maxg

Woah.... I wasnt trying to say that the only thing discussed on here is amplification - far from it. I was only pointing out that it seems to get a disproportionate coverage in comparison to the other aspects of the system. For the record, and to confirm what Kelly has stated, my system is as it is now largely due to the imput from this very forum and I would be the last one to deny it. And yes - I am still using those crummy amps !!! In fact that was largely the point of the post. It became obvious to me that my amplification (both amps and pre-amp) were no longer the weakest link in my chain. Going further, I still dont regard them as such. My next step (planned - we will see in the future what comes) is a new TT. I am planning to keep the arm, cartridge and the phono stage and get something rather better to run them on. In the light of my recent experience in switching from the BPS to the Clear audio Virtuoso that new TT should sport 2 arms. That will allow me to choose another cartridge for rock (not sure what yet - not another bps). On the ampification side I have often talked about moving into SET. The only thing that holds me back is the possibility of moving to other speakers in the future that would simply need more watts to run. Ultimately 45 watts of push pull may not be as good as 3 watts of SET sonically but it is a lot more flexible in terms of speaker choices. And having said that I know my speakers would benefit from 100 watts of amplification - were it available to them.

Over the years of posting and reading on this site I have noticed that there is a total obsession with amplification, almost to the exclusion of everything else. On the face of it this seems to be somewhat odd and I cant help asking myself how much influence does amplification really have beyond a certain point and in relation to all the other factors that go into making a decent system. Trying to be a little pseudo-scientific about this assume for the sake of argument that there are just 3 factors that influence a system's sound - the equipment, the source and finally the environment (room in the case of home audio). If we further assume that each of the above carries an approximately equal weighting (big assumption) then we are left with the system being responsible for one third of the sound's quality (whatever that is). If we further disect "system" into speakers, source player, pre-amp and amp(s) and then add in interconnects, speaker cables, power cables, power supplies and so on we start to get an impression of the relative importance of amplification. Now I am not saying that you cannot go horribly wrong with amplification (been there - done that - used to have a Yamaha surround sound amp acting as a pre-amp for a Rotel 200wpc power amp driving Heresy's!!!), but I am saying that once you find a reasonable match the law of diminishing returns is going to set in in a rather big way. On my own system I have all but forgotten the amps over the last year or so and concentrated on the source pick-up. Obviously the biggest change to my sound has been the migration from CD (and latterly SACD) to vinyl but beyond that changes to the cartridge, phono-stage (which is an amp I suppose) and even the arm have made dramatic differences. Far more dramatic I suppose than any further change to my little push pull KT88 amps. I should state for the record that none of this is meant to be a critism of anyone on this board - I just find the focus on amplification to be a little baffling is all... Anyone else feel the same way? Am I missing some thing crucial?

I dont know - 20 years sounds pretty fair to me Reel. We are coming up to our 20th in January, come to that my parents are coming up to their 40th. No idea what I am going to get any of them.... Sadly when it comes to audio I am in the "hide it" camp. Even after all this time she who must be obeyed (SWMBO) doesnt get the fascination. Its not that she doesnt enjoy listening to music on ocasion but usually only as a background to entertaining or something. My constant striving to improve the sound leaves her mystified and only very ocasionally does she comment on an improvement.

Preaching to the converted here. I work on the basis that a decent sounding room can make any system sound as good as one costing twice as much in a lesser environment. On the subject of soundstaging I would say that this is THE major benefit I have experienced since switching from the Heresy's to my own home built speakers (well that and bass but the bass is less aparent as I no longer run the REL sub). I dont want to go on about my own speakers (expecially as no-one here has the ability to hear them - or is likely too unless they have a trip to Greece planned) but the depth of soundstage I now have is simply staggering. I would compare my current depth to that of the Quad 989's that a friend has - and that is supposed to be the last word in depth...

