Paducah Home Theater

Ok, my wife is officially mad at me. I'm shocked really. At the end of Enter Sandman when the roadie smashes the hammer and Rider shatters, there is really low material that literally shook the entire house. Dishes in the kitchen were rattling. I jam out to this movie ALL the time, and really push my 18's with it, yet I have never heard this before. I was literally getting a full body massage that felt tingly when it stopped. These things are nuts.

Ok, I got them going. My official opinion is that on two-channel music they are a little boomy compared to what I'm used to and not as tight as I expected but can sound surprisingly good if you cross it over pretty low. I at least thought I had the subs at 80 hz and below coming from the receiver. I still had to use the low pass filter on the subs to kill the boomy high end. They can go pretty low, they sound killer in the next room, haven't figured out the best in-room setup yet. I moved them all around the room, they are super loud in the front corners but in the boomy frequencies. I put them behind my seats and they sound pretty good so far. Once I quit rearranging I'll run Audessey with SubEQ and see if it sounds any better. However, I just realized that after I wrote the above paragraph, my Metallica movie had reverted back to two channel version. I just switched to the 5.1 channel version and HOLY COW. The house is shaking. Jeez. These things can flex. They are sounding SURPRISINGLY nice right now.

Thanks guys, yeah the black one is a tele. The brown one is a hand built custom one-piece made by Rob Wave custom guitars. It's kind of my baby, used top end flamy maple and local western Kentucky walnut.

I've got one going. Unfortunately I'm surprised to learn that apparently you can't use one wireless transmitter going to two subs, they have to be paired up. Turning a second wireless receiver on knocks out the first one. So, I guess you have to run a wireless receiver for every sub unless I'm missing something. Very surprised it works like this. I have to do some reading and maybe order some splitters, I dunno. First impression based on sound is that one is nice for normal volumes, it compliments my RF-7ii's pretty well. They aren't playing at the obnoxious levels that my dual 18's and iNuke 6000 plays at but this is actually much more accurate. No super low movies yet but kick drums are plenty low and effects are rumbly for Metallica. The explosion on the intro to "One" sounds just as low as I've ever experienced it, and one sub is keeping up just fine. Two should be pretty killer, if I can figure out this danged transmitter.

Don't laugh at my massive 47" TV and my THX center stands now. Still haven't figure out how to take a decent picture of a solid black room either, always shows up as 50 shades of gray and everything else is washed out. Still building, stay tuned.

If he's running two channels off the amp as mentioned, I can't imagine that it would hurt anything. A little weird maybe. If side by side, I've never seen two tweeters in two different locations so I can't picture how that would translate but like you said, probably not a huge deal.

I've heard some of them but I don't like them, seems like it typically means "press this button if you want to kill the sparkly highs and introduce a weird echo effect". About the only effect I've heard that I enjoy is the sports setting on Sony receivers. If you're watching a game, it takes the announcer's dialog and plants it on the center channel, and your other speakers are the roar of the crowd with a little echo. It actually sounds very realistic.

Did they even have recordings that were high quality enough to pull this off back in 1980 even if you had perfect equipment? I was 4 years old at the time of this writing so I have no idea. My dad has told me about high speed tape being used around then before. Surely vinyl wouldn't cut it. That was way before CD's.

Of course back in 1980, amplified rock concerts probably sounded horrendous compared to what is possible today, and a live orchestra really was the only way to accurately judge things.

Even though the core concept is true, personally I thought the writer came across as being a pompous ***. I have played my fair share of Beethoven and Bach, plus played several instruments of the brass/string/wind variety, yet I simply don't care for live orchestra music nowadays, and am not about to study up and spend a ton trying to reproduce it, but I am in fact surprised at the amount of people who simply don't seem to know what a good acoustic guitar in a good venue sounds like in person so I have to agree with the general concept. I think the general idea applies to amplified rock music too though. For example, blasting bass guitar riffs through some mushy subs just isn't how it sounds live, you can lose the nuances of a tube amp along with the harmonics. Sending crunchy and blues'ey electric guitar riffs to small bookshelves with no strong low midrange isn't typically how it sounds like live, that stuff is very heavy on the low midrange. Boosting super low frequencies but not 60-100 hz isn't how a good kick drum sounds live, 60 is what thumps your chest. Playing cymbals and hi-hats through speakers with a really bright and airy top end is definitely not what it sounds like live. Running the sound of an aggressive under-saddle ribbon pickup through mild and lazy soft dome tweeters isn't what it sounds like live. People do this all the time though and think it sounds great. That doesn't make it correct. Orchestra halls aren't exactly the only good sounding live venues either. I mean, do you know what things sound like in the balcony of the Ryman Auditorium? I do, it's awesome. Why is reproducing the unamplified sound of an orchestra hall the only goal worthy of their writing? I want to reproduce how Rodrigo y Gabriela sounded at the Ryman. Why exactly does that make me unworthy of buying their magazine? Ironically, if we set our system up so that it sounds exactly like what a good rock band in a good venue sounds like live, these guys would dismiss us as a lost cause seeking a fantasy-fulfilment system. Perhaps instead of isolating and shaming people with a passive-aggressive superiority complex'ish tone while actively persuading people to cancel their subscription if they don't fit in to the cool kids club, they could realize that different people like different sounds with different music, and try to help people be HAPPY, not be exactly like the writers as if they joined an exclusive club, which actually sounds more like a cult that has strict rules.

