Islander

The efficiency/sensitivity of the speakers is one of the biggest factors. Electronics that seem quiet with other speakers may produce a hiss when driving high sensitivity Klipsch speakers. The noise signal was always there, but you couldn't hear it before. However, that same high sensitivity, along with reducing the power that you'll need to drive them, means that the speakers can recover more fine detail and have lower distortion. The next factor is noise produced by other components. Maybe it's coming from your TV, for example, assuming that your TV is connected to your system. You can disconnect your sources one at a time, until you find the guilty component. If it's a hum rather than a hiss, that could be the 60 Hz hum from the AC mains power. Improper grounding is usually the problem in that case. Hopefully, other members will have some other ideas, because that's all I got in terms of where it's coming from. However, if the hissing sound is not audible from your listening position, only when you put your ears close to the speakers, it's not a problem. A faint hiss when you're close to your speakers should not affect your enjoyment of them when you're sitting on your sofa or chair, in your MLP, or Main Listening Position, just to throw in some jargon. As for my system, you can see it below, but the sources are a Panasonic Blu-ray player, a Technics turntable, a Yamaha DVD player, a Panasonic TV, and Net Radio and off-air radio through a Yamaha AV receiver, plus YouTube or downloaded music by AirPlay. From the receiver, the signal goes into a 24-bit Electro-Voice Dx38 digital sound processor, which replaces the crossovers in the speakers. From the processor, the signal goes to the two dual-mono Yamaha MX-D1 power amplifiers (one for bass and one for treble, the speakers are bi-amped), then directly to the drivers of the modified Klipsch La Scala II speakers. Their sensitivity is about 105 dB/W/m, so they're ultra sensitive. There is a very faint hiss in the speakers, but your head has to be within a foot/30 cm of them to hear it. Since it's inaudible at the listening position, it's not an issue and can be ignored. Almost forgot something. The system is not plugged directly into the wall. Instead, I use a pair of Tripp-Lite Isobar Ultra surge protectors/noise filters, an Ultra 6 and an Ultra 8, with 6 and 8 outlets respectively. They protect against voltage surges, of course, but they also have filter banks which filter out noise in the power line. In office settings, where the Isobars are often used, certain devices, like printers, are notorious for sending digital noise into the power system, to the point of affecting other devices on the same circuit. The same is true of Class D power amplifiers, but to a lesser extent, I believe. In my case, I have two Class D power amps powering the main speakers, plus two subwoofers, each with its own Class D power amp. These amps have the potential to put noise into their power circuits, so the Isobar Ultras filter that out. The result is an extremely faint hiss, even with the 105 dB JubScala IIs (bi-amped La Scala IIs with K402 Jubilee tweeter horns). The 402 horns are 1 metre/40 inches wide, allowing every detail of the music to be heard, as well as any hiss from the equipment, or even the recording process.

It was sad to hear of its collapse. That was an amazing installation.

And you see ads for various electronic pieces or streaming services that promise "CD Quality!" and often don't even come close. If you want CD quality, pop in a CD. Better quality? Pop on an LP. Want better yet? DVD (in my opinion, anyway). Blu-ray is even better, but if you're listening on a crap stereo, the ranking might be different, and the extra detail retrieval of the DVD and Blu-ray won't even be noticeable. Could it be that the music is just wallpaper surrounding the listener's epic daily life? The funny thing is that people like Brian Eno have been making music for that purpose, and yet it's the pop music that's the soundtrack of many folks' days. At least the youth have the excuses of lack of money or knowledge. At 16, I was really happy with my little 6 transistor radio, complete with earplug (just one, it was mono), listening to stuff like Brown Eyed Girl, or Itchycoo Park or A Whiter Shade of Pale, stuff that really spoke to me, lol. Pictures of Matchstick Men, by Status Quo, with its amazing use (overuse, maybe, but at the time...) of the new gadget, the wah-wah pedal, was an ear worm for a while. There wasn't much in the way of distortion gear for guitarists back then. In the early and mid Sixties, the sound of the fuzz box was part of most of the cool songs, but when the wah appeared, the fuzz tone sort of faded away, because it was so yesteryear. Hmm, that comment digressed into a nostalgic sort of rant, or maybe reminiscence is a better word. Maybe some of you guys remember those tunes.

Yeah! A pair of La Scalas at the back of the room rounds things out just right. A Khorn/La Scala set of 5.0 speakers makes for great sound; Just add a subwoofer or two and you have a premium 5.1/5.2 Surround system.

As the saying goes, "Keep the drunk away from the volume control." Sending too much power to speakers is bad, but generally speaking, it's a bad idea to turn the volume very high, with any power source, because a low-powered amplifier, including some in AVRs, can be driven into clipping. This is a situation in which the amplifier can start to put out a type of distortion that's very damaging to speakers. This is why most speaker manufacturers recommend that your amplifier has double the power that the speakers are rated for. This will ensure that the amplifier is working in its clean operating range, producing a minimum of distortion, with very little likelihood of clipping.