Do my eyes deceive me? Could that be Kelly posting on the 2 channel forum again - my things change when you are away..... As for this Clearaudio cartridge....hmmmm.....well....I now understand why someone might want 2 arms on their pickup. From what I can tell to date (about 4 hours listening) this thing is made for classical - blows the bps away no doubt about it, but for rock....how do I put a second arm on a Project RPM 4??? Yet to try Jazz / blues / Soul etc - meant to - but made the mistake of putting on Aida and kinda ended up listening to the whole thing - all 6 sides. Anyway nice to see you back Kelly....

I just lent my TT to a friend and he managed to break the Damn BPS cartridge. Whilst he is promising to pay for the original it is the 3rd one that has blown in 7 months. The design of this cart is way too problematic for me. Just been over to my supplier - who tells me I am fast becoming his best cartrdige customer. Anyway he just fitted a clearaudio virtuoso for me to try out so if it sounds any good I will stick with that - enough of this exposed design non-sense...

How do you gain a Penguin's consent? Buy it a fish dinner?

I dont know the Apex unit so I cant tell you if the Comet is the same or not. Comet do have a site (www.comet.gr) but they do not have an upto date picture of the DVD player - mine looks nothing like the one shown. I will try to snap some pics of the thing so you can all see. In the meantime I can tell you that is does have a rather cool drawer for the disk. Instead of the front section that slides out being part of the drawer it is a separate little door that drops down for the tray to slide out. I have no idea if this is better or worse or simply different from the norm but it looks pretty cool to me. One other clever thing. the numbers on the remote control are shaped like numbers - makes it mush easier to find them in the dark. Oh yes - I think I underestimated how much music I have got on one disk in MP3 format. I played 4 hours yesterday and as on track 55 out of 120. This could take some time.

320??? Isnt that higher than native CD? I seem to remember that CD is rated at 300kb/s... I think that these are at 128 Kb but I cant be sure..

Back on topic. Yes - I think you will have no problems driving any Klipsch speaker ever made with 600 watts. I am just not sure if you will get any benefit from having the last 500 or so, possibly the last 596.5. Doesnt Kelly (Mobile) have Cornwalls running with 3.5 watts? Still - you will definitely have more headroom than he does at volume - probably enough for me to hear your system here in Athens...

Yes - I am in Athens Greece so I dont know how much use the store will be to you. For what it is worth the store is called Praktika and is, I think German owned. One thing from Justin's comment - it does not play SACD or DVDa - just everyting else seemingly on earth that comes on a little shiney disc. BTW - how much music can you get on a single CD in MP3 format??? I reckon I have got about 5 hours (126 songs) - this is going to be great for parties - and tantric tricks.....

About 6 or 7 years ago I bought a Denon 3000 DVD player that has been with me ever since. It was a Generation 1 player that pre-dated DTS and such like but it played both DVD and CD well enough for me at the time. Since that time a Sony NS900V has been and gone, through a brief flirtation with SACD, and I have settled into vinyl now and potentially forever. This morning I was in one of those hardware hypermarket things that sell everything except food it seems. Sitting in the middle of the electronics section was a huge pile of various DVD players - all from manufacturers I had never heard of. The thing that got me was the prices - they started at just over $70!!! Now when I bought the Denon, if memory serves it was nearer $1000. Things have definitely changed. Anyway I browsed through the various models at this cheapest of all pricepoints. Most were obviously limited in one way or another - no optical out, no decoder, nasty connectors and so on. One, however, did not appear to be missing anything. Full DD5.1, DTS, Optical and Coax output, plays every kind of disc on earth bar DVDa and SACD (more on this later) and at the same price point of around $70. For reference the make is "Comet"???!!! What the hell I thought - how bad can it be? So I bought it and installed it in place of the Denon. I am amazed. Cd playback is eminently acceptable. A bit softer than the Marantz CD6000 but not massively inferior. DVD seems fine (although I have no way of testing out the optical and Coaxial connectors). It does sport the full compliment of outputs so I could connect to to a couple of other amps I suppose (for rear and centre), but in 2 channel mode it is fine. Reading the somewhat hilarious manual - obvously written by someone with English as a third language at best - it seems the unit will play a lot of stuff. Having tried DVD and music CD I then tried a Video Cd and it worked very well, then I tried a CD with about 4 hours of MP3 and that too, worked well (quality not near as bad as I was expecting either...). To my amazement it even reads CD's with photo's on them. I put in a CD with a fairly complex directory structure with long file names and varying resolutions from 3.3 Mpixel down to about 800*600. The unit flicked through them with an admirable nonchalance. Of course they dont look at their best on a TV but you can see them perfectly clearly enough. It even found some MPEG 1 files (movies) I had taken on my digital camera (not digital video camera) and played those too. Hell - for all I know this thing will read word documents. Not bad for $70....

