STL

I think placing your TV at C would be you best bet. I have a 55" HDTV and I'm only about 10' from it. If you're watching HD or DVD then that viewing distance is actually about "right"; SD programming will look a little rough but that to be expected -- and hey evetually everything will be HD!

On 7/22/2005 11:23:55 AM michael hurd wrote: The Tripplite unit that picky mentioned automatically selects different taps on an internal transformer. It will correct for voltage as low as 87 volts and as high as 140 volts. When I get some more debts paid off, this is the unit that I am considering. So does the one I have (that 3dzapper mentioned even before picky). And if an 1800W unit will work for you, it costs about HALF as much as the one picky mentioned! Also, you might want to watch eBay since you can get used ones even cheaper there.

You can use another set of RF-3s or some RB-5s for your rears. Depending on what you listen to and your room layout, they might work just as well or better than RS-3s.

FYI, although the KG-3.2 might look like a 3-way speaker they are NOT. The 10" you call a woofer is actually a passive radiator and is not hooked up electrically at all! It's like a woofer without the magnet. If you want confirmation on that take out the 4 screws that hold it in and take a look for yourself -- or go look at "discontinued" speakers at Klipsch website and read the specs. The 8" is a woofer, and the speaker it just a 2-way design. Placing speaker wider (to an extent) is better than placing them right at the sides of the TV. Also be aware if yo decide to use the RB5s for you front then you need to replace your KV-1 (with a RC center or BEST yet another RB-5 if you have the room). Without see a drawing (with dimensions) of your layout it's hard to give you suggestions. And I doubt buying new speakers (beyond replacing the center like I said above) will do much to help and layout issues.

On 7/22/2005 8:18:56 AM Cal Blacksmith wrote: However, the "offical" list on this website has NO recomendations for many heratage speakers listed so as a starting place, the list posted is not useless. You're right it might not be completely useless, but I would NOT take any of those recommendations that suggest using a Reference series speaker to match Heritage speakers! And for the record, Klipsch current site does give some recommendations for Heritage speakers. Just look at the Academy: http://www.klipsch.com/product/product.aspx?cid=119 And the Klipschorn list gives the same info the above list does AND more: http://www.klipsch.com/product/product.aspx?cid=2 Actually the more I look, I think Klipsch current website gives all the information in the above old list (that's correct) AND more. Now I'm back to thinking that list is useless if you REALLY want to find a truly matching speaker.

On 7/19/2005 7:03:09 PM 3dzapper wrote: For $213 at CompUSA, this unit by Tripp Lite will do the trick for most. http://www.tripplite.com/products/product.cfm?productID=2833 I have an older version of this model that I picked up for less than $50 on eBay. It is suppose to protect in both low and over voltage situations, and it seems to work well. I was having some power problems one night, and I was impressed that it successfully kept my HD TiVo running (so I didn't have to wait thru a reboot) through several brown-outs. I also bought a Tripp-Lite Isolation Transformer on eBay for only $11. It's mounting flange had some damage it likely got during shipment but was otherwise new; I think think I got it so cheap because no one knew what it was and because shipping was going to be pricey (but I picked it up locally). Here's a link to the model I got: http://www.tripplite.com/products/product.cfm?productID=226 I'm currently not using it. Is anyone tried such a device? Any comments about it would be appreciated. Lastly, since I have an open basement and a spare 20A breaker I am thinking of running a dedicated power line for my HT. Anyone have any comments about the benefits (or lack of) in doing that?

WARNING: That list is old and it only suggests the "best" CURRENT (at the time) model to use and not the truly best model irregardless of whether it was in production or not. So it does NOT really tell you the best model(s) to use!! I suspect that it's because of that misinformation that Klipsch stopped posting it. To get that info for old models just use Klipsch website and select "Prodcuts" then "Discontinued" then find your model speakers. On that page, it will list the best matching components -- but they have a lot of omissions in their listings. For instance the KV-3 is a matching center for the KG-5.5, but look at the two pages for them: http://www.klipsch.com/product/product.aspx?cid=142 http://www.klipsch.com/product/product.aspx?cid=178 The KV-3 lists the KG-5.5 but not vice versa.

kenratboy, Someone has to keep an eye on you!

Yes, I saw it...but it's not a waterfall!

But that waterfall chart only shows down to 20Hz. I guess you mean the spectral charts further down...

According to Klipsch the KG-5.5s are 98dB @ 1watt/1meter, but having a matching center goes WAY beyond matching the level!!! A matched center has the same timbre as well as the same dynamic response. I am certain a stock KV-4 will NOT match a KG-5.5 as well as a KV-3, but I also feel there is a very good chance a modified KV-4 (like I detailed above) would match a lot better than a KV-3. IIRC, you can order a K-85-K horn assembly (that includes the driver) from Klipsch for around $50.

That's right, for some reason I was mistakeningly thinking the CF series was the Tangent series. But I was right about it not being at match for the KG-series (which is why I posted about it) and about the woofer size of the KG-2.2. I just thought of a great idea to try though. Use a KV-4 but replace its tweeter with the K-85-K horn (and driver) instead. I not sure, but based on pictures I've seen I think that should be a fairly easy to accomplish. Since the KV-4 horn lens is larger, it would require building a mounting plate that would fill that original horns hole, and that mounting plate would have the smaller K-85-K attached to it. You might need to tweak the HP section of the crossover, but then again you may not. That might be the easiest DIY center option to do -- and if you can get a KV-4 for $200 then I think it's certainly worth a shot!

