Thoriated_Tiger

I put my vote for the Panny -- I have a 700 and while I've had some lamp issues (as in, they're crap), I love the picture it puts out. Now, I'll throw this out there for your consideration: I've yet to hear of anything concrete (or even rumor-ish) for a 900 replacement from Panny. But, the tradition is that if there is a replacement, it'll be shown in September at CES, and it'll be on sale Oct-Nov. That's how it has been for most of their HT projectors. The new one, should it materialize, will hopefully have (and I stress hopefully) the new C2Fine panels from Epson, instead of the 900's D5 and 700's D4. Completely new panel, not a refinement of prior stuff. C2Fine's *supposed* to do Jet Black. However, by this time last year, we knew Epson was making D5 panels, in time for an October debut in the 900 and others -- so far, this year, nothing's been said about C2Fine. =o( This is all conjecture at this point -- but I was in this situation not too long ago -- buy an AE500, or hold out for its replacement -- I held out, and got the 700. I skip the 900, because I know panny will have something out by end of year -- and if it is C2Fine, I'll bite, oh will I bite. Otherwise, I'll wait -- I don't want an incremental upgrade, I want a quantum leap. []

Ferrari flat-12?

Yup, that'd be a 26B. LeMans winner.

It isn't the speakers. The sibilance was there with my Stereo 70 (very little, just hard "S" and "F" sounds), el-cheapo Sony, el-cheapo Technics. (murder on my ears, both of 'em.) No sibilance with ARC D-70 or Panny XR55. Same cables, same room, same sources. GIGO, folks.

Both pix are the same lump... question is... whose lump? []

Yes and no. I always had miserable TVs from childhood up to about age 26, when I splurged and got a 35" Trinitron. Best @$#!@#$! TV I've had. Friend of mine has it now. However, that said... it got to a point where I noticed... "My audio chain beats the tar out of the local cinema's audio chain." All this glorious sound, and watching a movie on a postage stamp.. this was years ago, when FP was still solely in the hands of the very well-heeled. But time went on, prices dropped, performance came up, so... Once I went FP last year, something inside of me snapped. See, I pretty much grew up in theaters. Spent a lot of time in 'em, time I shoulda spent "doing homework"... I viewed TV as an anomaly, not "the norm." To me the cinema experience was "the norm" So of course, once I had a setup comparable to a theater... something inside me broke, and I'll never go back to small screens for movies / cartoons. OTOH, I don't watch TV much.... F1 racing, and the odd program on history or speedvision... I view TV as a brain-rotter. A means to appease the massess, and control them, while you're at it. *shrug*

Nope.. these are the ones by John Elliot Gardiner and the English Concert. Or is it Trevor Pinnock? I think both are involved -- the piano ctos are played by Pinnock and directed by Gardiner. I do have an LP of Concerto 21, the "Elivra Madigan" on DG. I belive that indeed was the Anda recording. The Gardiner set is (was, when I bought it) almost 100 bucks for 9 disks, and has from #5 all the way out to the end. These were done mid-90's, on their "4D" system. They claim 144db dynamic range.... I can vouch for that -- I have Beethoven's symphonies on the same label, same conductor, this time with the "Orchestre Romantique et Revolutionnaire"... the 9th REALLY pushes my system *hard*. That recording was the reason for me to seek a (for me ;o) hi-power tube amp.. 60wpc instead of my normal sub-30 ;o) Warning, Gardiner playes the 9th with a really strange tempo... pretty fast, and the march in the middle.. he doubled the time on it. It works, but it sounds goofy the first few times. That 4-d recording system, btw, was built by yamaha for DG. I think they got their money's worth.. [] As for which Mozart piano cto is my favorite.. . man, that's cruel. That's as cruel as asking me which LedZep album is my favorite. In no order.. I really dig 20, 5, 6, 17, 14, 22,, 26, 15... 15's last movement is my favorite "drunk" mozart. [] (watch Amadeus for why I think that... they show him just bopping down the street, early AM, allready with a near-empty bottle of wine in one hand, all cheerful.. then he goes up the stairs to his pad... and *BAM*, queue the intro to Don Giovanni, and there's his dad, wearing a black cape and black tricorn.. sobered him up REAL quick [] ) Really, I like most of 'em. If I had to pick a favorite for virtuosity, it'd be 26, with #20 for sheer "dark" mozart (one of his only 2 piano ctos in a minor key.)

Mowtownbker, the thing is you ran across Mozart, of all people. The music he left us is at once tender, joyful, powerful, sublime, and sometimes even terrifying. I don't think we'll ever see another like him. The problem with classical is its extreme dynamic range and extreme frequency range. It's easy to play compressed pop, rock, etc. But to swing classical properly, all the bits of a system need to be top-notch. Otherwise... yeah.. it'll sound sour. Klipsch comes in handy for classical for the same reasons it comes in handy for other forms: Dynamics, and lower-distortion than other types. PWK was hell-bent on bringing the orchestra into the living room, that was his driving force to make the Klipschorn. I think he suceeded, and even the smaller ones do allright.. my Fortes love classical, big, loud, powerful classical. So do my SF2s. If you like ole Wolfgang Mozart, may I suggest, as a rather large 2nd step into your classical journey: 1. The boxed set of his piano conectors, Deutsche Grammophon/Arkiv. 2. The boxed set of his symphonies, Deutsche Grammophon/Arkiv I recommend those two for a number of reasons... they're fairly complete collections of his major works. You can spend years studying these.... and then you realize he wrote over 600 works.. you can spend your whole LIFE listening to him, and not hear it all... another reason is the sound quality on these is pretty $@#! good... another reason is, they're "historically informed" performances, using, for example, a copy of Mozart's piano instead of a modern piano (they sound lighter and brighter, and can play faster than modern ones), and all the instruments are made like they were then... fiddles a bit lighter, leather-headed tympani with hard sticks, wooden flutes... etc. Classical is my musical drug. Yup. And mozart, I guess would be my musical smack ;o)

