maxg

"Actually, the point of a driver's distortion increasing with applied power is independent of the amplifier, as long as the amplifier is not clipping. " Absolutely, 100% true - but this is an argument for discretion with the volume control - not choosing a low powered amp. In fact - mentioning the "not clipping" part at the end of the sentence rather puts the nail in their coffin, "But that isn't the point either. The point is that with any given driver the more power you put into it, the more distortion it makes. Of course this is not a "revelation" as you liked to put it. Or, it shouldn't be." Volume control again?? Might be interesting to see some measurements on distortion and reported detectability. Of course - it was seriously in Paul Klipsch's interest to promote the concept (without saying it directly here) that a higher sensitivity speaker, by its nature, is a lower distorting device than a lower sensitivity speaker (and the raison d'etre behind the horn loaded design). "It simply a reason why some people prefer to put fewer watts into their speakers - it reduces distortion. The louder a speaker is played, the more distortion it makes" My 500 wpc Yamaha will play at less than 50 dB - almost exactly the same level as any low power amp.

Thanks for that - although I sense a degree of sarcasm perhaps....but I thought I looked very cool taking a sip of coffee somewhere towards the end of the movie. [:$]

Synergy is 100% of the sound.

Long cords would be a pita - a remote might be better. Not sure you need a level selector either - doesnt your amp/pre-amp have a volume control? Otherwise - sounds like a great toy to play with - although I have a CD from Behringer (I think) that does much the same thing and I can do the track selections with the remote for the CD. Bot quite as flexible as what you are looking for - but a lot cheaper I would guess (actually it was free).

Well, sounds like more money. A stepup device will run how much$$$? Boy, its never easy is it. I know I can use a MC cart. with my Phase Linear preamp, but I was wanting to use the Scott. My HK tt. does have a low mass arm, I believe. I will have to get the manual out and check. So, if it does, what MC cart. would be compatable with it? Any suggestions? If your arm is really low mass then a 103 is unlikely to work well. An alternative might be the Denon DL160 which has a higher output and a slightly higher compliance. You should not need a step-up transformer with this cartridge. The 160 can usually be found slightly cheaper than the 103.

Santa got run over by Grandma. The new hit single by "?" - the artist formerly known as Thebes. "Are house" Craig? "ARE" house????? Some things no spellcheck in the world can help.....

When I bought the amps the maker was kind enough to take me through the whole biasing thing with a little meter and all that. All I did was once every couple of months or so - pull the amps out - open them - insert the prongs in the right place - and bias till the meter was pointing at the same number for each tube (the number he provided). Between biasing sessions - I had one tube go Nova in a big way - amp started screaming and the tube glowed like an exploding star. I killed the power immediately and took the amp back to be checked over - lots of wires had stated to melt inside and were all replaced. This only happened once - with the JJ Electronics KT88. At other times I just worked on the basis that if I could not get a tube to bias properly it was a dead tube - or a dying one (as per the advice the manufacturer gave me). That was a regular occurance with the KT88's but never with the EL34's - although I got power cleaning at about the same time as the EL34's so it is hard to tell. Never ever blown an SS or digital amp - but I did pop a woofer on a Heresy 2 with a Rotel 1080. It was playing very loud at the time.

Not dissimilar problems over here too. Voltage swings from 218 to 234 and frequency from 46 to about 54 that I have seen. I run 2 boxes to fix the problem with the system - one for the voltage swings and one for the frequency. I have no idea which is the more important for most equipment but for the TT the frequency is definitely the key. The nice thing about these digital amps is that they seem to be much more tolerant of voltage and frequency changes than either tubes or SS amps. I run the amp directly from the mains - bypassing both boxes and even when the lights go dim the music quality does not seem to change. When I ran my tube amp direct I used to burn a KT88 or 2 every six months - although the EL34's faired rather better. Not sure if that was due to the make or the power or both. For reference the KT88's were JJ Electronics (Tesla clones) and the EL34's were Electro Harmonix.