"among the twenty or so pairs of speakers that I have" Jesus - if you were married to my wife you wouldnt be married to my wife - she'd leave you flat. I have a war going on because I have 3 pairs of mains in the house at the moment (not counting the Aiwa in the bedroom - they arent mains they are moulded plastic in the shape of a speaker).

And here is the other pic....enjoy

Just to give some idea of the scale of the speaker I have attached a pic of it nect to the heresy with another one to follow..

Firstly thanks Edster - that is what I wanted to do originally - I wonder why it only works for me???? As for the questions: 1. The design. Frankly my new found wodworking skills allow me to build a box and not much more yet. Therefore the speaker is a box. As for the crossover and speakers these were lifted direct from a speaker that my friend Tony (ex. KHorn owner) built some time ago. Those speakers were something of a disaster as he had tried to shoehorn them into tiny bookshelf speakers without ports. Despite this I could hear something from them that told me there was more to be had soundwise and I was convinced that the box size was the key. Add to that the fascination I have for the idea of using proper wood, as opposed to MDF and the whole thing comes together nicely. I should add that the wood I have used is a soft wood, but very thick (slightly over 1 inch thick (28 mm)). This made it very easy to work with but still strong. It also, I think works in conjunction with the sound absorbing materials to minimize internal reflections. I have the feeling that harder woods would be more reflective and potentially more problematic but I may be wrong not having played with any yet. 2. Time. Right now I am not working officially although I am doing various things kinda part time. This has left me with plenty of free time and not being one to sit around in front of the TV I have been building a plenty. 3. Inspiration. I didnt even know ALK had built a Heresy on steriods although I would love to find out more. I too have been tempted to re-box the Heresy and swap out the woofer for something a little more punchy. Will investigate this further. As for my own inspiration - see above. Well that's it for now. They do play well, real well - so who knows what the future holds....

And here is the pic of the other speaker...

So it seems I am the only one who can see the pics I posted. Typical - fooled me completely. Attached is one of the pics. I will attach another one to the next response as I cannot tell if you can attach more than one file at a time. Sorry for the inconvenience all...

Well amazingly I have been doing a bit of DIY (yes - me - Mr. Allthumbs!!). And what did I build??? Yep - a pair of speakers. If anyone is interested I may provide full technical details but for now the following will have to do for reasons explained at the bottom: They are made from solid wood (not MDF), are 60cm high and 40 cm deep/wide approx. This makes them slightly larger than the heresies - actually a fair bit larger - between the heresy and the LaScala. The tweeter is a Horn as you can see, the midrange is paper and the woofer an 8 inch carbon fibre unit. The box is sealed (not ported). Whilst it is a bit early to tell, soundwise they certainly destroy the Heresies (bigger sound, deeper soundstage, more bass, less edgey, fuller highs and mids... Sadly they do not seem to have the sensitivity I was hoping for. I would guess 90-93 dB but I havent tested it properly. The good news is the bass must go down at least 10 Hz lower than the Heresy, maybe more - listening without the sub is no longer so painful, in fact, I am not sure the additional bass really adds anything worthwhile for most listening. For what it is worth I would guesstimate the numbers as follows (proper measurements to follow later): Sensitivity - 90-93 db/w/m Power handling - 150 watts Range - 40dB (?) to 36,000 (crazy tweeter) Right now that is all I have. All I can say is that to my ear (and Tony's - who helped in the design) they play unbelievably well - so well in fact that, subject to the reactions of some other listeners, we may well go into business to sell them. Just thought I would let you all know is all.....

