mustang guy

Sound like some sound advice. What about the zip cord was inferior? Copper quantity low, oxidization?? BTW, have heard about the Monster insulation before. []

A friend of my dad returned home one night to find one of his k-horns in the driveway, which was the point at which the potential thieves gave up. Hillarious!

Michael, Do you have any plans for a future subwoofer project? I am interested in the folded horn technology, and am considering starting from scratch instead of buying kits and designs. I think it would be awesome to build a sub inside an unexpected container, like a sofa or something. That would be completely NUTZO!

They are labeled, they are just not lined up. Proportional font. [:S]

http://www.rocketsciencecanada.com/rocketsciencecanada/Sound/Horns/Tool_ExponentialCalculator.asp Indeed I do like it! Would be uber-kewl if that data could be plotted and scaled to make a visual of the resulting horn. Nothing that can't be done on graph paper or in AutoCad, but it would be much faster. Thanks SF

Full band simply means don't use any frequency cutoffs, or crossovers. In essence it means you have speakers that are big enough to reproduce any sound very well. Let me explain. When you set your speaker config at 80Hz for the center speaker for instance, you are telling the receiver not to send sounds that are below 80Hz in frequency. 80 Hz means 80 vibrations per second, which is low tone. The lower the number the lower the tone. When you see a number with kHz, it means kilohertz, which is thousands. 1.5 kHz means 1,500 Hz. Your ear can hear somewhere between 20Hz at the low end and 20kHz at the high end. Even though you do have pretty big speakers in the Left and Right, you should not set them as full band, because you are using a subwoofer. It can reproduce low notes far better than the L/R speakers, so let it do what it is good at. When you take away the real low work from the woofers in the speakers, it cleans up their sound. They are not 'muddy' when you let them reproduce what they like. See?

You have gone to a great deal of trouble to set the stage for a world premier system, and you are skimping on the most important component? The receiver you want would be in the $750-900 range. I would recommend the Marantz SR5005.

And being that close, and you with your loud music, they probably know you by first name. Right? []

There is nothing to be scared of here. I have a total of 3 Ohkyo (Integra) receivers in operation right now. Set your speakers distances using a tape measure, set your LFE at 80 like Willand said in the first suggestion, set your high pass cutoffs like Willand said at first, then set your levels. Once you have done all that, get a Blu Ray, not a DVD, not a CD, not Pandora or any computer, and see how it sounds. Blu Ray will consistently be better sounding than any other source easily available to you. If you would like a suggestion of a great Blu Ray with great LFE, try the new Tron movie. While watching the movie, pause from time to time and make a change and see if it improves of worstens it. By the end of the movie, you will have it dialed in.

I have been trying to understand the theory around horn speaker effectiveness, and I found an illustration that was made in 1926 that may have given me an epiphany. Look at this: Horn length is proportional to the wave length. Wave length at a certain frequency is simply the speed of sound divided by the frequency. For example, the wave length of 50 Hz is calculated by the speed of sound (1,126 fps) divided by 50, which equals 22.5'. Look at the 1926 drawing above. The wavelength is 6' there. Take the speed of sound (1,126 fps) and divide by 6, and you have 187 Hz. At 1/2 way, the fundamental wave and the harmonic waves all touch like at the beginning and at the end. In this drawing, a tone of 187 Hz coming out of a horn, would suffer no loss at 0', 3', and at 6'. The 1 1/2' horn shows the fundamental wave not ligning up with the harmonics. That means a 1/4 horn is not as good as a 1/2 length horn for a specific frequency. Here's the thing I wonder. If I want to tune a horn for 18 Hz, should the length be exactly 31' 3"? Please correct anything I said that was wrong!!! And... please please please keep it simple!! Thank you very much.

Michael Hurd's sub DIY:

What about this monster from Danley? I have been considering it for my 50,000 sf application.

I had a pair of JBL J620M bookshelf speakers with rotted foams. I went onling to parts express and got a pair of drivers, and they sound fine. I kept the old drivers in case I ever feel like re-foaming them, but I doubt I will..

Here is one at Home Depot with a CAT pump $599: http://www.homedepot.com/Outdoors-Outdoor-Power-Equipment-Pressure-Washers-Professional-Pressure-Washers/h_d1/N-5yc1vZbxd1/R-202201149/h_d2/ProductDisplay?langId=-1&storeId=10051&catalogId=10053 A $999 one with a CAT pump: http://www.homedepot.com/Outdoors-Outdoor-Power-Equipment-Pressure-Washers-Professional-Pressure-Washers/h_d1/N-5yc1vZbxd1/R-202560119/h_d2/ProductDisplay?langId=-1&storeId=10051&catalogId=10053

I have owned many pressure washers. Go find a pressure washer with a CAT brand pump. Those are the same pumps used in car washes and industrial solutions. The pump is everything in a pressure washer!