" Hey now!!! I think my spelling and grammar abilities have went from like 6th grade to 11th grade around here in the last 5 years!! Next year I get a degree for graduating the klipsch forum school of spelling and grammar! This new spell check software sure helps! Craig-" It is something I feel strangely proud of.....[]

Hey Dean, I built a Hypex based amp myself a few month back. Mine was a rather lesser implementation and I did not like it much. I was supposed to do a review of the thing but in the end the supplier and I agreed it would probably not be a good idea. Of course - this was the first amp I ever built - so it might have been more me than the unit at fault. Be interested in your findings though....

Additionally the Denon is not ideal for a low mass arm as its compliance is too low - better suited to medium to high mass arms.

I am trying to figure this out in my mind as I type - so bare with me. I think the lower source impedance of an MC cartridge is actually a result of its lower moving mass. The source impedance is, I think, the measure of the "work done" to move either the magnet or the coil. Lower mass therefore is the same as lower source impedance - I THINK.... I am going off into a corner to ponder this one - I think it is right but I am not at all sure. If anyone can save me from this deep thought - fire away... Edit - Not happy with the phrase work done - resistance to motion or interia is probably a better way to explain it....still thinking....

Move the magnet or move the coil. For a given output level the magnet is actually lighter than the coil, however, if you are prepared to accept a lower output level then a coil can be made to be lighter than a magnet can. The above is almost entirely the logic behind the mystique. Low ouput MC cartridges are moving a tiny coil through a magnetic field and producing a very small output (typically less than 0.5 mV). An MM cartridge can produce a much higher output - 5 mV for example - or 10 times as much requiring, consequently, less gain from the phono stage. The theory behind LOMC is that the smaller the mass of the thing you are moving - the coil in this case - the better the response of the cartridge to the sudden demands of music reproduction. In other words - you should get more detail out of a LOMC cartridge than is possible with a typical MM, whilst picking up a more musical effect of the music - a win win. That is the theory - and one I happen to agree with in practice - but YMMV and all that.....

audiophileOne entry found for audiophile. Main Entry: au·dio·phile Pronunciation: 'o-dE-O-"fI(-&)l Function: noun : a person who is enthusiastic about high-fidelity sound reproduction From the Merriam Webster on-line dictionary http://www.m-w.com/dictionary/audiophile

"I'm sorry, Max........." No worries - learnt a lot about wooden floors here and I did not know a thing before (all solid floors over here) Who knew there were Pergophiles?

No expertise in this area at all, however - as that never stopped me before: I would guess that there is little to no shielding on the Heresies but there may well be more on the reference. Depending on how close you plan to place the speakers to the TV this may be an issue. Further, if you decide to expand the 2 channel TV experience into a 5 or more channel at any point in the future it will be a lot easier to get a centre channel speaker to match the RF's sonically than the Heresies. Practically speaking, therefore - I think I would lean to the RF's. Soncially? Your choice.

I am currently in the process of employing a semi-naked slave girl to fan me and peel my grapes. [] In the meantime the video has now been put up on various sites and there are over 30 forums discussing it. I understand from the latest figures we have that there have been a total of about 18,000 downloads to date and there is at least one TV station interested in acquiring the rights. I guess this is my 15 minutes of fame [<)] I am available for weddings and Barmitsvah's..... Heaven knows how it will sound from the internet over Meagain's system - the quality of the recording, specifically the sound, is not that great...

"All the money in the world in the hands of an idiot will probably not produce a good musical sounding system. A small budget in the hands of a true audiophile (no apology needed) will probably create something very pleasing and listenable." Help me out here Mark - how does the idiot get all this money in the first place?[] OK - yes - it is possible - but the high end systems that I have come across have generally been assembled by real audiophiles who knew what they were looking for. The end result may not, ultimately, have been that impressive but certainly more than a match for systems 1/10th of the price - as was in my original example. I am sure there are billionaire playboys with mega systems that have been badly mismatched and sound like crud - I just never got invited to their houses.....

"With audio there's no correlation between outlay and sound quality." Cant let that one go uncommented. I could accept the correlation is not always obvious but not that there is no connection. Never yet heard a $2,000 system sound as good as a $20,000 system. Have heard a $5,000 system sound better than a $10,000 to my ears - if not the owner. Certainly a lot of variation around a given price point - but there are limits.

