twk123

My Dad took me to a Grateful Dead show when I was about 7 and it was an awesome experience. I am 26 now and got to brag in College that I saw Jerry Garcia play before he died.

You are wise to be skeptical. To me, the way an automatic performs is harder on an engine due to more lugging and rpms that never get high enough compared to a well driven manual transmission paired engine. The human brain with just a little practice is far` superior to an auto trans when it comes to proper gear selection. Not to mention the grin you get on your face when you nail a downshift on an off ramp or into a back road corner. With manual its more than just choosing the gears, its the experience of feeling the rpm's in the shift knob and knowing every spectrum of the engine's power band and the muscle memory of all the shift points. You eventually get to where your car in an extension of your body and thats something I believe you can never get with automatic or flappy paddle gear boxes. There have been a number of times where I avoided a serious wreck by being able to downshift in an instant and control the vehicle instead of just mashing the brakes and hoping for the best.

I am still speechless that Porsche is not making any true manual gearboxes anymore. I want to DRIVE my own car, not flip a paddle and have a computer do it for me. I have a Subaru Impreza 2.5i (non-turbo) with a manual and there is nothing more fun than blasting around on dirt roads and downshifting into corners while drifting sideways.

I am selling this amp because I dont have subs in my car anymore and I would like to get a new HT sub. Here are the specs on it: http://www.rockfordfosgate.com/products/details/t3002 Its in great condition, if you want pics etc let me know. (Its still hooked to my car to demo for CS sale)

I thought you were going to say his name was Joe Rosenthal there for a minute. I'm actually shocked that anybody who was there would own a Japanese car though. My grandfather's best friend was in WWII, fought the Japanese in the Philippines I believe. He HATED them and all things Japanese. He was what people nowadays would call a huge racist towards the Japanese. I doubt he would have owned a Japanese car. My mom's brother was a prisoner of the Japanese in WW II. The horror stories of their cruelty. He escaped to the sea and watched other escapees get eaten by sharks. He was an alcoholic the rest of his life, basically ruined him. You should look up and see what they did to the Chinese. Anyway, I designed 4 electronic modules for the Honda Accord many moons ago. It is built in Marysville, Ohio, and is one of the most "American" cars you can get based on parts content, not brand. I heard that we actually made a deal with Japan after the war that if they didnt make too much noise about being nuked then we would help brush over the atrocities they did in Manchuria, some of which were worse than the Nazis ie vivisection etc.

I thought you were going to say his name was Joe Rosenthal there for a minute. I'm actually shocked that anybody who was there would own a Japanese car though. My grandfather's best friend was in WWII, fought the Japanese in the Philippines I believe. He HATED them and all things Japanese. He was what people nowadays would call a huge racist towards the Japanese. I doubt he would have owned a Japanese car. My Grandpa was in the Navy on a Sub chaser in WWII. He then worked for Chevy his entire career until his retirement. Finally a few years ago we convinced him to by a VW Passat but he would NEVER even consider a Japanese car. Its kind of interesting, he is having some memory problems that come with age but if you ask him the story of how he got home from the Navy after the war he will tell you every detail like it was yesterday.

This thread reminds me of a great lecture from the Rocky Mountain Audio Fest: Personally, I think the enjoyment is two fold. I really love buying equipment on Craigslist as I am on a budget and I love the thrill of seeing a component I want, researching it and negotiating a good price then going out and making the deal happen. So far, I got my KSB 1.1's for free, KG 5.5's for $400, My Denon AVR 3801 for $35 and inherited my Thorens TD-214 turntable for free. Even the setup is enjoyable as you have to measure your room and the speaker angles and get all the calibration correct. Then when you put everything together and it sounds incredible its that much more rewarding. You also understand the mechanics behind the quality and can listen for it when you hear your favorite music or movie. As far as being satisfied, it will probably never happen because there is no end in seeking that perfection in your hobby. There is always a DIY project or equipment upgrade that will make the puzzle fit ever more clearer. Similar to driving, I love Forza 4 and play it all the time. Simply racing stock cars gets old pretty quick but once you start tuning and realizing all the aspects that go into making a 1,050 hp monster controllable around a track you have a better appreciation when you play with your buddies. In your head when playing you intermittently think, 'Ok good thing I set the rear diff to lock at 85% so the back isnt slipping out right now'. Its the same satisfaction with setting up your own sound system. When the flying Ringwraith circles over the dead marshes rattling the room and you can still hear Gollum tweaking out and throwing himself under bushes you remember the hours of subwoofer setup and speaker calibration and it makes that moment even better.