Last night I watched "12 years a slave". I wasn't exactly moved. It may be cool as a documentary if I knew it was historically accurate, but as an embellished hollywood version of a true story I thought it fell pretty flat. There was no climax or revenge elements, nothing shocking other than people getting whipped, some of the acting and most of the vocabulary was unrealistic, just didn't enjoy it much. Truly don't understand the awards from a film perspective, only based on the subject matter, which is no reason to give out the awards that it received in my opinion.

Hell I easily bottom out both Ultimax 18's of mine in a super nasty way with the intro of Transformers 4. I can also do it when Lady Justice gets built in the Metallica movie. The dumbest sub mix I've heard in awhile is the latest 300 movie. There's all kinds of sub material, during stupid knife fights. The director was apparently like, oh, somebody got stabbed... time to send a few thousand watts to the subs for the effect, then repeat it a few seconds later. Really stupid sounding, although I didn't notice any damaging subsonic stuff.

True but it depends on the material. I watched 7 years a slave last night. I haven't done the fan mod on my iNuke so it got annoying due to the quietness and I turned it off. The bass coming out of the RF-7ii's at that point was just as good or possibly better than some systems with a small sub that I've heard. I was plenty happy with the sound given the material, and I'm a bass-head.

Yeah some of the third party tests do kind of deflate these figures. I know the KL-650's were measured at 92 something which is way lower than specs so this isn't new news to me. However I have both THX and RF-7ii's and feel the RF-7ii's are way louder than the THX stuff. Perhaps it is the taller height or the extended bass response, but whatever it is, the same exact settings on my receiver is WAY louder on the RF-7ii's. -15 db used to be casual listening levels for a kids movie. I can't say that this is the case anymore.I watched "7 years a slave" last night at -30 db and the dialogue was clear as a bell. I couldn't really do that before, I'd have to crank it up more. -15 db on the metallica movie is a world of difference.

Ford's don't need to be replaced just because you've had it long enough for the tires to get a little bald, that would be Chevy.

BF Goodrich all terrain's are extremely popular for these trucks. I have an 04 F-150 and have a set. They are a good all around tire. Anything more aggressive and it would be a noisy mud tire, anything less would be a slick street tire. I think it's a good compromise. They're pricey though, ain't no getting them for $150 a tire, more like over twice that. I have the BFG mud terrain's on my jeep and like them better but they are pretty noisy and have more vibrations. AT's are very smooth and look good. I've heard of guys getting 80,000 miles on them if you rotate them often and keep an eye on the tire pressure.

At least Dre made big headphones cool though. Klipsch, Bose, and whoever else is making the things should probably thank this guy. Before "Beats" you'd never consider these things to be a hip fashion statement in the younger crowd, but now there is so much at stake that simply wearing the wrong headphones in the NFL will get you a 10 grand fine. It's a huge market now, all due to Dr. Dre, all driven by fashion.

Nope. Although not exactly the case, you can think of the "Reference" line as Icon's with colored woofers. You can find them at big box stores who just swapped them for their Icon line. The non-Magnolia Best Buy stores come to mind, non-Magnolia meaning they're not allowed to carry the good stuff like a Magnolia store would. The Reference II line has nicer crossovers, has titanium instead of aluminum tweeters, and they are typically heavier which is nearly always a good sign when comparing apples to apples. The crossovers and especially tweeters are worth getting the Reference II's though. I've heard these in person, the tweeter is much harsher and does not blend in with the woofer very well comparatively. Stick with Reference II.