When I first brought the Heresys home my wife took one look at them and said "You are not thinking of putting those big ugly black things in the living room are you?" Right then and there they very nearly got me out of a life situation and into a death one. But for some fast cabling, and even faster talking friend, and a copy of ABBA's greatest hits I might never have been able to write this message.

Craig, Interesting ... I didnt know about variable output tube phono stages? Presumably it will happily run both MM and high output MC, but have you tested it out with any lower output MCs? Everyone I spoke to over here said the only way to drive a low output MC was SS. I didnt have the knowledge to argue so I went with the flow and picked the best from the audition of 9 or so I got my hands on. Would definitely have prefered a tube stage.

Funny you should say that Dean...without really thinking I found myself pondering whether Kelly had a life outside this forum before he disappeared. Now I know that is ridiculous and of course he did but you get so used to conversing with people on one subject and largely in one way that you start to see them rather more 2d than they really are. Recently I too have been posting less - I am trying to pretend I too, have a life....

I am guessing you did not expect it to go this high...its $405.59 as I type with 3 days left. Maybe you better stick to your current system of offering them for sale on Ebay and giving them away here for $10. Will be fascinating to see what price you finally reach. Will it, or wont it, be enough to buy a(nother?) pair of KHorns?

Well I met a guy who knows a friend who is a regular traveller to Dubai. He also happens to be a very serious audiophile. As a result of this combination and in conjunction with the fact that he is obviously a wheeler/dealer he has picked up a long list of audiophile stuff that he is looking to sell. After a few conversations we have agreed a price for me to buy the lot (at massive discounts from the RRP) and I have provisionally sold most of it making a small profit along the way. All that is left to do now is to ensure that none of it is stolen and I should make enough money to get something rather nice for me. Now, I know what you are thinking. Why not just buy a few of the products that he has, if they are so heavily discounted? Well, frankly, they are just too audiophile... Following is a list of the products with their estimated RRP here in Greece: FM Monoblocks (model?) 293,470.29 FM Preamp (model?) 58,694.06 Eaglestone IVY Speakers 117,388.11 SME 30 TT (no arm) 26,118.86 Forsell Airforce TT 33,749.08 Accuphase A50 amp 19,369.04 Accuphase DC100/DP101 64,563.46 Accuphase 290V Preamp 20,542.92 Thorens TT (model?) 5,282.47 1 Euro is about $1.18 at the moment. As it happens I had never heard of most of this stuff - we are in the silly league here - strictly for people who want to spend money, rather than time, perfecting their systems. Now I want to make it clear here that I am not offering to sell any of this stuff here (no idea about exporting it to the US with import duties and all, not to mention the weight of some of these things!!!) This is just to share a list of ludicrous products that came my way. Were it not for the fact that all of this stuff is, apparently, still in its original boxes and unused I must admit to more than a passing interest in hearing some of it in my house, but, I am going to be strong and resist. Except maybe that Accuphase SACD thingie....That I really do want to hear. It is supposed to be the best of the best and I cant help wondering how it sounds expecially as I was so disapointed with SACD on the Sony NS900... If I do weaken I will let you all know my impressions!

The most obvious choice of "next tier up" cartridge would probably be the Blue Point Special, that is, if you like the sound you have out of the Blue Point. One word of warning on the BPS though. I have found it to be a somewhat precarious cartridge with all its elements exposed and definitely not one for the ham fisted. I am currently on my second BPS as I managed to damage the first. For what it is worth I regard this as one of the best cartridges for Rock that I have ever heard although, IMHO it can be bettered on classical music. Cant comment on Jazz as I dont listen to Jazz all that much.