The KG-2.2V uses 6.5" woofers not 5.25" as someone else said. Also, be aware the KV-4 is not made to match the KG series, but rather the Tangent series -- I think. If you must use a pre-made center with your KG-5.5s then use a KV-3, KG-2.5, or KG-2.2 (note the latter two come in both shielded and non-shield varities if that matters). I highly recommend making a custom center using a Klipsch K-85-K horn (that's the same one in the 5.5s) because NONE of those off-the-shelf speakers will really keep up with 5.5s. Many people have modified existing speakers (use a 5.5, 5.2, 4.5, or 4.2 since they all use K-85-K horns) or even build one from scratch like I did. That's the only way to really get a seamless match. If you want to know more, I suggest you do some searches as there are many threads about my custom center as well as other peoples.

On 6/30/2005 12:43:10 PM rplace wrote: My goal would be to have CD quality music on my computers hard drive so it can be accessed quickly and in turn put all my CD into storage. Why not use a lossless format? Like the name implies, you won't lose any quality -- but you will get substantially smaller files sizes!

On 6/30/2005 12:33:52 PM wmilas wrote: Well AAC is really just a tweaked mp3 with VBR. Its much better than plain old mp3, but Ogg Vorbis still slaughters it in double blind listening tests. It's a bit more than that. AAC is VBR, but not in the same way MP3 is currenting doing VBR. AAC varies bit rates but the variance from the target bit rate are very small. True AAC VBR is coming (in fact Quicktime 7 for Mac already has it) and it will further improve AAC. As far and OV being "so" superior to AAC -- I haven't seen anything to confirm that. In fact, I have see a test where AAC beat out OV! On 6/30/2005 12:33:52 PM wmilas wrote: As far as Apples lossless ecoder. I encourage you to test it against Flac. Flac produces smaller files. FLAC does produce smaller files, but they don't seem to be that much smaller -- and FLAC takes longer. On 6/30/2005 12:33:52 PM wmilas wrote: The only problems I see with Apples lossless is that the format is not open, so those of us doing serious archiving have no guarantee that they will not get locked out of thier own music files down the road. That chance of that happening is about a close to zero as you can get. If by some twisted fate that did happen, you better believe some hacker will open the format up within days -- so I'm not worried.

On 6/30/2005 11:37:38 AM rplace wrote: Questions: 1. Should I use Wav, FLAC, something else? 2. What is good software to accomplish this? Something that will use CDDB or the like to catalogue them by Artist, Album, Track, etc. 1) I would use a lossless format like Apple Lossless 2) Just go download the latest iTunes. Anytime you encode a CD, it automatically fill in all that info about the album (and you can modify it if you want).

On 6/30/2005 12:16:37 PM DizRotus wrote: It seems that the only reason to convert MP3 files to WAV files is to burn CDs to use in players that will not read and/or play MP3 CDs, i.e., that require WAV files. Correct!

Since we are talking about formats here, I thought I should mentioned that AAC is poised to be the sucessor to MP3. You'll see now that several aftermarket CD players are now supporting AAC and that phones are coming soon that will also soon support this audio compression. Many people don't know it but MP3 is a fairly old compression that is audio part of MPEG-1. For reference, DVDs use MPEG-2 compression. AAC is the audio part of MPEG-4 and does a much better job of compression with less loss in quality. The most popular portable music players around, iPods, support AAC and now we're starting to see other manufacturers getting on board as well. In addition to AAC, Apple also has their own lossless format (called Apple Lossless) that reduces files sizes by roughly 40% WITHOUT any loss in quality -- and it's pretty fast too. Even if you don't own and iPod you can download a full working version iTunes (for free) and use the AAC and Appple Lossless encoders.

Once a music file has been compressed with a lossy compression (like MP3) then converting it back to a WAV gets you absolutely nothing. The new WAV file will be larger in size, but it won't be any better in quality than what it was encoded in because the "damamge" was already done.

I have three diaphrams that each sound different -- one of them is very noticibly different (best decribed as louder and more shrill). I've tried swapping them amongst different motors and the sound seemed to follow the diaphrams. While doing the swap I also inspected them and don't remember seeing anything out of the ordinary of any of them. I also took a few measurements and saw values (which I don't have with me at the moment) with more variance than I expected. I posted a thread about it in Technical forum about year or more ago.

You could also consider using a KV-2 or KV-3, but you'd be best off creating a custom center using KG-4 parts. Be aware that in your custom enclosure you can ditch the KG-4's 12" passive radiator and port the enclosure instead (since both are forms of venting).

A bypass cap is a very small value (high-quality) cap that is placed in parallel with the cap you are "bypassing". I've heard arguements both ways on whether they really help or not, but my rational is that since they cost less $4 each it's not a large invest to try them out.

On 6/22/2005 9:11:16 PM merkin wrote: I did notice about the setting that with large you get the whole spectrum and with small the cross over was at 100. I would really like to have the cross over lower like 80 or 60. I think my forte II's could definitly handle it down to there. So what is the problem with running your Forte II's on Large?

Don't buy that over-priced and over-hyped monster gear. You can get good protection for a lot less.

I posted this is another thread, but it applies here too: Another option would be to replace all the caps with Dayton Poly caps then bypass each one of those with a 0.01uF AudioCap Theta cap. I read over on a Lansing forum where a guy had very good results doing that on his JBL horn's crossover. His results agree with a guy's high-end cap testing -- see http://home.zonnet.nl/geenius/Cap.html -- in that he recommends Thetas be used as a bypass caps. Although I have no practical experience (yet), I have to believe in the law of dimishing returns when it comes to upgrading caps.