Quiet_Hollow

+ 1Some of us young bucks figured out finances* and acoustics at a fairly young age. Had a very nice 5.1 HT setup in my own place by 19, and got into Klipsch heritage by 25. All is not lost.P.S. - Watch the primary eliminations on American Idol at least once. You'll see, for example, that not every 17-30 year old has good aural taste or tone recognition by default of youth. * thanks to Pareto

A phase-linear EQ goes a long way to bring order from chaos in the crossover region.

I can appreciate that. It's the one mounted on a stock Canon GL1.

Videos of my system: (more to come soon) and...

My "secret recipe" for extracting every drop out of the XR has been to simply run it with a sub. Alleviating the XR amps of bottom bass duty. The money I had left over from the purchase of the Panasonic bought an linear-phase EQ and a nice subwoofer amp. I run that with a high-sensitivity horn loaded subwoofer. Those coupled with the La Scala's and my hearing runs out of gas well before this system even gets close to it's limits while maintaining impeccable composure. Not that any of that max effort stuff significantly matters though, as I listen to it at -75 on the dial the majority of the time, but it sure comes in handy for movie night. ;-)

This is frequency dependent for mains and satellites and doesn't apply to signals higher than the baffle diffraction step of the cabinet. In the case of subwoofers, figuring in boundary-loading assumes the owner knows how to correctly place their equipment. It would be more conservative to stick with the lower value. Indoors, it's still 6 dB for every doubling. You can check that with a meter. Being off by 3 or more dB in calculation would be quite an issue when figuring out power demands or why things aren't as loud as they should be. [H]

LG consistently favors well in Consumer Reports, but just like any product, it's model specific with the top tiers usually performing better regardless of brand. If I could make a recommendation...Keep your Sharp and hold onto the cash or put it in a CD for a year because when OLED/QLED televisions hit the shelves, people are gonna dump anything less. It's that good. 3D and blu-ray are a fart-in-the-wind compared to this paradigm shift in viewing technology...has to be seen to be believed, just like high quality audio.

For less than $1000 you can get a builder to make a Bill Fitzmaurice Table Tuba shipped to your door. That, or I'm sure Mr. Hedden at Danley could hook you up with a CS30 for right around the high side of your budget. Both, IMHO, are some of the finest consumer level horn-loaded subwoofer product of the last decade. Either one will leave your jaw on the floor and a dollop in your pants.

Only if the the tower speakers and subwoofer signal arrive at your ears, in phase, across all frequencies with which they share...So in reality, not a chance. By neutering the signal going to the floorstanders and letting the sub become part of the big picture. The bandwidth of a typical sub, properly implemented, is much wider than that. More like 25-250 Hz. (even higher if you include induced harmonic content from certain woofer alignments) So, how does a sub really help a tower speaker? Mind you, this is a question that requires a book to fully describe, but I'll try to give it a go in a nutshell. 1. When crossed over properly, a sub prevents the two towers from fighting with one another acoustically over a pre-determined bandwidth. 2. When placed properly, boundary-loading significantly reduces the amount of power required to achieve desired low frequency SPL's at the listening position. Lower power equates to less induced harmonic content = better sound. 3. Low frequency content (less than 250 Hz) requires a unique combination of space, cabinetry, power, and / or signal processing that is not taken into account in your average sub-$10,000 tower speaker. There are of course exceptions, but I've never seen these special cases as affordable as even the most high-zoot subwoofer, if you know what I mean. It's the nature of the beast. By virtue of design, a pair of standard tower speakers, played full-range, are acoustically poised to have low frequency issues (destructive interference between the cabs in the mid-bass region most audibly). As PWK said, put'em in a corner. That solves a lot of the issue if the room is big enough. Using a separate sub, or Bi-amping the towers in some instances can take care of the rest, typically sounding better due to the increased low frequency extension, in most cases.

An insightful write-up...Thank you very much for posting! :-)

Disabling the video circuits potentially cleans up the signal a little bit, if you happen to be using the analog audio inputs, per the manual. I make exclusive use of fiber optic, so I wouldn't know any different in practice. I do know that there is some pretty fancy MHz-range signal traffic taking place along the amplifier boards, therefore shielding and managing EMI within the chassis is a big deal with these puppies.

