zuzu

Western Pa just north of Pittsburgh. The power amp should travel well. It has a great new custom fit double box. It weighs about 35 lbs. Their flagship. Built very well.

Last chance. Going on ebay at 4:00PM eastern daylight savings time.

Every area is different on property taxes. In my area the first floor is taxed at a high rate by square footage. The second floor is 1/2 that rate and the basement is not taxed at all. So you get killed on a ranch like yours. In addition a two story is much cheaper to build for x amount of square footage. Less cost and maybe less taxes. Keep us posted.

Excellent resonant mode dispersion can be had from 21' X 14' with a 10' ceiling. If it were me building this house I would find a plan with bigger bedrooms to start with and no living room.[!3' or 14' by 11' is still small for bedrooms] HARD to RESELL.I've had 3 houses with living/family rooms. Never spent more than a few hours in the living room.. Paid property taxes on that room for 20 years and furnished it twice only to practically have to give the furniture away. Living room costs $60,000 for the 3 houses. If you must stay with this plan, add more to the bedrooms and less ie 21' for the HT room X 14'.

To check for one possible problem on polarity just move the connection at the power amp. Switch the speaker cables there. Move the cable connected to red to the black post and the other on to the red post. +>>>>to minus. and ->>>>to + See if the sound image centers between the speakers. If this makes no imorovement don't forget to move the cables back again like they were.

Your speakers may be out of phase. Mine were. I just bumped RF 7 speakers out of phase up for you to look at on this technical forum.. Changing the +/- speaker wires at the amp for "ONE", speaker fixed it.

bump

It would seem that a change in some of the dimensions would/could minimize the standing waves. I did not do the math. What dimension chages would do the most good? A false wall. A false ceiling. BTW is the ceiling closed in or still open to rafters?

A cello cd 'Yo Yo Ma SOLO,' digs deep and hits many highs. Also in SACD or regular.

My RF 7 amplfication saga. Went from a Rotel 990 [200w/channel] to a NAD C272 150w/channel. Went Back and forth between these 2 for months and finally sold the Nad since I thought the 990 sounded a bit better in the base. Then about 3 weeks ago I auditioned an Ayre SS amp. When I went to borrow it I thought it was going to be the 200w/channel version. Turned out it was the evolution Ayre [integrated] 60 watts. I had just driven an hour to get it and would have it for a week so I took it anyway. It drove the RF 7's beautifully without my $ 5000 tube SP11 pre amp in the system. Since I intended to keep the SP 11 and did not want to spend $2000 for the Ayre that ended the Ayre for me, but that is a very musical amp. Latest chapter.---- The Ayre dealer also is a Rotel dealer. He rated the current class D Rotel as the best amp they ever made and the RB 1090 as a close second. I bought a used1090 the next week 380w/channel and like it as the best.sounding. This is because of the build quality and components in the 84 lb 1090 not the extra watts so I 'THINK'. I am now selling the 990 which was just factory refurbished a few weeks ago.

This forum gets first shot. It's going on ebay this coming weekend. $200 parts and labor have, very recently, brought this mint looking amp up to full factory specs. The soldering has been redone and some 10 parts replaced. I have a brand new factory box which it fits into in a styrofoam heavy insert. Technical manual included. Sounds great. I went nuts and bought an almost new RB 1090 so the 990 is up for grabs. $500 plus actual S&H plus insurance. Or you can wait and get it on ebay $550 buy it now.

Try switching the actual speakers. Relative to the listening position, are the speakers toed in or pointing at your eyes EXACTLY the same. Look to see the same amount of inside cabinet on both. Is the Spl meter where your head is at the listening position, when you run it? Could be speaker placement, listening position, room acustics or all of them?

There are 4 1095's on audiogon now.

Thanks Dean. Thanks for the upgrade. They sound great.

Stereophile link. http://www.stereophile.com/features/338/index.html

BTW I have test CD 2 and 3. First big break thru is they showed my speakers were out of phase. A very simple white noise test. There are a lot of very well recorded different types of music on these CD's. It's a trip just listening to them for fun. I would get them from stereophile. Music direct gouged me $6 shipping on each $9.99 CD even tho I ordered them within 24 hours and it took them 2 weeks to ship. Actual post mark was $2.15. Crooks. Bunch of test tones that I am wading thru. I recommend them.

