Colin

refurbished is good, so are sub-woofers, which use most of the power

certainly interested in hearing your impression Ear, I mean SirEar!

I wonder what low cost home theater equipment can be purchased from India?

Yes, oldtimer, I did not want this thread to "degenerate through a gradual change" to a discussion of globalization and monetarism. I want names of equipment made in India. Ancient structures were indeed built with cheap labor. And yes, 4tay (cute moniker), I am sure that sales since time external uses unscupulous tactics. "For you only, the special price on this jawbone of an *** is only..."

I do not want this thread to devolve into a discussion of globalization and monetarism, but this process of strong currency buying cheap labor and natural resources will never exhaust itself. Roman Senators did not build the roads than lasted for a thousand years; cheap, imported foreign labor did. There will never be balance. Nature abhors vacuums and balance. Natural systems are always in flux. Without imbalance, there is no need for negotiations between capital and labor. Big business will always deploy labor. As long as the US dollar is more valuable than any other currency, there will always be people working cheaper. There will never be a universal currency either! In fact, the trend is towards more, not less, global currencies. One tribe's salt will always have more value than another's; without different salts, tribes would invent differences to create a competitive trade advantage.

Indian Stereo Tube Amps Perhaps as much as 40% of American goods come from the giant Asian tiger, China. Their group dictatorship resembles fascism more than Marx’s communal ideal of a classless, stateless and oppression-free society, where decisions on what to produce and what policies to pursue are made democratically, (compare http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fascism to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communism). Despite being a repressive regime, China may be capitalism’s worst nightmare: a benevolently directed economy! Therefore, I wonder what low cost home theater equipment can be purchased from the world’s largest democracy, India? India Rupees (INR) to Yuan Renminbi (CNY) Exchange Rate Rs1 = Yuan 0.1519 Yuan1 = Rs 6.5824

Worth repeating Drawbacks Of Conventional Direct Radiator Loudspeaker Designs While horns offer a dramatic increase in dynamic capability, image size, and presence, with harmonic distortion less than one quarter of the value found in audiophile direct radiator systems, most direct radiators severely compress dynamic contrasts and reduce image size. In addition, many direct radiator designs suffer from dynamic compression coloration, where the highs and lows are rolled off at high SPL's, resulting in a perceived midrange boost. Many direct radiator designs are not efficient enough to be used with low-powered single-ended triodes, and even with high-wattage and high-current amplification, these loudspeakers sound polite and uninvolving compared to high efficiency loudspeakers. Single-ended tube amplifiers need not apply, for obvious reasons (low wattage). http://www.enjoythemusic.com/Magazine/manufacture/zingali.htm

Once the highs and lows have been separated in this fashion, the strong current pulses and surges that a woofer demands when reproducing bass or drums will not interact with the delicate sounds of a flute or cymbal. The magnetic field of the low frequency signals cannot modulate or interfere with the highs, and to a lesser extent, the reverse is true. http://forums.klipsch.com/forums/p/121216/1222097.aspx#1222097 lost of posts on this subject

also 28 degrees north, 82 degrees west, 117 ft elevation

Tampa, FL 33637

sounds like fun, I am in IF: Herb K wants to car pool up from FL I can crash on couch or air mattress

http://www.enjoythemusic.com/Magazine/equipment/0105/standbyme.htm Loudspeaker stands should be as solid as possible, in order to communicate more of the music and imaging. The proper stand, mounting and use of pads or spikes, may make as much difference to the sound of your dream movie and music system as the proper cables. Stands should also look good, ideally contributing to the powerful appearance of your majestic home movie and music reproduction system, without calling undue attention to themselves. Yet, they should not lighten the wallet at the expense of other essential gadgets or goodies. some ideas...

great list here: http://insidemovies.moviefone.com/2007/09/05/best-sex-scenes/

BTW, "District 9" is a much better movie than Best Picture award winner "Hurt Locker"

Tube pre and power amps will definitely give you a "lush, rich, less fatiguing" sound without losing the sense of "being there" that you get from properly positioned big ole horns. I second what Mark Deneen said. First choice would be Juicy Music pre-amp with NOSvalves VRD amps, but also reviewed ASL and Cayin integrated tube amps on big ole horns and loved them.

sounds good, plenty of Klipsch lovers in ARK, except i don't know what"they take take the signiture of the main power amp for a seamless transition to accurate, fast, deep bass" means...

