Don Richard

A lot of musicians do the same thing with Guitar Center, 30 day return policy. They carry XLS also.

I have an XLS 402 that I am using as a bass amplifier on polyamplified Khorns. The sound isn't bad, but the two cooling fans are LOUD. You will probably need to replace or muffle them somehow.

And while exorbitant profits are being made by the OCs they are still getting tax breaks at the Federal level "to look for new, domestic sources of oil.

I knew I had this stuff somewhere but it took a while to find it: The Klipsch MMTM is a controlled directivity high frequency horn designed for long throw applications. The MMTM's controlled dispersion is ideal for applications requiring high sound pressure levels at long distances and those requiring precise control of coverage patterns. Frequency range: +/- 5dB 6kHz-16kHz Sensitivity: 108 dB SPL 1w/1m Max Power: 40w 124 dB SPL Nominal beamwidth: H 45 deg V 20 deg Nominal impedance / minimum impedance: 8 Ohms / 5.9 Ohms @ 18 kHz Network: Passive 6 kHz hi pass filter with 18 dB / octave cutoff coupled with a notch filter creating a 60 dB / octave slope Dimensions: 8.25 in H x 10.25 in W x 13.75 in D Protection: 3 Amp GBB (2 Amp AGC)

Thanks for the info, Dave. OPPO seems to have a good reputation and good reviews. And I'll definitely be downloading some "good stuff" to try.

The reason I went to the high end audio shop was to demo hi-res audio to see if there was any difference that I could hear. Despite being engouraged to stay away from hi-res digital, I think I am going to get a universal player anyway, to see for myself. Oppo, here I come.

I think that the AES paper shows that few people can hear a difference in digital storage sample rates. When people don't hear differences they don't buy. Low sales is the reason that the guy at the store thinks the hi-res media will fail at the consumer level. It is my theory that the music industry wants these formats mostly for better copy protection, not increased performance.

I really think that the "deadliest" thing that happened was the use of 8, 16, 24, track tape. Heck, you could slave as many tape machines together as you needed for as many retakes as you wanted. And you could do "flying switches" between several takes to assemble one "good" track. Multitrack production exploded because of the "perfection" that was attainable. This occured before CDs came on the scene and got worse after digital recorders were made for studio use. 48 and 96 track became common, and of course, they could also be slaved. The talent realized that no matter how "off" the performance was "it can be fixed in the mix". So subconsciously, perhaps, the performers stopped trying to nail a good performance in the studio. Then came the boxes. There is now a box out there to fix any problem. Vocalist singing flat? Put er through a pitch shifter, voila!, magically in tune. Kinda dry from close micing? Digital reverb to the rescue. Timing off? Line it up in ProTools. Etc, etc. Looks like a skill issue. Or several simultaneous skill issues. Performance skills, recording skills, mixing skills, mastering skills. And the chain always breaks at the weakest link.

Hooking the tweeter filter cap to the junction of the autoformer input (pin5?) and the 13uf cap causes the tweeter roll-off to react as a second order network electrically rather than first order. Dr. Eugene Patronis calls this an "improved 3 way network" in the 3rd edition of Sound System Design by Davis and Patronis. Hooking a tweeter filter cap directly to the xover input will allow more tweeter output below cutoff.