Thanks Tom. I"m playing stereophile's test cd 2 and they have white noise in phase and out of phase. In phase the sound is to be centered and out of phase spread out. My speakers flunked the test. I just switched the speaker cables at the amp and now the sound is centered as it should be when the noise is in phase. Been listening to out of phase for 3 years. YIKES. Thanks Soooo much for your wise timely response. I will do the male voice thing later today as you suggested.

Concerned with polarity left vs right. Not woofer vs midrange. Not bi-amped. I have Dean's crossovers. Thanks Tom. I was thinking of switching the connections at the power amp ie + to - and - to +.

They are biwired [no lectures please]. If they are out of phase what do I do?

It's a work in progress. I got a headache. Got a new 1090 amp so I go at it tomorrow. Will post.

Second Try Track Information, Tracks 15-19, Subjective room & speaker diagnostic tracks [15] Pink Noise at -20dBFS (DDD) 1:24 Correlated between channels, then uncorrelated from 0:42 [16] Bass Decade 1/3-octave warble tones at -20dBFS (DDD) 2:47 Center frequencies: 200Hz (Index 1), 160Hz (Index 2), 125Hz (Index 3), 100Hz (Index 4), 80Hz (Index 5), 63Hz (Index 6), 50Hz (Index 7), 40Hz (Index 8), 31.5Hz (Index 9), 25Hz (Index 10), and 20Hz (Index 11) [17] Midrange Decade 1/3-octave warble tones at -20dBFS (DDD) 2:32 Center frequencies: 250Hz (Index 1), 315Hz (Index 2), 400Hz (Index 3), 500Hz (Index 4), 630Hz (Index 5), 800Hz (Index 6), 1kHz (Index 7), 1.25kHz (Index 8), 1.6kHz (Index 9), 2kHz (Index 10) [18] Treble Decade 1/3-octave warble tones at -20dBFS (DDD) 2:32 Center frequencies: 2.5kHz (Index 1), 3.15kHz (Index 2), 4kHz (Index 3), 5kHz (Index 4), 6.3kHz (Index 5), 8kHz (Index 6), 10kHz (Index 7), 12.5kHz (Index 8), 16kHz (Index 9), 20kHz (Index 10) [19] Music Articulation Test Tone (DDD) 1:19 These tracks are intended to enable audiophiles to get a handle on how their system and loudspeakers interface with their listening room, even if they don't have any test equipment. The sound on Track 15 is random noise with equal energy per musical octave, recorded in dual mono. Called "pink" noise by engineers, it easily enables the listener to hear loudspeaker problems. It should sound like absolutely smooth rushing water with no band of frequencies sticking out any more than any other. It should also not sound hollow or colored in any way, while the image of the noise should appear to come from a narrow point midway between the speakers. If the sound of this track fails to meet any of these criteria, then try sitting higher or lower, closer or farther away, or moving the speakers and/or nearby furniture. The second noise signal is the same as the first except that each channel of noise was recorded independently. The overall sound should therefore appear to be very spacious. Listen, however, to see if any frequency bands stick out or appear to give a central image, particularly in the treble. If this happens, then your speakers probably have some resonant problems in those regions. The warble-tone tracks (which roughly illustrate the extent of the terms "bass," "midrange," and "treble") were recorded on a JVC XD-Z1010TN DAT recorder from the output of an Old Colony Sound Lab warble-tone generator, the frequency quoted being the approximate center frequency of each. The generator contains a sinewave oscillator that is frequency-modulated at a rate of 5Hz or so; this is fast enough that the effect of low-frequency room resonances on the perceived level will be minimized, the test tone changing sufficiently quickly that the resonance doesn't have time to fully develop. The bass warble tones can therefore be used to give a good idea of a loudspeaker's subjective bass extension in the listening room, either by listening or by using a sound-level meterRadio Shack sells quite a good one for around $30. Set a reference level with Track 17, Index 7, the 1kHz band, then note by how much the sound level drops with each successive warble tone (footnote 7). (If your cassette deck came with a microphone, put the mike at your listening chair, set the recorder to "Record," and monitor the sound level with its meters.) The 200Hz-100Hz bands can be considered the upper bass, 80Hz-40Hz the midbass, and the remaining bands the low bass. If these bass warbles sound or measure uneven, with some either sticking out more than others or missing in action, then try moving the speakers or your listening chair around the room. The object is to get the tones as even-sounding/measuring as possible. Tracks 17 and 18 offer sets of warble tones covering