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artarama

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  1. About four years ago I called on a CL listing in Boulder and went with my daughter to look at a "Luxman amp and pre-amp" that a guy had for sale. He was never in town and had someone else who knew nothing about the equipment set up a time when he would be home. So, not knowing model numbers or any other pertinent info we finally found the place about 50 miles away with really poor directions and no GPS. We were on a tight time frame and running late by the time we got there. I had come with cash in hand just in case there was something I wanted. Turns out the guy was a driller that worked mostly internationally and when he was gone would let friends stay at his house. Lot's of parties from the looks of things. In the main house there was a couple of beat turntables and cassette decks, nothing of much interest. In the separate hot tub house was a luxman M6000 amp, C-12 preamp, T-12 tuner and a pair of speakers with multiple drivers and kind of an odd narrow slope design. I honestly can't remember the make or model. He said they were "expensive" when he bought them (even for him). Well, I feel like an idiot now looking back but I really didn't know much about the M6000 at the time and was only interested in the amp and preamp anyway. Get this, he wanted $500 for everything! Speakers, turntables, cassette deck, tuner, pre-amp and the M6000. He wouldn't split it out, he wanted it all gone. I remember him saying "yeh, it seems to be that amp that everybody is interested in". I passed. I had one in my hands, I sat it down, turned my back and walked away! It hurts just to type that. []
  2. Now there is a kindred spirit. Great list, a little freakey how close most of those are to my tops. No idea of the DOREMI ... but I will look it up. I guess I need to find a copy of Foreigner 4 too as I can't remember that one. I would toss in almost anything by Peggy Lee or Taj Mahal. I listen to those artists at least once every week or two.
  3. I think it is great when a company asks their long time valued customers for input on their products and services. Who better to give valid experianced feedback than long time users. Maybe feedback from a target audiance focus group gives reinforcement to a current marketing idea. But this doesn't really give the company ideas of how to improve on what they have done to date. And Klipsch has done a lot!!! Thanks for asking!
  4. I think this could be the longest single paragraph post in the history of this forum. Word count anyone?
  5. That probably was the Audio Power Labs 833TNT Monoblocks at $175,000 per pair and the Leonardo Model 8 Ribbon Planar Speakers at $65,000 per pair. The Grand Illusion Loudspeaker Cable used was a modest $15,000 per set. Plus a few other niceties I am sure that setup was at least a quarter mil. It sounded great and was presented very well. I may have even spotted one guy that looked like he could have afforded it. This was my first show but I thought there were a lot of people and very well attended by manufacturers or resellers too. Guards at the elevators to keep from overcrowding. I definately went away feeling I had heard "another level of sound quality". I also left feeling good about my system. I think I am past the point of having to pay incredible sums of money for extremely deminished returns. But it is nice (I guess) to know how much more is out there and to have had the chance to have heard it.
  6. Nice looking unit. Currently $600+/-. It is good to see a more serious nod to quality sound in an audio dock. They obviously feel people will pay more for good sound! A room in my basement is one big audio dock...and if I crank it... I can hear music in any room in the house.
  7. I am planning on going on Saturday. Should be quite a show. A lot of exhibitors! If you can make it from Maine, I can make it 50 miles.
  8. Holding companies/investment banks/ ?!?! Capitol etc. have a singular goal and that is profit for the stakeholders. Period. Some investors like Warren Buffet (who's age portends a different generation of thinking) seem to buy quality companies and let them function much on their own with vastly more resources. However, more often the case is that accountablility to the bottom line trumps product innovation and quality. It really comes down to short term versus long term goals of the current/future managers of the investment. Hopefully the Italians are in it for the long haul, for better or worse, till death do they part. Remember Luxman.... McIntosh in Costco's or Sam's anyone ?!?.
  9. I took jhoak's suggestion and looked online for a good cleaner. I used a couple recommended resister fix programs and subscribed to one (can't remember the names right now) that helped a lot. Still far from "fast as new" but much better. I think I will try to replace these caps at some point just to extend the service life of the unit. It looks like it will be a lot harder to get the mother board out of the case than it will be to change out the caps. Thanks for all the input.
  10. Thanks for the link sunnysal. A good fair analysis IMHO. Somehow I keep thinking of high performance MC/Car analogies with speaker wire and interconnect debates, so here it goes. Building our "hifi" systems is a lot like building a high performance engine. How much difference does a high flow air cleaner make if you haven't ported and polished the heads? And if you have gone to the expense and trouble of porting and polishing your heads do you really want to run a stock air cleaner? I recently was able to get some PS Audio speaker cable at a good price and feel like it was a substancial improvement over the six strand twisted 12 ga. DIY copper wire I had been using (30 foot runs). More bass and more deffinition. But... and there are always but's... I did have to move my equipment around to accomodate the shorter cable runs, so not exactly apples to apples either. I would put this type of an upgrade in that last 5-10% or so of system improvements. Deffinately not your biggest bang for the buck improvement but an improvement none the less.
  11. Thanks man that is very generous, PM sent.
  12. Ok so I hate to mix work and pleasure but... My desktop Lenovo ThinkCentre has started to run super (insert explicative of your choice) slow and without all the IT trouble shooting which is not part of this forum, thank goodness I do have this one question. I opened up the box and noticed three 6.3V, 1000 microfarad electrolytic caps that are on the motherboard are starting to crown and look like they are ready to blow! Could bad caps cause a computer to "slow down" (affect performance) or would the machine just fail when they go?
  13. Good info djk. they look like a jet engine. So, the smaller outlet causing compression is that what they were calling a "phase plug?
  14. I think your parents are pretty cool. Khorns with their TV! Early adopters of HT or I'd really like to see their 2 channel rig.
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