I just got back in town from a trip to the New Orleans area to get warranty work done on my nearly new CD player. After eating lunch I stopped by the only high end audio shop in our area to see what was new. I spoke with the owner, a fellow who has been in the audio business for 30 years to get his take on hi-res audio formats. His opinion is that he doesn't expect SACD or DVD-A to be around 5 years from now. He said that his own listening tests indicate that a properly recorded and mastered Redbook CD is nearly as good as any hi-res format that he has heard. In a listening session he demonstrated to me an audiophile remastered disc that I had a normal copy of. The sound was amazing on a very small loudspeaker system ( Spendor) driven by about $35K worth of Audio Research tube gear fed by an Esoteric Audio CD transport. Some of the best sound I have heard. Until I got home and played the remastered disc that I bought there on my system. I have never heard my system sound so good. Compared to the original commercial disc the audiophile remastered copy sounded like FM compared to AM radio. Much clearer, much fuller, sharper transients, Night and day difference. And all I am using for a CD player is a $50 DVD player! Many CDs these days seem to sound rather bad to me. The producers push the engineers to make the disc as loud as possible with little apparent regard to the musical content that is being damaged. The 90+ dB dynamic range of the format isn't being used. The dynamics are all compressed into the top 30 dB or so and the music seems squashed and lifeless. Want to up the performance of your system for $14? Buy better software, you'll be amazed at the difference. Don Honk if you love Horns

I was researching bit width / sample rates and found the following: http://mixonline.com/recording/mixing/audio_emperors_new_sampling/ This article describes tests run by Brad Mayer and David Moran that were reported in the September AES Journal titled "Audibility of a CD Standard A/D/A Loop Inserted Into High Resolution Audio Playback". Don't throw your CDs away yet. They are better than some think. Don Honk if you love Horns

The phase response of the steep filters used for anti-aliasing are probably the culprit. Frequency-dependent delays that are created by the filtering tend to smear time-related information that extends into the audible region. Don Honk if you love Horns

We in Louisiana have the secret of good coffee... no machines. We use French drip coffee pots and pour the water (boiling hot) used to make the coffee manually. The biggest secret, however, is the coffee used. We use fine ground dark roast coffee. Community or Louisianne are the only brands I'll touch. Stay away from coffee and chickory. It is nasty and I believe the only people down here drinking it are tourists. Starbucks? LOL Don Honk if you love Horns

Thats what I'm talkin' about! Don Honk if you love Horns

That's it... a Crank It Up Contest for home stereo. Sign me up![] Don Honk if you love Horns

Mark, seriously, have you been to a live concert where sound reinforcement was used lately? It ain't 1965 anymore and the sound that I have been hearing lately has been very good at concerts, and depends more on the talent of the SR crew running the show than the gear being used. I want my home system to sound as much as possible like the live show that I heard, whether it be a chest slamming kick drum at 105dB SPL or a glockenspiel at 75 dB. It easily does both. So we are in agreement, it appears. This would require a something like a Bogen mixer/amplifier and an EV Cobraflex paging horn. You are confusing a vocal paging system with a sound reinforcement system. Paging systems restrict the frequency range to about 300-4000 hz or so for vocal intelligibility. Far from sufficient for music reproduction. BTW, if you hooked The Best Audio Amplifier in the Whole Wide World, DC to 2 ghz response, to that Cobraflex paging horn it would sound the same as the Bogen. Back in the old days, days even older than me, sound at the movies was the best sound reproduction most people had heard. Cinema sound systems were put into homes by those desiring the best audio available. These people were using professional grade equipment for home use. I'm just following their lead, trying to recreate the sounds I heard at a show as best as possible. Don Honk if you love Horns

But there are very expensive lunches out there that don't taste good. Don Honk if you love Horns

There you go again. Home audio gear is is much more delicate than SR gear. There is a thread going on about earthquakes here. The chances of a piece of vacuum tube gear that was shaken off of a shelf still working won't be good. Maintenance? Vacuum tubes require periodic re-biasing and replacement. Power output? LOL. Entry level pro amps' power output starts where home units ends. 1400 watts @4ohms is available from the XTI. Need more? QSC RMX5050 - 5000 watts. At low distortion. Universal compatibility? Input and output impedances of home gear isn't standardized. Hooking a preamp with a high output impedance to an amplifier necessitates careful matching to an amplifier for high quality results. BTW, be extremely careful when hooking up Audio Research preamps to Krell amps. These are highly respected components, however, they both go down to DC in frequency response. When you turn them on the Krell will amplify the DC offset from the preamp and fry your speakers. On newer Krell amps there is now an input with a blocking cap. Be sure this is the input you are using. Where offered? Mostly, its not offered. Any of yours have this feature? Don Honk if you love Horns