That's interesting. I compete in 3-gun and USPSA competitions, most all my social media feeds are just non-stop full of guns, I have several friends on the pro tours so it's pretty common. I don't think anything of it whatsoever. The guys who make me nervous are definitely NOT the ones who are open about their firearm hobbies. It's the quiet guys who are awkward with girls, have horrible handwriting, and draw fantasy scenes at inappropriate times that scare me.

I witnessed the tail end of this same exact thing back in 1990 while I was a freshman in high school. I was down in Key West and in front of the Margaritaville Cafe, (which was MUCH different back then but that's another story) there was two Hispanic guys from rival gangs that met and instantly got into a scuffle. One punch and one guy fell backwards, hitting the base of his head on the edge of a curve. They flew him to a hospital in Miami and he died a couple days later. As for bullying in general, in that same year a guy on my football team thought he would pick on me a little. Punched me in the face right in the middle of class while sitting at our desks waiting for the . I told him to meet me outside and got up and left. I went out and waited for him. He came out of the door and instantly charged me. A right haymaker stopped him in his tracks. I went over to him and hit him a couple more times, spinning him up against a brick wall, in which I grabbed the hair on the back of his head and slammed his face up against the wall several times. Blood was friggin everywhere, all he could do was hold his face and walk around in a disoriented state, until a teacher escorted him away. Looking back, I think that moment ruined his life, he never was the same after that, turned into a hermit of sorts, really sad looking. About a year later I witnessed an extremely shy classmate get picked on, he kept trying to brush it off but it came to a head one day and he lit in to the guy, knocked him flat on the ground, hard enough that all he could do was kind of roll over and get on all fours like on his knees and hands, couldn't get up any further. Yet, he was still running his mouth as my friend walked away. He had had enough, and took off running from about 10 yards away and kicked the guy's face like it was a football. It was nuts. Too much Modern Warfare playing I guess. The most violent game we had back then was the original Super Mario Brothers so I have a hard time blaming any fist fights on games.

My opinion on the RF-7ii's needing an amp is that generally speaking, you don't if you are not interested in hearing loss. Of course my amp isn't calibrated yet but the night before last I watched the Metallica movie at -15 db and couldn't hear worth a crap all day yesterday, it was shaking and reverberating through the whole house even though I was running the same subs, and the ambient sound even past multiple closed solid core doors sounded just like a concert, it was nuts. Last night I watched "3 days to kill" at -25 db on a crappy Netflix mix and it was more than enough. -35 db was plenty comfortable. That's running them full range too. These things are WAY more sensitive than usual, so saying you need more power than usual to run them doesn't make a heck of a lot of sense to me. Whether or not you need an amp, at least assuming you have a high quality receiver, shouldn't suddenly lean towards the amp realm just because somebody gets RF-7ii's, if anything you need less power to achieve the same output. It has more to do with how hard you run things, how big your listening room is, whether you are interested in a cooler running receiver and less noise, things like that. If you're worried about headroom... THX reference level is 85 db with 20 db of head room which is 105 db on the upper end. A single RF-7ii is rated to achieve within 1 db of this with only two watts. I kind of believe it too. Normal speakers are often around 89-90 db, these are rated at 101. Of course that diminishes the further you get away plus other variables, but once again that's dependent on how your run it and how far away you are. Personally speaking, I like to run stuff hard yet I cannot handle the output of my Marantz SR-7009 into RF-7ii's even running full range. I may get a separate amp for my LCR's but that would only be due to taking advantage of Atmos, not because my receiver can't push these things hard enough. I can easily get into the extreme overkill realm with my Marantz. If I cut them off at 80 hz I can even run things significantly harder. The idea that this still isn't enough for fairly close range listening is nuts in my opinion. There are other reasons to get an external amp but the idea that a quality receiver can't drive RF-7ii's hard enough for fairly close distances isn't one of them.

As I mentioned in another thread, gunshots on "3 days to kill" was overly exaggerated last night but it could have been the mix due to hearing pistol shots through my subs which is kind of a ridiculous idea. I have rf-7ii's pretty close to the wall and running full range.

Watched "3 days to kill" last night with them set up like this. A few things did stand out as being exaggerated. Mostly gunshots. There was this very low tone that gunshots put off that shouldn't be there. It could have been the mix though, as much of it was also coming through my subs.

So basically if you get a blu-ray concert movie for example and listen to the two channel version, sub content is there, but it is weak. If you watch the same concert on Netflix, which is supposed to be 5.1, sub content is there but it is weak. Get the same concert blu-ray but listen to the 5.1 surround version and BLAM! All kinds of sub content. Why is this? Why is the NetFlix version weaker, and why doesn't stuff below 80 hz get picked up and sent to the sub in a strong manner on the two channel version?