Well first I go to Frostwire (because Limewire got shut down). Then I search for the song I want and have to filter out all the ones that have porn words added as they are usually viruses. To get the most audiophile quality I make sure to only download the 320 kbps. Make sure you also turn off the option for people to download from you because thats how the Feds come after you. Once I have them downloaded I then run a few free trial software virus scans as I probably picked up something anyway. If for whatever reason you cant find it on Frostwire then you download free software that rips Youtube videos to your computer then you simply Youtube search the song and rip it, its important here to ONLY do 720 or 1080 p or the sound quality wont be good. Then you put the music into an itunes folder so you can put it on your ipod. After that you simply plug the headphone jack into your iPod and your receiver and you are good to go...

I could not disagree more... I think he is recognizing that vinyl is in with hipsters. Its not a comment on DACs not being cool! Just to be clear at what age does one become a hipster ? Usually around the age of 19 to 20 or after a good year or two of Liberal Arts classes and gender neutral bathrooms...

I could not disagree more... I think he is recognizing that vinyl is in with hipsters. Its not a comment on DACs not being cool! Haha yes I was just making fun of Hipsters. My Aune T1 DAC and Spotify revolutionized the way I listen to music.

http://www.ksl.com/index.php?nid=218&ad=32651087&cat=&lpid=&search=klipsch&ad_cid=9 It looks like a pair of KG 4.5's. The center looks interesting, do you guys know what model it is?

which is why i don't have hipster friends.. Wow, so you actually dont like sitting around at Starbucks with your ipad while complaining about corporations, meat and how gender differences is actually violence or how you knew all the Indie bands before they were cool and sold out before going on to debate how much hops and fresh chlorophyll you can shove into a microbrew? Nope. As in the case last night, I sit around my 42" fire pit, burning cedar cut down from my property, smoking my pipe, drinking WinCo coffee with fresh cookies made by my wife, and enjoying direct conversation with a few buddies - mostly circling around classic video games of our childhood, the celebration of one guy finding out his unborn child is a girl, and just general decompression from time focused on family, work, and life. Damn that sounds pretty awesome. Ocarina of Time definitely tops my list with Mario Kart 64 and the original HALO coming in as a close second and third. There is nothing like cussing out your buddies in your basement playing Rockets on Boarding Action, good times...

Didn't really think this through well enough when I first replied....... I was worried about timbre matching your center and mains more than anything else. Unless the speaker I am buying is on sale for $20, I am going to listen to it first, especially when it comes to mains. I have a nice center channel. It is a Belle that matches (reasonably close, anyway) my Khorns. However, my Hitachi TV speakers sound almost as good (they actually are good sounding speakers for a TV though) as the Belle just for TV dialogue. When the music comes on though..... it is a different story. My mains need to perform...... the center channel is simply "there." Having said all of that, my ears are much more tuned in to music than some movie or TV show. Listen to the R-15s and see if you like them.....I have never heard them, so I can't give an opinion. What I am saying is that my initial speaker investment would be in the mains I like the best, because TV dialogue and even movies are much less demanding on the sound quality of the speaker. Bryant No to mention that if you have some great main speakers that are well placed you can simply run a "Phantom" center and save some money. The first thing this forum taught me was to turn off my old JBL center speaker that had a horrible timber match to my KG 5.5's and I was amazed how much better movies sound now. The voices even sound like they are coming directly from the TV because the KG's image so well.

which is why i don't have hipster friends.. Wow, so you actually dont like sitting around at Starbucks with your ipad while complaining about corporations, meat and how gender differences is actually violence or how you knew all the Indie bands before they were cool and sold out before going on to debate how much hops and fresh chlorophyll you can shove into a microbrew?

My klipsch do not sound like that (honky in your face), Heritage or otherwise. I see that word "honky" all over the place. I have never thought that any horn loaded driver sounded anything like "honky." I have heard a few sound harsh with some program material. Cheap ones, like some Magnavox used to use, were very harsh. I think someone, somewhere, named the sound of midrange horns "honky" because automobile horns are said to honk, and if you push on one, you are said to be "honking." My Klipshorns, modified Belle, and Heresy IIs do not "honk." Neither did the JBLs of the past, nor do the JBLs of the present. When the High End "Golden Ears" showrooms first started in about 1970, none of the ones I visited had even one horn speaker, and the sales people started using "honky" to describethe absent horn speakers. I wonder if they had heard many. Then and now, there are diffcult recordings out there, and I suspect that the "Golden Ears" preferred cone and dome speakers because they sometimes contributed some "rich sounding" distortion (sidebands) that helped veil the problems of bad recordings, or at least dulled the sharp transients. The very best recordings I've heard sound great on good horns, and blander on many direct radiators. I agree with you on this one. I have an old pair of cheaper 3 way Kenwood speakers that you can blast crappy ipod music through them all day and they bump pretty loud for casual listening. I then got my KG 5.5's and they are so efficient that they shriek horribly with bad digital source material to the point I only really used them for vinyl. I then got a good DAC and music just effortless spills out of the speakers with such holographic imaging you almost want to cry because you miss Bradley Nowell when listening to Sublime. When I tried the same on the old Kenwoods for comparison it sounded like I was dragging the speakers through the music while they struggled along to reproduce the sounds.