I've had tremendous success using Panasonic's XR-55 receiver. I find it as well suited to horns as my 2-ch amp... I feel I have seven single-ended triodes each making 100w. That's what the panny feels like. Cheap, too.. so cheap as to be laughable... so I"m gonna get me another. []

Horn Coloration (and the cupped-hand play) are tools used by speaker salesmen to sell you a pair of cheaply-made cone-and-domers for a huge margin, instead of well-made horns for a very slim margin. Horn Coloration is something people read on the internet, where some self-appointed guru declares "Horns are Bad! They're colored! They're honky, harsh and screechy!!" and 30,000 inbred retard audiophiles chime in and say "YUP!"... of course, it's on the net, in a nice bedlam-type facility for mentally-handicapped audiophools, so it MUST be true... so the poor sap reading it, being too dumb to think for him/herself, believes it. I'm so fed up with the perception horns have in the world Joe Sixpack lives in. Screw 'em. Let 'em live with their little screechy boxes.

III for me. The Bron-y-aur Stomp is one of my favorites, as is "That's the Way" I've heared many breakup songs, but "That's The Way" hits very close to home. Add to that the ethereal, unreal guitar in that track, and well... it made an impression [] Tangerine is another fave of mine, for those same ethereal guitars. A slide, but not quite... something even prettier than just a regular slide. But really... a single favorite Zep record? You're bloody cruel! They're all great! []

Oooh these are purrrrty! They match my WO Forte 1s... and.. and.... and I"m broke for the moment >.< Hm. So... using four of these as FL, FR, SR, SL, with a Heresy for a center.. how'd the Heresy integrate? Fairly well, I"d imagine.. better than the SF2 - SC1 - SF2 array I got right now for LCR... Must.... not... give... in.....*sigh* I want 'em []

Most popular != 'best'. There is no one best tube for this job. Me? I dig 2A3 in single-ended, I dig EL34, I dig 6550, EL84.. 300B.. have not heared the more 'exotic' ones like 845 and 211s and such. I also extensively dig digital amplification through horns. Heretical, idn't it... []

My bedroom is roughly the same volume as your 14x14 office, and I run a pair of Fortes in it. They play low, they play loud... they always sound good. In the cell I laughingly call 'my office', I have a very tiny pair of Infinity RS1000 driven by a 1978 Pioneer SX-680.. works just fine at micro volumes. I'm very tempted to get a pair of SB2s and see what that'll do in this environment.. But for a 14x14? man, stick a pair of Fortes in there. []

I've had my Synergy SF2s for a few years now (3 years?), and last year completed the HT setup with SB2 and an SC1. All of these driven by a Panasonic XR-55 to very good effect. Now.. here is where it gets very weird very quick. The SF2 used to be my 2-ch rig speakers 3 years ago, when I was strapped for cash, driven by a Dyna Stereo 70. I was happy with that, but there was still something off. Then I lent the SF2s to a friend and got me a pair of Fortes. Better. Then I put an Audio Research D-70 on the Fortes, and the gates of heaven opened. (I've yet to try the SF2s with the ARC D-70) FFWD 2 years, the SF2s come back, along with their siblings, for my HT rig... driven by a Sony. Kinda.... well, bad. Listenable fersure, but no where near the 2-ch rig.. FFWD 1 year.. I drop a panasonic xr 55 into the mix... MUCH better... Then I spiked the SF2s and the SC2 (they were resting on carpet, minus their feet, because the guy I loaned the SF2s to lost the feet).. spiking the SF2s did such a change that I'm still trying to reconcile in my head what happened, why something as simple as spiking a speaker will remove a few layers of opaqueness.. but that's what it did. Not more bass, not more treble, but more detail -- I could hear far deeper into the recording than I could without 'em spiked. After the spiking, I would have to honestly say the Synergies are very, very good speakers, and doubly so considering their humble price. Their performance is creepy, almost -- I don't think there's another speaker in that price range that can match 'em. I still look at 'em in disbelief. The only thing they lack, imo, is the bone-crushing *WHACK* of the Forte bass. They have bass, but the Forte feels so much stronger there. A sub has fixed that. A tip of the hat to Klipsch. I always thought of the Synergy line as a bottom-feeder, big-box retailer loss-leader. But after addressing things like amplification, positioning and spiking, I am very impressed with the Synergy. Every inch a Klipsch. After tearing them down to look at the build, I was impressed -- far above what say a Tangent was, and much more in line with traditional Klipsch quality -- solid as an anvil, in other words [] I do have to wonder... will the Klipsch Synergy be the "Sleeper" speaker of the 2000's? My ears say "yes". As for the TI PurePath the Panasonic uses? Um.... surreal, unreal, unexpected, I love it... almost feels like having seven single ended triodes with 100 watts a piece. The 55 does a neat little trick where it straps un-used amps in 2-ch mode to 'dual-amp' the main two front speakers. In any mode, the clarity is startling, very much (as mentioned by others here) like a top-shelf, squeaky-clean amp.