I measured a dozen speaker positions once (in my youth!) and found that three to four feet from the front AND side walls was optimum placement for most speakers to maximise imaging, soundstage and bass response.

First and foremost, Macs are quality pre and power amps. Second, I am in the group that thinks the power amp makes more of a difference to the sound, especially with their wonderful qualities, and weaknesses, than pre amps. One reason why power tube amps make so much of a difference is because of their high current, but low wattage, pleasant even order distortion, but poor impedance control of the woofer. Pre amps however, can really soften up the hard jitter of disc players. The technical issues with tubes are many, but mainly NEVER work on a tube amp when it is plugged in, since the experience can be SHOCKING. VRDs are excellent tube amps for big ole horns. I ran classic Dynaco ST-70s and SET amps on Cornwalls, LaScalas and Khorns for decades. I think tube amps need deep solid state sub-woofers to help them out. You really need to hear some tube amps for yourself. You can run a SET amp with your Mac as a pre and since the Mac is a great piece of equipment, why not start there? You might be able to get a vintage integrated tube amp, like the kind NOSvalves.com refurbishes (like Dynaco ST 70s, see his order list), have him refurbish it (the old units all need it), use it and resell it at no cost if you don’t like it. For the money, the mid and high end sound of a refurbished tube amp will rival some of the best amps you can hear on ultra-efficient horns. Not 100% solid-state accurate. No. But musical and enjoyable forever.

Movie of the year? NOT No Apocolypse Now, or Platoon or even Saints & Soldiers Good war movie, like many others.

Combined with wonderful music reproduction and big screen TVs, home theaters systems provide some truly awesome entertainment. I started threads about war and football movies. Those are irrelevant compared to what really excites, moves and makes most men feel alive – sex! Without simply pandering to our prurient interests with mere nudity and explicit sex, the medium has the power to tap our emotional core with beautiful women, erotic settings and potent dialogue and plots. So guys, let’s see how far we can take this thread before our mommy moderator shuts us down. 1. What gentlemen are the most sensuous, erotic, beautifully crafted movies you have ever seen? 2. What are the sexy movies you would share with a lover? 3. What movies are so good that the two of you could watch again and again? Recommendations must meet all three criteria above. Please note what makes them so special (certainly if it has a good soundtrack). I’ll start… 1. Carl Zhang’s Lovers (2008) is a touching, erotic tale of a young French girl taking on a rich Asian man as a lover. Set against the beautiful, glowing backdrop of modern Shanghai, 'Lovers' explores the subjects of love lost and found, regret, and the fragility of second chances. The camera never looks away from their passionate explorations. 2. The amazing Unbearable Lightness of Being shows the handsome Daniel Day Lewis (Last of the Mohicans, There will be Blood) as a woman chasing doctor with two loves. One is the beguiling Juliette Binoche (the endearing Chocolat, with Johnny Depp), the other is the sexy, artistic free spirit Lena Olin (also Chocolat). Their love making is touching and sexy. The situation is brashly adult and realistic. 3. Definitely Maggie Gyllenhaal bending over the desk to receive spankings from uptight lawyer James Spader in the shocking Secretary (2002). So hot. 4. Of course, Chocolat. Not simply because it has Johnny Depp, Juliette Binoche and Lena Olin, all that is certainly reason enough, but because without a lot of nudity or sex, as in the two above, Chocolat weaves a charming tale of magical love certain to move and inspire the fairer sex, and perhaps a few skeptical tweaking audiophiles as well. 5. Yes, Liv Tyler’s topless nudity in Stealing Beauty (1996) is an attention grabbing scene that is the hallmark of this sensuous film. But its tale of a young girl exploring the meaning of love and relationships, with yet another powerful performance from Jeremy Irons (Lolita, Merchant of Venice), is what puts this move over the top. 6. It is absolutely Liv Tyler’s brash seductress (three men over the legal limit) in One Night at McCool’s that makes the movie so sexy. Anybody watching this would run away with her. 7. The soft porn classic Emmanuelle (1974) with Sylvia Kristel may seem tired now, but the steamy Asian setting makes this an erotic temptation. 8. Kevin Spacey’s American Beauty because of the wonderful contrasts between his middle age male attraction to a teenage girl (the sexy Mena Suvari), Annette Benning’s sexual obsession with a successful salesman, and the tender explorations of their teenage daughter (Thora Birch) make one want to enjoy the precious few seconds we have in this life. 9. Beowolf (2007) because all though she is nothing but animated, god-like monster, the explicit nudity of Angelina Jolie’s character provides the fundamental driving force behind this ancient plot: mere mortals are continually tempted by her overt sexuality. 10. Guys, I am going to go out on a limb here and add Ang Lee’s triple Oscar winner, Brokeback Mountain, because if you can get past the two guys kissing, Annie Proulx’s short story about a forbidden and secretive relationship between two cowboys is one of the best love stories ever told! The movie proves that love is indeed a powerful force of nature. You might not cry watching this move, but your woman will and you will be a better man for watching it with her. 11. The compelling sexual attraction between Nastassja Kinski and Malcolm McDowell in the 1982’s Cat People will have you giving in to your animal desires. I wanted to add Jack Nicholson and Jessica Lange in the 1980 remake of The Postman Always Rings Twice because their flour covered lovemaking on the kitchen table is so hot (not explicit, but he touches her down there)! Then I considered the sexual undertones replete in her King Kong, but that movie doesn’t fit the three criteria above. I can’t add Lolita, The Ice Storm or Body Heat because all though those movies are sexy, they simply use sex as a plot device (mmm, so does Beowolf), not as a sensual element of the story. The end result is that you don’t feel sexy or adventurous after watching it (not like Secretary)!