Pro sound, especially products designed for live sound reinforcement, possess the following qualities: 1) Power and high output current capability. 2) Tough and rugged. 3) High quality performance well within the range of human hearing. 4) High efficiency, low AC power consumption. 5) Near total immunity to microphonics. 6) Balanced interconnects for greater immunity to noise pickup. 7) Maintenance free operation. 8) Superb protection from shorts, surge and transients, DC faults. 9) Clipping protection. 10) Bandpass limiting to protect from subsonic and ultrasonic damage to loudspeaker components 11) Universal connectivity with other professional grade components. I'm tired of typing, time for lunch. Let me know if you need more reasons. Don Honk if you love Horns

Sounds like the bully is fixin' to get his a$$ whupped. Don

If global warming is caused by human activity, then what human activity? Blaming what has been observed so far solely on the combustion of fossil fuels is not correct. Deforestration, particularly in large regions such as the Amazon rain forest certainly is a major contributor. Undoubtedly others will be mentioned. Don Honk if you love Horns

SWL: Thanks Don. When I use my XTI as an ordinary 2 channel amp.........I'm not the least bit interested in it. When bi-amping using the DSP features I enjoy the results very much. In fact.......isn't this how these amps are really intended to be used? There are quite a few folks who do not care for the sound of this amp when used full range for 2 channel use. Too many folks who appear to know good sound when they hear it to simply ignore. However, when polyamplification is employed one is severely restricting the bandwidth per amplifier to a value less than 20hz-20khz. Perhaps the division by the crossover of the input signal into narrower slices of the frequency spectrum masks some deficiencies that are more readily apparent during full bandwidth use. Like you, I bought these amps to use in a polyamplified system and to use the onboard DSP for time alignment purposes. In that role these amps work really, really well. Don Honk if you love Horns

I have not listened to the XTI full range on Khorns. I first bi-amped the system using a Crown XLS402 on LF and an XtI1000 on MF & HF, liked what I heard, then got another XTI and tri-amped. I'm using Khorn bass and K-400 MF with a Peavey HF, crossed @400 & 1200 using an analog xover. I'm using the XTI's DSP for limiting and delay. The 24 dB/octave crossover slopes along with MF & HF delays seem to reduce comb filtering quite a bit compared to a stock AA network. This seems to widen the sweet spot considerably. Time alignment improves the reproduction of transients such as snare and tom drum hits. The effect is subtle, not OMG!! But I like it. Don Honk if you love Horns

Hardly any. I just got the XTIs about a year ago. The "best" amp that I hooked up was an SAE MKII, 1975 vintage. On HF. The SAE didn't interface well with the active xover and had audible noise. Don Honk if you love Horns

I thought you were trying to prove that ultrasonic frequencies caused square wave activity. Actually they do, in electronic equipment, if the ultrasonic information consists of odd harmonics of the fundamental frequency. Alpha waves? Well, if you were as close to an instrument making sounds as the mic that they used in that study, the ultrasonics would be masked by the fundamental frequency and its audible overtones. According to the study you cited ultrasonic information that is correlated comprises 1-2% of the total energy in the waveform. If they had miced that instrument at a normal listening distance the ultrasonic information would not have even made it to the listening position to cause any activity of any sort. If you had listened to that instrument at the stated measuring distance you would be deaf in short order, and you would have to get your supply of alpha waves from a source other than music. Ultrasonic: Pertaining to acoustic frequencies above the range audible to the human ear, or above approximately 20,000 cycles per second. It might take some of those $15,000 cables to deliver alpha waves. I hear (pun intended) that they do all sorts of inaudible things that are of great benefit. Alpha waves? Jost say Ommmmmmmmmmmmmmm...Ommmmmmmmmmmmmmmm. Repeat as necessary. Don Honk if you love Horns