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.

Gave the Fortes an all-Audio Research tube rig. No mods to the speakers themselves. Gave the Synergy HT system a Panasonic XR-55. Spiked the center, L and R speakers. Spiking the SF2s got me a level of improvement very disproportionate to cost. It wasn't a little improvement, it was a lot -- particularly in low-level detail retrieval and removing hi-frequency 'hash'. The XR-55 is a scary, wonderful piece. I'll just leave it at that

Mine reflects its main purpose and decor: Cinema Ink and Paint. []

It appears Klipsch went to two-ways about 10 years ago, with the 3-ways being used for Pro, Cinema and Heritage speakers. It seems lately, though, that the 3-way makes a comeback.. first the Reference Premiere (which we won't get in the US, and with that cabinet and price, I'm glad) Now mention in the internet of a 3-way Reference... now that's interesting. I sometimes look at my SF2's, lost in a fog of *ahem* mood-altering substances, and think . o O (Gee, that cabinet's long enough front to back to take in a foot-and-a-half horn... a square tractrix midrange down to 600-800hz would be just dynamite in a narrow cab like a Syn or a Ref) All I ask is they price it *sanely*. I'm not exactly broke, and it still took me some time to put together a five-channel Synergy setup. Few years, actually. I can't just sink say 5 large into a speaker system in one shot. I can maybe do half of that.

Dunno, but you sure as hell got my attention! Perhaps it is the long-rumoured Reference Premiere in a non-Industrial-Lights-and-Magic blingolicious cabinet? [] Reference 3-way.. hm.... now *that* would make me upgrade from my synergy 5-ch setup.. but only if the center is a 3-way, and only if the whole thing is sanely priced, not audiophool-priced. Otherwise, my old Syns will keep on singin' for years to come.

Make sure you go in and set all the speakers to "Large". The 55 defaults to "small" Also, the receiver must be told how many speakers you have. For 5.1 it'd look like LCR S, with the sub selected elsewhere in the menu. For tuning, you could use the setup DVDs, or just use the built-in pinknoise generator.. take it off dual-amp mode (By selecting DPL II, 1st button from bottom up on the left of the remote) , hit "TEST" on the remote, crank it to like -25db and that should get you 70db pink noise (with most klipsch, that is.) Then tweak the center, surr. l and surr. r to be as close to the mains as possible.. within 1 db or better if you can. Use Slow, C-weighted. IF you have the Radio Shack SPL meter, the older analog one needs a bass boost.. correction charts are all over the web. at 30hz it needs +4 or so. So if you got all yor speakers singing at 70db, make the sub 74 and you'll be set. Then spice to taste. []

If you get the 700 (or 900, but you said budget..) a hushbox will not be needed. I run a 700 about a foot behind, and 2 feet above my head.. can't hear the fan, can't hear the iris, even with playback stopped and A/C off. The 700 has a reallly flexible zoom, you may be able to mount it at the back of the room, on a shelf on the wall, avoiding the cost (and cabling brouhaha) of a ceiling mount. All heritage HT.. *envy* [] Mine's on synergies and does allright... have been toying with the idea of six Heresies (or six Altec Valencias..) I suspect Heresises will be easier to source. There's a THX screen calculator on the web somehwere, goodle for that term.. feed it your seating distance to the wall, and it'll spit out the THX and SMPTE screen sizes for that dimension. The THX number is a little bigger than the SMPTE. I went with the THX + a little extra.. but not too much.. I don't like neck-swivelling. Mine came out to 96" diagonal from 10 feet. For your max width of 108, that comes out to about 15 feet or so, I think, for the "perfect" theater seat. In my setup, the PJ's on the back wall, up on a shelf, the top of the lens ring is about even with the top of the screen, and I use lens shift to shift the image down to the screen.. no keystone required (and will not be, unless the shelf / mount is not flat and level..) Man, once you roll a flick through that setup, you may never leave.... []

Specs never tell the whole story. Almost universally I've found the lower the claimed THD number, the more sandpapery the amp will sound (SAE, Sumo, Carver).. the more relaxed that number, the better it'll sound (SET, Pushpull tubes, etc). The panasonic breaks with all you might know about hi-fi. It's not what you think it is. It's not an amplifier at all. The rules which applied to conventional solid-state don't apply here. In fact, from what I've gathered from my own experience with it, and what I"ve been able to read on-line, it has characteristics more in line with tubes than solid-state. (Distortion is minimal at low power, rising as you ask for more, whereas traditional SS has a narrow "sweet-spot" .. at about 50% throttle.. below that, and above that, distortions quickly rise.) As far as power, remember the Panny is *not* a power amplifier at all, it is literally a DAC which can swing large currents. TI says their solution, which is what panasonic uses (PurePath / Tocatta's Equibit) is 95% efficient.. so yes, it'll pull a LOT less off the wall than say, a 60wpc tube amp. Or a 100x7 solid-state amp. Under conventional thinking, I'd dismiss the Panny out-of-hand as being a wimp.. 9 pounds? C'mon, get real.. REAL hi-fi weighs a ton.. runs hot.. is expensive.. All those rules are now moot when dealing with PurePath, Ice and Tripath. Now we'll have to learn a whole new set of 'rules'. But in the meantime, hoil, that little Panny is fierce.. and since we use efficient speakers.. we also have tons and tons of headroom. 100 watts go VERY far with horns. []

All the time.. usually with background low-level stuff. Some examples: Mahoromatic: All bath scenes. The Misato's bath needs work.. drip..splish..drip..splish.. first time, I thought it was my faucet leaking. Or the AC leaking.. or the roof.. Mahoromatic: All boat scenes: Buried deep within the soundtrack, the sound of a large diesel.. first time I heared it, I thought there was a large utility truck outside my apt.. it's just the ship's powerplant.. Anytime an old-school Western-Electric phone rings. I've not had one for 20 years, yet everytime I hear that characteristic "Trrrrrrinnngg" of an old WeCo phone, I look around for mine.. [] Harry Potter III: The sequence were Harry leaves home and sits at a curb, right before the Knight Bus arrives... dogs barking in the distance sound a little too real.. thought it was dogs in my vicinity. Ditto for the dogs in Pink Floyd's "Animals"

I think you just let yourself be dissuaded by all the hoopla (positive and negative) about the XR55. I would strongly suggest you get it and run it. Amazon's return policy is reputed to be quite liberal. I have one. My horns love it. A lot. I know what I like in sound, and what it takes to get it -- and the Panasonic delivers. Just my 2 ¢.

Heh.. your ears will give out before the speakers do! I have the older Synergies (SF2, SB2, SC1), and I've driven them with a variety of stuff.. right now they are my HT speakers, running from a Panasonic XR-55 full-digital receiver. Very good sound. Very very good, actually, for about half of your stated receiver budget. Enough power to make film (and music, duh) Sound Right. As for care? Optimal levels? All up to you. My suggestion is get a Radio Shack SPL meter and learn how to use it. Klipsch is so clean they'll play super-loud without distorting, so you must be careful. Me, personally, I play most rock/pop with peaks to 80db, jazz to 85-90, classical peaks to 95db. For film, I set it so normal conversation is about 60-65db, which gives me loud talk at 70-75, screams 80-85, explosions and other FX 90-100. With my speakers, and my receiver, that point is about -33db on the volume control. (Goes from -78db to -0db)... so about 1/2 throttle gets me what I like. I can say, though, the Panasonic XR55 is an amazing value. 220-ish bucks, and it sounds sooo good. It is different technology than most other receivers... it has no amplifier.. just a really fast switching power supply.. or you could think of it as a DAC which can swing big current... but it is not an amp, at least not technically...[]