Looks like they got pissed at JL for steeling thier thunder with the Gotham, MSRP $12,000. I believe this speaker is built using two of the automotive 13W7AE subwoofer drivers which MSRP for $1200 each. Weight, 360 lbs!

There are some adhesives that let go and leave no residue, like a post-it note but stronger. If you could get something stick with something like that, and pull it out, would that work?

No I didn't think you were scolding, and I didn't mean for it to sound like I was either. OK to make sure I have it right, I always thought the main amp main breaker was for everything under it, both phases ? I know all the little breakers can add up to way more than the main, but they are all never even close to full capacity which I thought was 200 amps. That's how I thought it worked anyway ? You are right, the main breaker is for everything after it. Each phase you are referring to is the standard household 120 volts AC. You have it right. The reason the main breaker contains both legs or phase is because if one of the them gets tripped both legs get shut down so as not to leave any 240 volt appliances with half power. The total available power coming out of a 200 AMP 2 phase main breaker is 400 amps of 120 volt AC, or 400 X 120 = 48,000 watts. One interesting thing I have run across is when I needed to have a large building wired. It was 1,000 ft long, so the electrician used two transformers. The first one stepped up the voltage, the next one dropped it back down to 3 phase 120V. This allowed him to use a smaller wire. It was then I discovered that the power companies do this so they don't have to have wires 3 feet across to carry power. I think the wire at the top of the poles is 21,000 volts AC. The amps are what fries the wire, not the volts. That is why battery cables have to be thick, and tazer wires are thin...

Not really, if you look at the top it has a 200 amp main breaker, it all shuts down at 200 amps. The two "legs" are each just a different phase, a 220 breaker takes one from each side and single circuits use either side. I'll state it differently. You have access in your home to 400 amps of 120 volt alternating current. If you have 240 volt electrical appliances, they reduce the available current by double what the 120 volt does. [] We both know this, I was only pointing out that I wasn't confused as you stated. Sorry if it sounded as though I was scolding. [^o)]

Here are all the amps they have made over the years. Hope it helps... http://www.mcintoshaudio.com/history.htm I have also heard rants about the old Marantz 8B's with these speakers. Lastly, a review of tube amps at another site Tube amp reviews....

The MSRP on the sub is $449. Positioning of a sub is everything. Got it in a corner? What direction is it facing? Also, where is your LFE set on that Onkyo? Are you setting high pass on the RF-82's? One last thing, the phase on the sub can be changed to help keep the RF-82's bass from canceling out some of the sub's bass. You might want to post a question about the overall sound on the technical forum. The people who hover there can help you get the sound you desire.

They are late 80's I think. I have a pair with AL-3 I just drove 12 hour round trip and paid $1100 for. I have 2 other pairs with freshly recapped AA crossovers, and the AL-3's sound better. Where I live, if they are birch, and have a nice finish and sound good, they should be worth 1000-1200 for the pair in my opinion. If they are beat up but sound good, 800-1000. If they need work, do the math.

Are you refering to the windings in the voice coil? Good point. Well, you have posed an interesting question. Question 1: Why doesn't the high wattage fry the tiny wire in a voice coil, or in any electric motor, alternator or generator? Frankly, I haven't a clue! I have heard about the damping factor of 20 or more before. Question 2: Should be concerned with overall damping factors rather than simply the right size wire? Question 3: Does bigger wire offer less resistance and therefore higher damping factor?

That table doesn't account for wattage. Wires have maximum amount of heat they can dissipate. For instance: there is never a case where a 22 guage wire should be used for a 1,000 watt sub. The chart says you can run 12 feet at 8 ohm to any speaker from any amplifier. When you plug in those numbers on the wire size calculator, 1000, 12, 22, 8, the calculator say Use a larger wire or a shorter length of wire. If you continue to change the wire to larger size, it eventually tells you OK at 14 guage. IMO, there should be 4 seperate charts, a 2,4 6 and 8 ohm, with a verticle axis of watt ranges (eg. 100-120 watts), and the horizontal for run lengths ( eg. 50'). Even then, you are likely overengineering wire decisions.

Basically you're comparing a middle of the road Reference system with a Velo sub to an upper Heritage line with Danley. Hardly a fair fight. You'd be surprised how well the Reference 7's compare to the larger Heritage models (especially with the same sub in both systems). EDIT, I guess I don't understand what you had after re-reading. An RF-62 system or a THX system? I won't let trag toot his own horn. Read this thread if you want to know the exhausting measures he went to to develop his system. http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=876791