LesHalles

OK, thanks for the advice. I am giving up on the ceramic isolator idea. It would make my apartment look like a telephone pole anyway. A related question is that I have an extra decent stereo amp lying around. I have one set of speakers in a second room. Is it better to send the line-level signal over decent interconnects to other room and use the amp with very short speaker cables, or use long speaker cables and use the main receiver's B speaker outputs? These speakers have subwoofers with power amps built in, so I could also split the line-level signal at the amp into those subwoofers. (I also don't know if the subwoofers have a low-pass filter built in. I could also pipe the main receiver subwoofer line out to the other room, which is already filtered, but that would add 50% to the interconnect cost.)

I have read it is better to use ceramic electrical insulators (isolators)and keep speaker wire something like 4" away from any material, to avoid electical effects. To do that, I have to send the wire up to the ceiling, across the room, and down to the speaker. It's pretty easy to do and keeps the wire off the floor, although it will look strange. This is a 6 speaker HT system. However, it adds 50% more length to the cables, some of which are already long (9 meters). The question is whether the extra length will degrade the signal more than just laying the cable on the wood floor. thanks, LesHalles

I think there are, but they might not be common. Read some DVD player reviews (hifichoice.com, sterofile.com, hometheatre.com, etc.) and see what DVD's they use to evaluate the players. They will tell you if they use higher bit rate audio.

I don't understand you completely. I would place the speaker against the side wall, between front and back, so it lines up with the most common viewing position, woofer directly facing the viewer. I don't think that a subwoofer has anything to do with it, I think you would set this up as a "small speaker" with bass management.

The manual for the Dennon AVR-5800 includes speaker placement recommendations. For movie viewing with diffusion type speakers (that have the shape of RS-7s in the diagram) the manual says to place them like this: same distance apart as mains- directly at the side or slightly to the front of the listening position- 60-90 cm. above the ears- pointing directly at the ears.

This is what I have read: Ported bass enclosures gain 3db at the resonant frequency, but rolloff below that at 24db/octave. I have also read the port worsens the transient response, which makes sense. Sealed bass enclouseres only rolloff at 12db/octave, so they reach lower for the same speaker design. Generally, I have heard that sealed enclosures give greater depth and precision; I would guess this is partly because the sound escaping the port is likely to be out of phase or otherwise distorted, and also the physical dimensions of the port and enclosure would tend to create resonant frequencies. I have certainly heard some pretty boomy ported woofers. But I have also heard some tight sounding ported subwoofers. It seems designs with a port require greater care in speaker placement within a room, to give the port sufficient airspace and avoid reflections. Why did they choose a ported design for the RP5, sacrificing quality and simplicity to gain efficiency in a version of the speaker that already has a larger subwoofer, amp and cabinet?

The rp3 and rp5 seem to have the same tweeter driver and horn, but they have different crossovers. The rp3 is 2750hz, the rp5 is something like 1980hz (I forget exactly). On the RF3 and RF5 the crossovers are, as I recall different than this. So the RP3 and RP5 do not seem to be just RF3 and RF5 with subwoofers added. I read that the higher crossover actually can give smoother mids somewhere else on this board (maybe a comparison of the RF3 and RF5). Also, RP3 seems to have an unported subwoofer, the RP5 seems to have a ported subwoofer. In general, doesn't unported tend to be tighter? The 6.5" woofer on the RP3 is smaller than the 8" on the RP5- but for midrange, wouldn't a slightly smaller woofer be better, even if the power handling would be less? Question: what is the sound difference between the RP3 and RP5?

Hi- This is my first post on the BBS. Colin Flood said to say that he sent me. He did. I have read that it is better not to burn a component, like a CD player, in continuously. Like 8 hours on, 8 hours off.