Oh super - almost noone got the point - not quite the writer I thought I was. You can be an audiophile with $500 invested and a lot of time and effort. You can have spent $250,000 on an audio system and not be an audiophile. Neither of these are the point. The point is that on this forum, and others, if you are an audiophile and have spent a considerable sum of money on your setup (say $40,000) you are considered somehow almost an inferior being than someone who has spent, say $2,000 with a lot of time and effort. That this is the case, on an on-line forum where we will presume no-one else has heard the setup is strange to me, as an unapologetic audiophile. Or to put it another way (to be quite clear) you really can be a music loving audiophile and have spent a huge sum ($250,000 from the above) on your system. It does not mean you value the music less, nor the equipment more, in the serving of that musical experience, other than by its capital value.

Ditto! Larry [] Mavis Beacon Typing tutor from way back in the day - wonder if it still exists. Took 2 days to get to 60 wpm or thereabouts. Back when I was working for Price Waterhouse I was faster on the keyboard than any of the secretaries in the office. No idea what my actual speed is now - probably slightly better than that.

RIP indeed - the man that put Ray Charles, Aretha and a whole lot more on the map. Where are the new Ahmet's to take up his mantle? Will be greatly missed.

There is a funny thing about this hobby, certainly as it appears on-line. I don't quite know how to describe it so I have called it the apologetc audiophile. Over the last few weeks I have broadened my on-line forum membership and joined a few new ones. On these new forums, as here, there is more of an emphasis on how little an individual has gotten away with spending rather than on how fabulous his (or her) sonic return might be. It does rather make me wonder if this makes audiophilia unique. Further, there is a huge amount of what can only be refered to as total denial over being an audiophile. It contains within it a partially hidden disdain for the possibility that you are in it for the equipment rather than for the music. This is often caveated with "of course there is nothing wrong with that persay" but that really reads - "what a nutter." How many times do you read in a post - well I am a music lover - not an audiophile really. How much water can that arguement really hold? My father is a music lover - he listens to Classic FM radio almost all day - on crappy radios. He does not post on any forum that discusses systems and no amount of prompting from me is going to make him invest in a decent system. That is a music lover - I would venture to suggest that if you are reading this - then you are an audiophile - like it or not. Compare audiophilia to any other hobby and you get a very interesting picture. I don't know - take model train lovers. They spend countless hours and countless sums building ever more realistic setups. There is no apologizing or hiding the sums and time they have spent. They invest their hours and dollars and achieve their result.The more of either (or both) you spend - the better the result. The same could apply to a stamp collector. Either spend big money on rare stamps - or big time hunting flea markets for a bargain - the end result is the same - more of either/both - better result. Want to extend the model even further - car racing. An old friend once said to me - "How fast you want to go and how much you want to spend are actually the same question." No hiding it. Time and money win the day - every day. When it comes to audiophilia, however, things are perceived a bit differently. I suppose I am as guilty of it as the next man. There is a perceived nobility in spending time fixing your system to get the best sound out of it alongside a perceived inverse snobbery about spending money. Is there really a difference between the 2. Is your time of no value - or lesser value than your dollars? We sit at our keyboards and converse on the subject of our audio systems, changes we might make, purchases we are considering and so on. We attempt to describe the results and we judge on the basis of what exactly? The flowing prose of the writer? Our experience of similar systems? The latter might be fairer but then how many of us hold back from passing judgement on a system of which we really have no experience? So - you spend $x on your system. $x is 5 times more than me - therefore you are an idiot. Your sonic rate of return is crap compared to mine. Is this really the defining factor in our hobby the hobby we often deny having? Of course that denial really helps. I can belittle the lunacy of someone who has spend hundreds of thousands on his system (without having experienced his sound of course) whilst claiming that I am some kind of semi-audiophile that has created amazing sound for a mere $y. For said loony it is obviously no longer about the music - it must be about the equipment - ha ha. At the same time - I can snear comfortably at those that have bought ready systems from Sony, Aiwa and especially Bose. That is not good sound - only I have achieved good sound for the right investment. They don't care about the music either - if they did they would have spend as much as me - or as wisely as me. Theirs is a mere fashion statement or a yielding to the pressures of WAF so we know who wears the trousers in their house!! Equally - there is little or no perceived nobility in buying new other than some lip-service to supporting a given company (Klipsch on this forum - and ocasionally Mark or Craig). Smart people buy used - dummies spend the money on new kit. Of course - no-one is saying that the used market - with its lower prices in not a godsend for many and a source of bargains for all - but does it really carry nobility with it? I have seen reactions all over the net to the ACA video. Almost entirely I see comments like "Makes me feel normal", or, "Look what those loonies have spent." Normal? Is that the aim of audiophilia? Do I need to pass an police line up to stay in the community. Does audiophilia show? Why the need to be normal? Odd, don't you think? Ferrari spends so many million dollars to make a forumla one car go round a lap one tenth of a second faster than it did last year - and no-one bats an eyelid. An audiophile spends $10,000 for a difficult to measure improvement in his sound but unless that money was on a new set of speakers he's a crazy audiophile. Of course - even if he spend that money even on speakers that I dont happen to like - the same conclusion can be drawn. Hell - if he spent it on speakers I dont know from a make I dont know (or heard once at a show and they didn't play nicely to my ears) the same applies. I have spent as much money as I can afford to get as good a sound as I can get. I like to think I have spent wisely. If I had more to spend I would expect to get better sound for my investment. As it is me that is paying and me that listens to that system am I not the only one that can judge the result and the return on my investment? Can another judge who has not even heard the result? I think not - but we all do..... From now on I am going to try to stop apologising for being an audiophile. How about you?