the Midrange and Treble decades (footnote 8), so that you can measure the in-room response of your loudspeakers without having to pop for an expensive spectrum analyzer. The 1kHz warble tone can also be used to get a relative idea of a loudspeaker's sensitivity: measure the sound-pressure level with a loudspeaker whose sensitivity you know, then, without changing the playback level, measure the spl of an unknown loudspeaker substituted into the system. The Music Articulation Test Tone was supplied by Acoustic Sciences Corporation, the progenitor of the Tube and Studio Traps (see Stereophile Vol.9 No.3 and Vol.15 No.2), and again allows you to get a handle on your loudspeaker positioning and your listening-room acoustics. Essentially a "musical range intelligibility" or "Modulation Transfer Function" test, according to Acoustic Sciences' Arthur Noxon, the test signal consists of a rapid sequence of tone bursts that starts at 28Hz, rises in pitch to a peak at 780Hz, then descends back down the scale to 28Hz (see fig.5). Each burst is 2Hz above the previous one, there are eight bursts every second, and each burst last 1/16s, followed by 1/16s of silence. The frequency at any point in the test is easily determined with a stopwatch, therefore, as the tone burst changes frequency by 16Hz every second. For ascending tones, the frequency = 28 + 16t Hz, where t is the time in seconds; for descending tones, the frequency = 1532 - 16t Hz. The best way to audition the MATT test is to first listen to the quality of the tone sequence over headphones, then over your loudspeakers. (The sound level should be set to your normal listening level.) "It is always a surprise how unintelligible audio playback systems can be," notes Arthur Noxon. "Some sections of the test will sound out articulate 'TAT, TAT, TAT,' representing clean, fast attack transients, stable sustains, and rapid decays. But interspersed among these articulate passages will be heard totally garbled 'BUDDULA, BUDDULA, BUDDULA' sounds. If you listen close to the speakers, the garbled passages will disappear, but as you back away from them into the room, the amount of garbled signal will increase rapidly." Fig.5 ASC Music Articulation Test Tone, plotting toneburst frequency (triangular curve) and amplitude (ragged curve) against track playing time The Radio Shack SPL meter can be used with the MATT signal. Set the speed to FAST and the weighting network to C SCALE. Adjust the speaker volume and meter gain so that the display does not peg the meter. Simply watching the meter needle is instructive: first experience a fully articulate signal by holding the meter a couple of feet from the speaker, on-axis. The needle will vibrate rapidly as it follows the rapid loud-quiet-loud-quiet of the tone-burst sequence. Now move back to the listening position and the needle will not move nearly as wildly. It will barely quiver during the inarticulate passages and mildly fluctuate during the more articulate passages. The object of the test is to move your speakers and/or listening position and/or add acoustic treatment to your listening room to obtain the most articulate sound/SPL meter reading across the entire frequency range of the test. A 1dB swing of the needle indicates your room needs a lot of help in that frequency region; 10dB or more is good to excellent performance. If you have any comments on the MATT test, we are sure that Acoustic SciencesTel: (503) 343-9727, Fax: (503) 343-9245would be delighted to hear from you. In addition, recordings of MATT tests made in your room from the SPL meter's line outputbe sure to turn off your cassette deck's Automatic Gain Control, if presentcan be sent to ASC for processing into graphs for a nominal charge (phone first). Footnote 7: Whereas the warble tones on the succeeding tracks increase in frequency, those on Track 17 decrease, to make it easier to judge bass extension by ear. Footnote 8: The 20kHz warble tone is included for completeness's sake, but because of its proximity to the edge of the CD passband, its actual center frequency measures closer to 18kHz.

The first 14 tracks are various types of music and were interesting to listen to. Tracks 15 to 19 are as described. I'm going to see what these tracks show in my room/speaker placement and in various listening positions.

I just bought a used Rotel RB 1090 power amp with 380W/channel. Is this a problem for the RF 7's?

Do these work? Tact Audio makes one. Does anyone else make them? Asked on Architectural forum, but no response.

I see Tact Audio makes such a product for about $5000. Does anyone else a little less pricey?