I think this is more for people that are just getting in to Vinyl. I know when I brought my Thorens TD-124 home from my Grandpa's basement I looked up all the calibration and my head almost exploded trying to manage the azimuth angles, alignment etc. It almost made me want to just give up on it. Finally I just set the weight, made sure it was level and eyeballed the tonearm height and was able to start listening to and enjoying vinyl. From that starting point you can then obsess over all the small details to squeeze out every bit of SQ you can. Besides, even the best DAC on the market wont impress your Hipster friends...

Thanks Chris. At the end of the day I think I will just put them in the boxes for now. The active bi-amping thing is interesting, it sounds like you really need to commit 100% to it though or its not worthwhile.

I have a pair of KG 5.5's and I am working to get the titanium diaphragms then build new crossovers from Bob Crites kit. Anyway, I love the look of the crossovers and think it would be cool to put them in an external enclosure with a glass front. Is there any sonic advantage to doing this? I heard isolating the crossover from vibration helps with imaging but putting them outside the speaker means more speaker wire etc. However, I heard that replacing the internal speaker wire will change the voice of the speaker as the original design was meant to have a certain wire when they put everything together but I am not too sure about that one. Anyway has anyone else done this and do you think it is a worthwhile project?

Tell me about it, I never get seats that are in the middle so I am not in the 'sweet spot' and the whole time I am fidgeting because I cant hit 'pause' and get a beer from the fridge.

Klipsch speakers are the epitome of 'garbage in garbage out', especially with digital music. I have heard good things about the Teac DACs. I use a similar tube DAC called the Aune T1 and its amazing how 'alive' it makes music from Spotify sound. If I try to listen to music through my iPod jack or even my Xbox I have to turn it off after 3 min due to ear fatigue.

I resealed the fronts with epoxy and put a piece of pink fiberglass in the inside of the box behind the foam and that made them more punchy as they have a large box for not being braced. I am not really sure of what else to do beyond putting in some bracing etc as far as cabinet modifications. Many people have done the Bob Crites titanium diaphragms for the tweeters.

No. The issue is this: The feds will loan anyone whatever price a college charges for tuition, room and board. No limit. So, imagine if you can start a school, get students to come and charge them enormous prices? Eventually, decades of this leads to a glut of underemployed and unemployed students with extremely high debt who will be haunted with it the rest of their lives. I agree 100%. Just like the housing crisis the Feds created this mess. By backing all these loans they have created an artificial demand for education as the true cost is hidden and put off. As the demand increases far beyond the supply the price raises which requires more loans. If they quit the loan programs then enrollments will temporarily drop sharply until Universities are forced to lower their prices to the actual market level. Of course the government doesn't actually have this money so we simply borrow it from China of have the Federal Reserve print it... Its funny how we have a Fascist system that we call Capitalism in an effort to promote Socialism as the supposed solution.

Is this more your style?

HAHAHAHAHA Did anyone else get the OJ Simpson reference at 7:35?

For me it depends on what kind of music I am listening to. If i want a really clean soundstage in which I can 'see' Bradley from Sublime or Frank Sinatra then I will always go with 2 channel direct on my Denon AVR. But if I am listening to electronic music like Tech House etc sometimes I like that enveloping surround sound. I would definately invest in some acoustic treatment. Try taking a bath towell and pin it to your wall on the primary reflections points and it will give you a good idea on what kind of improvement it can make. The best way to find these is to sit in your listening spot and have a buddy hold a small mirror on the wall between you and the speaker. Have him move along the wall until you can see the front of the speaker in the mirror and that is where you will want the dampening. This will take some patience and some beer payment but it really makes a difference. The voices and instruments will be much clearer because you hear only the sound from the speakers. When that sound bounces off the wall and hits you you are hearing both the speaker and the wall but the wall sound took longer to reach your ears so its a faint echo that makes the music sound muddy. You will eventually want to get something better but a towell or a curtain is a good start to see how the mechanics work.