I can hear the wheels turning in your head: Are cables the stuff that would make a great movie starring me? If not a documentary, how about a murder flick, in which the audiophile is murdered by his wife when she finds out he spent 10,000 Euros for a meter of cryogenically treated patch cords. The wife uses the interconnects as a garrote, then reconnects them to the stereo. The unsuspecting police cannot find the murder weapon and the wife smiles as she plays them music on her dead husband's stereo. The same kind of thing as Alfred Hitchcock's Rope. Coffee all over the keyboard!!![C][][Y] Nice one Paul.

Ah - the great cable debate - a timeless classic that can never be resolved. IMHO there are just too many factors going in to the process of listening to music on a system to make any clear cut statements one way or another. I find the sound on my own system changes - to my ears - even when I have made no changes. It could simply be my mood - it could be volume, humidity, temperature (inside, outside, of the equipment etc.), power supply fluctuations (although I have taken steps to minimize that effect) or gremlins, time of day, wax build up in the ear canal, lighting and god only knows what else. I think that, baring there being an actual fault with one cable or another - or extreme oxidation of a cable, cable induced sonic changes are not usually major (not like changing speaker for example). Against the above backdrop assessing relatively small changes can be tricky. On the one hand - insert a high dollar cable into your system - feel proud - mood improves - sound improves - whether or not said cable actually changed anything. On the other hand - listening to music is an emotional experience at some level - testing rather stresses these emotions and may negate them altogether - meaning that a real change cannot be detected because it is being tested. On a personal level I lost a lot of confidence in my own abilities to detect minor changes - or rather lost confidence that I was not detecting changes that had not in fact ocurred when I tested burn in. Long story short - bought a Pioneer 575 to play my SACD collection. Out of the box - the sound sucked in comparison to my existing CD player (playing the CD layer on a hybrid SACD). Decided to test burn in. Played the Pioneer for a week - and only the pioneer - kept notes of the steady perceived sonic improvements. By the end of the week I was not only convinced the new unit had improved and now surpassed my existing CD player I was even worried it outplayed my vinyl rig. I was totally floored when I returned to the original CD player. All the differences I had originally noted were still there - exactly as I had described them a week before - and just as I recalled them. In other words - no demonstrable change. Bottom line - I have no idea anymore - the more I learn the less I know. Goddammed stoopid hobby.