At the dispensaries in the US, is the person who serves you called your "budtender", as some shops here call them?

On the bright side of cannabis:

Just imagine being in a band doing a cross-Canada tour in the winter, especially in a van with marginal heating..

Apropos? French isn't foreign. It's our other official language, along with English. Oh yeah, you guys don't have any official language... All in fun, Bruce.

Toi too, comme on dit au Québec. Pour la miene (?), c'est assez pour les conversation simples, mais pas plus que ça, malgré de m'avais habitait au Québec pour longs temps.

It gets worse. I heard an interview on the radio with a guy who wants to really scale up the production of these "biologically-treated" coffee beans. He has a herd of elephants, who happily gobble up the beans, only to return them before long, now with that "special flavour". He hopes to make big bucks, but he won't get any money from me...

J'espere que ça n'avais pas une mauvais odeur, hihihi! Does it actually have a very premium taste?

Yes, war is the worst. One time on MASH, in the operating area, with lots of wounded, Father Mulcahy commented that war is Hell. Hawkeye said that No, war is worse. "Who's in Hell?", he asked. Father Mulcahy replied that sinners were there, while the good were in Heaven." Hawkeye replied that "In war, everyone is there. The evil and the good, the guilty and the innocent, men, women, and children. That's why war is worse than Hell." I may have paraphrased a bit, because I heard the story from someone, or saw it online. I didn't actually see the episode. As for your medical situation, I hope you got good news. Age is a factor. For once, the older you are, the better. In our seventies, the cancer is relatively slow-growing, while if you're in your fifties, it's a killer. That's what took Frank Zappa. If you're in your eighties, they often don't bother to treat you at all. The docs will say, "You will die with the cancer, but you won't die of the cancer. They just check you periodically. My dad died at 87, of a stroke. The cancer was not a factor, so the docs were right. Here's something odd that I heard from a local oncologist. He said that the type of treatment often varies by location. In Alberta, they tend to rely on surgery to treat prostate cancer, while in BC (British Columbia, where I live) the usual treatment is radiation, sometimes with chemotherapy as well, as it's thought to increase the effect of the radiation. For breast cancer, twenty treatments are the usual routine, while for prostate cancer the usual is thirty-five treatments. That's five a week, Monday to Friday, for seven weeks. In my case, back in 2005, I got two extra blasts for good measure, for a total of thirty-seven doses of radiation. The tumour was destroyed and hasn't returned. However, there naturally are lingering effects, like very low testosterone, which saps your motivation to do things, and of course it has to stay low, as testosterone stimulates prostate cancer, so you don't want that to start up again. There are even reports of men who take lots of testosterone supplements actually getting prostate cancer. Nowadays, it's possible to survive cancer, but you always have reminders, most of them permanent. Of course, it's better to be alive and grumbling than not being alive.

Is this on your back porch? And what are those things? Nuts? Berries?

Curious because when he first started out it sounded like he was in 5th gear. JJK JJK was asking about the gearbox in the Gas Monkey GT, the one that went 310 mph/500 km/hr. I would suspect that it sounded that way because the gearing was higher than would be used on the street or on most racetracks. That's probably why it also sounds like there's a big gap between every gear, even with six gears. That seemed strange, too, but the taller the overall gearing, the bigger the gaps between gears and the greater the RPM drop after every shift . The other possibility is that the highly tuned engine has a very narrow power band, so that it sounds a bit sluggish (relatively speaking, of course) at the start and after every shift. Maybe it needs an 8-speed, lol.

What's the matter with the woofer? Has it stopped working, or is there a problem with the surround on the woofer?

Mr. Bradford also tested my 1974 La Scalas. They still sound great, especially after I replaced the caps in 2006.

Any idea where in BC he's located?

Yikes! It always seems less serious when you come to a stop with the tires under you and not above you. I hope your injuries were minor. There was a time when a flipping car experience was often fatal. Do you think there was any malicious intent, or was it just a case of other driver stupidness (ODS)? Volvo? That power steering fluid reservoir looks so much like a GM part that I got mistaken. I guess there's so much cross-breeding nowadays that it's easy to make mistakes very often.