The SA-BX500 is still in production, but is only sold in Europe. All the other XR's are out of production as of '08. Wuzzer asked me how I liked the Panny. I gave him my thoughts. Next thing I know, there's re-newed interest on the forum.Oddly enough, the TI amplifier boards are still in production and used extensively by Panasonic in several of their recent HTIB product. I checked myself by dissecting one right at Best Buy in front of their Panasonic rep. It's a shame how many consumers will never know what they've got underneath the hood of their budget systems. Back in '01 my neighbor had an XR-10, and when we had house parties his system just sounded so friggin' good when cranked. I had an RX-V595 paired up with some NS-A2837's. They could go louder, but his system sounded a lot cleaner at über-levels. Had I known about the technology back then, I would've passed on the Yamaha a long time ago. Check out what model of JBL he has and make sure he's not trying to play his vinyl through the blasted thing. Their current floor models have very low sensitivity (~88 dB SPL @ 1 watt IIRC). So with only 18 dB of gain available, the XR's shouldn't be expected to work miracles like driving large bass transients at goofy levels into thirsty speakers such as planars, ribbons, dipoles, or sealed cabinets where some gnarly monoblock would normally be loafing along.

The XR70 is fine, it's just the predecessor to the XR55/57. The "wunderamp" line-up goes something like this: SA-XR10 SA-XR24/45 SA-XR50/70 SA-XR55/57 SA-XR700 and finally..SA-BX500

They are two distinct models.

Sure thing.My $40 pair of Sony MDR-AS40EX are my reference. I can hear anything on those buds, and It has been quite an escapade trying to put my home system on par with that. I'm close, but the sound from those buds is very intimate, as you've so described. One plus of the home system is that it can shake everyone's clothes and bend gravity at war volume. ;-)

+1 I'll second Russ's recommendation.

Topology appears similar to the Crown DC-300A series. Nice piece of kit you got there.

Certifiable? How about a liability instead? That's a lot of cash tied up and sitting around if you're not listening to it often. I had four La Scalas at one time. After three years of collecting dust, selling the second pair freed up coin to get other cool gizmos like a subwoofer EQ and amplifier. To my chagrin, they would honestly still be collecting dust with no guaranteed value otherwise. I simply didn't have the space for them. Probably preaching to choir here, but hoarding a bunch of anything, hobby or not, just isn't smart money.

If you absolutely insist on modifying your vintage La Scalas, start with a pair of K-401's, then a pair of AL-3 networks. Those components will actually improve the resale value of the speakers along with improving the sound. Messing with the tweeter won't help. With all respect, there's nothing you can't do with EQ and a good working K77M that you can do with a Crites tweeter. For that matter, I recommend checking out Al Klappenberger's site for some structured perspective.

If you can hold out for for XR55/57 or XR700, they had the latest updates in the slim chassis design and the most features. The XR700 most notably with auto-eq if that's your bag. They all sound the same though, and you can't really go wrong as long as you score a unit from a good home.

It's how they well they sound for the price you pay. Coupled with a pair of high-sensitivity speakers, the XR's let you truly hear everything. No amount of charts, numbers, or hearsay can describe the sound of one of these amps when deployed correctly. You can't help but laugh at the absurdity when you realize that you spent less for your amp than what some spend on cables or a bottle of fine Scotch, and it sounds that good. The raw data to pay attention to are that there was, and still is, significant positive discussion about these amps. There's a good reason for that. I'm certainly not saying that. The XR's aren't exactly feature intensive, so they may or may not get much notoriety in direct comparison to other high-zoot receivers. Park the signal juggling, up-converting, and decoding aside and the most important part to your ears is the amp inside. That's what the XR's have in spades.

Welcome to the club ;-) You'll never look at a big 'ol monoblock or pile of tubes with the same enthusiasm as before. And wait until you listen to it for a year or so, then visit a "hi-fi" store. The last Audio Research demo I experienced had me fervently reaching for the ear plugs. Not bashing here, seriously...but do expect your ears to become used to that creamy-smooth delivery of the XR.

Won't make a bit of difference. I recommend leaving it the way it is.

" I see! " said the blind man. [H] It's cool to hear that you've realized such an improvement, but.... I think you could've gotten by with a lot less if more consideration was given to your room and the dispersion characteristics of your speakers in the first place. Stuffing corner traps everywhere can be sort of counterintuitive when using horn speakers if you catch my drift. You've got to know what the problem is before you can determine the appropriate solution.

+1 No second guessing, and the warranty departments would be happy campers.