PaulE

Deang, Since I posted this thread initially, there's been some change, partially reflecting what you are saying....First, I've gotten a new CD player..Its a Rotel RCD-971, with Dual Burr Brown DAcs, HDCD, and a sweet sound. Then, this past holiday weekend, the Right channel on my Audiosource Amp3 went out...Poof...Just stopped producing sound. When I called them, I learned a little more about them...There tech support dept, such as it is, consists of 1 guy, who was on vacation..He has 2 helpers, but they were at a trade show...Meaning, NOONE could give me an RA to return for srvc at the time I called. UNACCEPTABLE!!! This amp was 40 days old. I prevailed on J&R to accept it as a return on a new one, and they finally agreed. But, I got a new insight into the build quality of the Audiosource, and what $350 will get you...Right You Are! So, I went down to my local Rotel dealer and got a Real amp...That doesnt necessarily mean Expensive. But it does mean Well Built, and sweet sounding...I got a Rotel RB-1070. While I still will not knock the sound of the Audiosource amp3, as it will improve Any av receiver with preouts, the Rotel was more powerful, and more detailed. Its really in a different league, and only twice the price of the Amp3...Anybody considering the Audiosource Amp3 would be much better off in my opinion, buying the Rotel instead. At $700, its still considered mid priced, but its sound is HiFi.

Jason, The speakers sound great when powered by a decent system, so I would look elsewhere. One thing I've found when listening to music using just an av receiver to amplify the signal, there is a tendency toward harshness. I use a Sony ES receiver, which is damn nice for HT, but like the rest, lacks good musical warmth and fullness. To rectify, I bought a decent 150 wpc stereo amp, and drove it via the receiver's preouts.....That's what I would suggest you try, provided you have preouts on your receiver....If you dont, then I think you need to upgrade to one that does...

dbflash, would you confirm the size once you get your 5/16? thanks.

Jason, Dont get mad at this suggestion, as I have a receiver not too unlike yours in respected quality..I have a Sony STR-V333ES receiver which my Klipsch RF3s are connected to....While an excellent home theater setup, I wanted a warmer, clearer, fuller musical experience. There is virtually NO av receiver today which will provide the same musicality that you will get with a dedicated external amp...Use your Denon preouts to drive a decent 2 channel amp, and connect your front r and l speakers to it...Continue to let yoru receiver drive your center and surrounds, and you'll find that your 2 channel music experience is significantly improved.

Also, see if you get it while listening to you tuner as well.

RE the bind posts on our klipsches, will 'normal' sized audio spade connectors fit these jacks, or do we, like some speakers, require oversized spade connectors, if its spades we want to use? Thanks

My system which I use about 80% for music and the rest for Broadcast tV and DVDs uses RF-3s up front. Since it works best for music, and my receiver allows me to do so, I have my front channels crossed over at 50 hz. To blend with this, I have my sub crossover set at 70. I figure this works with my SS1 surrounds and SC1 center for all round use, and I have them crossed over at 70 also. Now, I've heard that, when playing DVD or DTS movies, you should set the sub crossover as high as possible. Obviously, this would be all wrong for my music listening, but does it make sense for the movie watching, considering where I have my other speakers crossed? Or is the Sub Out (LFE) channel so independant that it wants to produce frequencies up to the sub max of about 170 hz on my sub? But wouldnt this clash with the front RF-3s which are crossed at 50hz and the center crossed at 70? Would I lose much be keeping the setting for movies the same as for music, ie, crossing the sub at 70 hz? thanks.