go, by all means, go

At first I was offended that DrWho would say “speakers are by far the weakest link in terms of accuracy,” since I always thought of them as the only bargain in audio. 1. But let’s forget musical tastes and room size for the moment. Consider budget. Walk into any big box retail store selling home theater with $500 and what can you buy? Harmon Kardon is pretty accurate with sufficient power and features. Certainly enough to get big ole horns to get up and dance, and most bass reflex cone boxes too. In fact, there are plenty of modest sounding receivers in that price range to choose from. Leave the box store and you have a lot more choices. I am a big proponent of refurbished, vintage integrated tube amps (VITA), such as those NOSvalves.com refurbishes, with high efficient speakers. To me, this is a wonderful bargain in sound quality. Between low cost chip amps like Sonic and Trends, vintage solid-state receivers (like Harmon Kardon twin transformers) and VITA, the tweaking audiophile can actually get a lot of relatively good sound for a modest investment. Low cost chip amps, vintage and new solid-state receivers provide very good measured accuracy within this limited budget. 2. Now, let’s buy some speakers for the same price. A wonderful single driver speaker, like http://www.omegaloudspeakers.com/products/ however is way out of this budget. There are even good sounding Klipsch Reference speakers in that price range. Not perfect, no. But awfully good sounding nonetheless. According to Klipsch engineers, one of the highest values in their line-up is the RF-82. The RF-82 covers most of the music spectrum (33Hz-23kHz) within a very accurate +/-3dB! Yet a pair of them costs twice this $500 budget. The RF-82 provides very good measured accuracy, but at a cost of twice this limited budget. My point is that to get good quality sound on a tight budget, you have spend about twice as much on speakers as you would on electronics. 3. Therefore, in dollar terms, the good Dr is right; speakers are indeed weaker links than electronics. Because speakers are weaker links (in sheer dollar terms) in the audio chain, improvements to them are relatively more important than improvements in electronics. The extra dollar spent on speakers makes more of an improvement than the extra dollar spent on electronics (see Jim Smith seminar at AXPONA). The diminishing marginal utility for electronics is greater than speakers. The original question In other words.... if you could only make ONE change, would you prefer to have your Khorns mated with a 'decent' preamp/amp or would you rather have your smaller speakers mated with a fantastic preamp/amp? Therefore, to answer the original question: 1. I compared big ole horns with cheap electronics and cheap boom box speakers with very good electronics (hence my link to my “Stereos, As They Relate to Indoor Sport” article). “I will say that both combinations impressed me.” 2. I have smaller speakers (Altec Lansing Ones with new 8” mid-range woofers). I have heard them on incredible amplifiers (see Delta Studio and Pass X250). I have also heard both my Cornwalls and Khorns on mediocre equipment (see nOrh’s SE9). Even with superb electronics, the Altecs cannot do what the big ole horns do. So I feel about my beloved Khorns the way Charlton Heston felt about his guns: you can take them “From my cold, dead hands!” Even with a low cost chip amp or vintage $5 Harmon Kardon 330B receiver, the Khorns offer wide soundstage, sharp, detailed, undistorted, crisp, clean, accurate, quick, dynamic, wide frequency response, delicate highs, ringing metal instruments, musical, responsive, detailed, deep and smooth sound.