Downhill decreasing radius turns have to be among the worst for catching out inattentive drivers or riders. Our sketchiest turn (in the Victoria area) has to be the almost-last (or, as the English say, "the penultimate turn") turn when travelling southbound on Malahat Drive. Sounds innocuous, right? Wrong! Malahat Drive takes you over the Malahat, a mountain that's about 1100 feet/350 metres above sea level on the roadway, not the mountain-top, and alternates straight and curvy sections as it descends toward Victoria. The turn I'm speaking of is preceded by a long downhill straight, five lanes wide, including the centre left turn lane. Very near to the entrance to the turn, the highway narrows to three lanes, two northbound, and only one southbound. At the same time, the surroundings on the right go from trees cut about 50 feet/15 metres back from the road, to the rocky face of the mountain, about 5 feet/1.5 metres from the road. Your comfortable travelling speed goes from 75 mph/120 km/hr to 35 mph/ 60 km/hr, in what seems like 100 feet/ 30 metres. Sure, you can go a bit faster, but I said comfortable, not hotdogger speed, and not if it's unexpected. That turn really wakes you up if your mind had been wandering. You suddenly realize why that semi/tractor-trailer that had been tailgating you dropped back a few seconds ago. That turn is probably notorious among truckers, so they take extra care as they approach it. For contrast, the safest highways I've seen have to be those in Japan. The drivers are careful, proving that not all Asians are bad drivers. As well, the curves are marked clearly, with hashmarks on the outside of every curve, and signs that mystified me at first. They were marked R = 300, or R = 450, or R = 250 on the tighter curves. Yes, they had signs indicating the radius of every curve, so you knew what to expect! I was amazed! Japan is a mountainous country, with many highway tunnels, but there are flashing lights to make you aware of the tunnel's entrance, plus about 90-95% of the drivers heed the signs asking them to put on their headlights, even on a sunny day, then they turn them off when leaving the tunnel. In the city, though, don't hang around when your light turns green, or the guy behind you will beep his horn. People in Tokyo don't have time to waste! Okay, this is long enough.

Is that suspension brace stock or aftermarket? In any case, it tore loose from the firewall, but it looks like its attaching nut and bolt are still tight. Also, the angle on the power steering pump is way out of whack relative to the fan and water pump. Fascinating...

You omitted a crucial bit of information: which direction were you going? It's probably obvious when you're standing there, but from a vertical view on a video screen, not so much. Did you enter the picture at top left or at bottom right? No disrespect to you, but I don't know the level of your driving skills (okay, I have some idea), and as we all know, some people can mess up ANY turn.

oldtimer, I see you realize this, but it does bear mentioning. The countries in the New World/Americas are fundamentally different from the Old World countries. For example, Germany and France (and Poland and Austria and so on) have been inhabited by people calling themselves German or French for over 1,000 years. They are the indigenous peoples, and have repelled invaders (with mixed success) for much of that period. Sure, if you go back far enough, long before there were nation-states, the indigenous peoples may have been the Neanderthals, but they died out (for reasons and in ways that are not fully understood.) Since none of the Neanderthals are here to speak up, we assume that the modern humans/Cro-Magnon types are the true possessors of the land. In the Americas, anyone with a European background is very likely to be a settler/immigrant, or to be descended from them. However, in Europe, in Germany in particular, saying that a certain part of the residents of the country have an "immigration background", while the majority of the residents/citizens do not have an immigration background, is likely to be quite accurate. In Northern Ireland, The British Empire's last colony, the settlers were sent over by Elizabeth I, the daughter of King Henry VIII. This is called The Plantation, and took place in the 1640s. The settlers were often British soldiers (of English and Scottish ancestry). They were given deeds to land that wa already owned by Irish farmers and the like, who went from being relatively independent farmers and fishermen to being tenants on the land, which was milked for every penny it could produce. Fast-forward to today, and we have two groups of residents, the natives (who are often Catholic, with a preference to permanently eliminate the border and re-unite the country) and the settlers, who are often Protestant and identify themselves not as Irish (in spite of 300-400 years of residence in Ireland), but as British. Yes, nearly a million residents of Northern Ireland consider themselves to be foreigners, of British, not Irish, ancestry. This has led to an odd sort of racism. Since nearly everyone is the same colour, a racist has to ask some probing questions before he can determine whether to shake your hand or turn his back on you. Here are some sample questions (this is from a total stranger, of course): "What part of town (Belfast) do you live in?" My parents told me to say "the North end", because that's a mixed area and doesn't give the racist much to go on. He may go so far as to ask you where your parents live or lived, but if you give inconclusive answers to those questions, he may ask which school you went to. If you reply with the name of a clearly Catholic school, that's the end of the conversation. The potential new friend will turn away and leave, often without a word. None are necessary, because the reason is obvious. You're not "his kind of people", and that's that.

The old decreasing radius turn trick. It's sucked in many people, in many places. On the bright side, when going the opposite direction, the turn is increasing radius, so you can accelerate as the turn opens up. The innocent passenger's reaction to this can be something between panic and acceptance that they will not survive this ride. When you come onto the straight, you're carrying good speed, so adjust your braking marker accordingly.

+1 for Dexter Gordon.