Ray, >>. First, in reagards to the 96/48 kHz digital bitstream output issue, if you are talking about CD playback, this is a non-issue, as there are no CD's that are encoded with anything other than 44.1kHz sampling frequency<< So that the downconversion in digital signal before it goes to the receiver would make no difference for my cd listening, which is 90% of my use for the DVD/CD player. >>The 96kHz sampling rate only applies to a very limited number of audiophile discs from companies like Chesky that released music on DVD-Video spec discs recorded at higher sampling rates. << Maybe one day I'll spring for an SACD player of DVD audio or someother fancy player...But even then, I thought our hearing goes from 20 hz to 20 khz...What's with the 96 khz? for our pets? >>As to the question about cables possibly being a limiting factor... I haven't found them to be a BIG factor in the sound of my system<< So what then could account for the digital signal sounding more 'dynamic' and even 'warmer' than the purely analog signal? Only thing I can think would be that the dac in the receiver is noticably better than the one in the DVD player...On avman's es receiver I can understand it...His has a burr/brown dac...Mine doesnt. Which doesnt mean its bad...But it doesnt necessarily mean its better than the one on the player...As a matter of fact, I kind of thought that most DVD dacs were pretty good, and certainly not noticeably better or worse than ones in receivers....But, who knows...Maybe its just that I'm 'used' to the digital sound, or the DSP is adding something to the sound making it 'sound' clearer and warmer...I guess I'll never get the answer to that one..Just play whichever one sounds better at the moment...Thanks alot ray for your answers...they cleared up alot of questions I had about when 96/24 is really used, and so on.

AVMan, >>if you use analog direct, you ARE using the dvd player's d/a converters, which i don't beleive are as good as the es rcvr's d/a's<< Well,thats easy for YOU to say...Your ES receiver has Burr/Brown Dac....mine doesnt Still, ya gotta love the ES receivers...Mine sounds especially good driving my Audiosource Amp3...I read a review of the Amp3 in I think hometheaterhifi.com, and they said the Amp3 was far superior to any of the amps in any of the receivers they had received for review...I bet they didnt receive your DA777ES though...Thats a receiver a cut above all others... I trust youve seen the forum devoted to it? http://pub7.ezboard.com/faussiedvdandhtforumsonytava777esstrda777esinformationforum Sony should be shot for taking it off the market...I dont care if it DID 'steal' sales from their higher priced ES separates. Youre right about AFD mode...The only reason I like Analog Direct is because its supposed to be the 'purest' and 'cleanest' signal, becauses its bypasses ALL digital circuitry in the receiver, just using the volume control...I dont even have access to bass and treble settings in this mode...So, for purists, wanting to best capture what is put down on CD, this is theoretically the best mode to use..However, the issue about the superior receiver DAC, if it truely exists, certainly might counter the purity issue. As I said, despite the theoretical purety to be gained in analog direct, I feel the sound has more dynamics and just sounds better when I too use the DAC in the receiver.

I have a Sony ES receiver and an audiosource amp3 driving the front stage, and a Sony DVP-C660 DVD/CD player. I feel that, for some reason, I'm not hearing an 'improved' signal when I choose 'Analog Direct' mode in the receiver, which uses the analog connection from the DVD player to the receiver, bypassing all digital signal processing...Even bass and treble controls become unavailable...Its about as pure and straight through as we can get. So, I'd expect this to be the purest and sweetest signal on my better DDD recordings....Yet, the DVD signal path via optical cable or digital coax seems just as pure and clean... 'Sweet' if you will. The following factors might be involved: The analog cables are rat shack interconnects...I've already ordered some silver serpants from bettercables.com, which I'll use to pick that up. Or,perhaps, when I choose Analog Direct, its the DAC in the DVD/CD player which is converting the signal to digital, whereas when I choose any digital soundmode, its the DAC in the receiver which is doing it? This is my question...How do we know which DAC is the one which is performing the conversion? I kind of thougtht that if we choose an Analog Direct mode, then the conversion would be done in the DVD/CD player...Otherwise, the signal would go to the receiver via digital cable in digital form, and be converted in the receiver once it does its DSP thing... Is this correct? If so, what is the liklihood that the DAC in the ES receiver is of better quality than the one in the DVP-C660 player? Or, are they probably the same chip? At this level, is there likely to be a noticable difference between the two? Or, maybe its due to the cheap analog cables ( being replaced shortly)? Or, maybe I'm so used to hearing the signal from the DSP that the native analog signal sounds less rich, and there's nothing 'wrong' at all?! Whatever, the sound is indeed sweet coming from my RF-3s, and I'm not complaining...Just curious as to what's going on.. Thanks.