I honk away all the time Don, but people get mad at me and never once ask if I like horns! I do get through traffic quicker though. And once I was forced to go to the hospital with a police escort because he believed I really did need an appendectomy!

this thread needs some pictures! []

musical notes have harmonics that extend above and below the intial note: Our Reviewing Standards By Editor Steven R. Rochlin It is not easy being an equipment reviewer. All the different possibilities each reviewer can use to optimize their setup are mind boggling! The difference between a product being rated as "good" to being rated as "great" could all boil down to simply changing one interconnect! This is just one of the many pitfalls of being a professional reviewer. Another is that there really is no set standards. No guidelines in what one means by "a deep soundstage" or "an expansive sound". Well now there is! The one thing no one ever seems to have tried is standardizing the "audiophile measurement lingo". Putting a quantitative result to a subjective measurement. Therefore Enjoy the Music.com is now the very first subjective magazine to have all of its reviewers use a "standardized form". This form is plainly explained below. What you are about to read is exactly the same as what every Enjoy the Music.com reviewers uses to judge a product within a given system. There is no special lingo, he-man secret handshakes, or secret "read between the lines" underground language that was known only to the now extinct Audiophili-asaurous'. We are breaking free from the "old school" and have found what we feel is a better way. As the Big Book (by my friend Bill W.) says "If we are painstaking about this phase of our development, we will be amazed before we are half way through. We are going to know a new freedom and a new happiness." As i was only half way through this new subjective measurement idea, it was painfully obvious how overdue it truly was. Every product will be rated by a points system. Each product will be analyzed in various ways such as stage width, depth, tonal accuracy, spectral balance, imaging, etc. In this way you, the readership, can plainly see a measured subjective in which you can compare one product to another. Of course each reviewer will have her or his own base-line in which to begin. Each category will have a point value of 1 to 100 with 50 being a good measurement. Consider most good high-end gear a 70 while the truly exceptional pieces get a rating of 90 or above. Now let us begin learning more specifics about this new system shall we. The Judging System First we will discuss what i feel is the most important issue of all. That being tonal (and harmonic) balance and accuracy. If a reproduced trumpet does not have the same tonality and harmonic structure as a real one, then who cares if it is precisely imaged or how deep it is within the soundscape? It still does not sound close to that of a real trumpet. Once overall tonality is surmised we can break down the frequency range into sections. Sub-bass being from 10Hz to 60Hz (dark blue), midbass as 60Hz to 200Hz (lighter blue), midrange as 200Hz to 3,000Hz (green, with middle "C" being orange), and high-frequencies as 3,000Hz on up (red). As you can see from the above piano, most musical notes are in the midrange (green). This is also true with the acoustic music we hear. Generally, most of it is reproduced by the driver(s) that cover from 200Hz to 3000Hz. Since no natural instrument i know of produces a "pure" tone, we also have an instrument's timbre to consider. For instance, a trumpet may be playing a middle "C", yet we also hear the higher and lower frequency tones added into the pure tone such as those from the trumpet's brass bell. This is what we call timbre and also referred to as the harmonics of an instrument. http://www.enjoythemusic.com/magazine/judging/