek/obsessive person would object to adding a veil... The muffling effect of a single thin grille cloth over a tweeter is very noticeable to me, although squawkers are less affected and woofers probably not at all.

Good one, Bob! That's thinking outside the box...

Actually, it's more logical to choose your speakers first, based on your room and your taste in music, then choose something to drive them. Your Yamaha should drive most Klipsch speakers just fine, but your choice will depend on your budget and available space. Some of the top-performing Klipsch speakers (the Heritage Series) are big and expensive, but if that's not a problem, they sound great.

Yamaha DVD-S550. I've got both the digital and analogue outputs connected, one to the receiver's DVD input and one to its CD input, so I can switch between the player's DAC and the receiver's DAC. It makes an audible difference, but some CDs sound better with one connection, some with the other. Replacing the basic Monster digital coax cable with a Monster Datalink 100 cable improved the sound, but I haven't tried anything better yet.

When you get to a certain age, which is different for everyone, it's easy to say, "Hey, I'm old enough to deserve this. I'm buying it!" I've bought a couple of pricey things while thinking that and didn't regret it.

Now here's a political twist to the story. The original plan was to have the SRBs manufactured in one of the eastern seaboard states and have them transported by ship to Cape Canaveral. They would have been wider and have been manufactured in one piece. However, the congressman from Utah lobbied successfully to have his state get the job. The constraints of train transport required a re-design, resulting in boosters that had to be re-assembled after they arrived. The joints were sealed with O-rings. You may recall that a failed O-ring was the cause of the Challenger disaster. The O-rings performed adequately in ideal conditions, but the weather was colder than usual for that launch. During takeoff, one of the cold O-rings failed to seal properly, allowing the fuel to leak out and causing an explosion that killed all seven astronauts. Some horse's *** set that whole process in motion... I am aware... I worked at the Johnson Space Center for ten years... I could tell stories that would send a chill up your spine!!! So often, expediency trumps safety. I worked for twelve years at CN Rail. The mark of a "good" foreman was his "willingness to take a chance". With that mindset, I wasn't at all surprised they had so many derailments. Of course, when a rocket fails, it's way more spectacular, but there's often loss of life in both cases and it's often avoidable in both cases. I was glad to leave there to work somewhere that things were expected to be done right the first time and opportunities for staff members to upgrade their skills were sought out and provided.