>>Two 16s would be as good as one 12, but not a "clean".<< Really? Isnt that real similar to what we do when speaker manufacturers recommend that we biwire their speakers? Arent we sending 2 sets of cable from one amp terminal to a speaker? Why would it be clean here, but not when running to a single set of terminals on surrounds? Perhaps, because the run to the surrounds is longer, you might have slightly more of a case for the image to smear, but still, I would think two runs of identical 16 gauge cable should be pretty much as clear as 1 run of 12. Again, if not, then why does biwiring not 'dirty' the image....Ooops...I forgot...there are those who say it does!

I dont know about a scam, but theyve been running an awful lot of Legacys lately...Last night, for instance a bid for KLF-10s ended at 7:47 pm eastern time....Believe it or not, they went for $189 each....Those speakers list for $1100, and some lucky somebody picked them up for $398 for the pair...Now for shipping, they were charging $150, but still, for $548 delivered, its incredible...Equally good buys can be had on KLF-20s and 30s. I just got what I thougtht was a sensational buy on RF-3s for $681 delivered from an internet store....good as my deal was, it didnt hold a candle to the Ubid deal...Only thing is they didnt have RF-3s on Ubid. If I hadnt gotten mine, I'd probably be bidding on the KLF-10s now....They seem to have them daily. Guess theyre' helping Klipsch sell their overstocks. Even though its after the fact for me, I'm curious, anybody have a preference of RF-3s or KLF-10s for mostly classical listening? Rock?

I've had my RF-3s since last wednesday, and I've run them for about 100 hours now. I never really subscribed wholeheartedly to the speaker break in notion. Yet, there's no doubt whatsoever that they are sounding Much Better. Upon first hearing them I thought the highs a little shrill, and the bass not as full bodied as I was expecting. But now, they're everything I had hoped for and more. But to muddy the picture, last night, I biwired them. I dont know definitively whether it was the biwire, or the increase from 16 gauge to an equivalent 11 gauge wire which made the difference. Or whether it was the combination of biwiring, and the speakers breaking in. Or the heavier wire, and the speakers breaking in. One thing which always puzzled me about the whole break-in notion: if speakers really needed to be broken in before their best sound could be heard, wouldnt factories consider it a worthwhile expenditure to break them in Before they went in the boxes? What company Wouldnt want their speakers to sound as good as they possibly could when Mr and Mrs consumer wired them up right out of the box?! If pre-breaking them in could elicit a 'W O W' from the customer instead of a more ho-hum 'wow', what company which aspires to impress the audiophile crowd wouldnt do it?

Hell, I'm running synergy SC-1 and SS-1s with my reference RF-3s, and even that's ok....Ok, true Home Theater guys whos main interest is HT would probably have a problem, but for me, whos interests run mainly 80% to 20% Music to HT ( and most of that HT even is broadcast television yet! )...I think that only if you spend alot of time with DVD movies do you need to worry about a perfect match...Even for my casual DVD movie viewing, I think my mixed system still sounds awesome... Of course for music, its tops..

Tonight I biwired my RF3s. I wasnt expecting much, but since I had been using 16 gauge generic and wanted to go to something better, I thougtht this was a good chance...So I bought a cheap length of Ixos 6004 biwire...this cable features 13 gauge for the woofers, and 15 gauge for the tweeters. But I wasnt sure which terminals on the speakers were for which....I guessed that the uppermost terminals were the tweeter terminals, so I gave them the thinner cables, with the thicker 2 going to the bottom most...Is this the correct terminal configuration? Anyway, the results were sensational...Immediately there was improvement in every facet of the sound....I'm still not convinced that it was the biwire, and could just have easily been the increased thickness....I'd love to know what OVERALL gauge I have when I combine the 13 and the 15 awg cables that comprised the biwire cable? Also, I want more cable for my surrounds...Rather than buying a new heavier gauge run, I think I'll run another length of the same 16 awg cable I'm using now...So, I will have 2 x 16 gauge twisted together...Do you know how to figure the combined AWG when combining thicknesses? Thanks.