Thoriated_Tiger

NPR here in S. Fl (WLRN, 91.3) played non-stop Jimmy Smith last night from 8:15 till midnight. (Evening Jazz with Glenn Paise, it's weeknight show local to this station.) Now I remember why I still have a tuner in my rig.. That smith is gone saddens me. I only discovered his music about 4 years ago, and immediately fell in love with it. I even got his Dot Com Blues he put out a couple of years ago, and a few LPs of his.

---------------- On 2/9/2005 4:07:37 PM J.4knee wrote: I am only going to address one point here.... Is that not a derivative of the horns efficiency...move a sizable column of air with minimal movement of source element hence a cleaner sound. ---------------- Not.. quite. THere are a few cone speakers rated at 99db / 1w. For example, the Inifnity SM series. very very efficient, would go real loud on little power. Dirty was too kind a word for these. Efficiency != cleanliness. The reason the horn is cleaner is because it has a much shorter excursion vs. a comparable direct radiator. This is because the horn itself acts as a mechanical transformer. Make a tiny wiggle into a big wiggle mechanically. A high efficiency direct radiator is still a direct radiator, subject to all of its drawbacks. The only advantage is, you can get loud dirt with little power expended

Friend of mine has an oooold brass western electric carbon (I think?!) mike. I always tell him he should proudly display it instead of it being buried at the back of the room along with all the other unused hi-fi gear.. Looks-wise, I'd have to say my favorite mikes are the old Neumans from just before WWII, and of course, the U-47.

I'm still waiting for Klipsch and Co. to put out a 'modern' speaker with everything over 600 or so hz handled exclusively by horns. The Reference and Synergies don't do it for me. Yeah, they're cleaner than conventional coners/domers, but still not as squeaky-clean as my Fortes. Why? Simple. The forte starts getting horny at 700hz. The effect is stunning -- complete, utter smoothness without sacrificing detail. Especially the lower midrange. This is exactly why I find the Reference and Synergies to be a little.. well, less-than-stellar. PWK didnt use horns for efficiency, he did so for cleanliness. Something the modern-day Klipsch seem to have forgotten. Why settle for merely "a little better" than the conventional speaker? C'mon, Klipsch. Go back to your roots. Give us a 'modern' speaker which is horn-loaded to below 1khz. Anything less than that is short-changing us. Yeah, the current 2-ways are better than most speakers, but.. *sigh* is anyone getting the point? The magic is the midrange horn. The magic is in getting everything above 500~700hz done *with horns*. I'm planning a massive HT upgrade within 5 years. If by that time there are no new Klipsch speakers with midrange horns, I'll just have to score me five or seven Fortes or Cornwalls.

Pac Man Fever. No. Really. Pac Man Fever.

The audiophile press seem to harbor undue ill feelings about horns.. Klipsch in particular. Wonder if it was because of all those little yellow buttons Of course, things change. AvantGarde has made it somewhat more acceptable to be a horny audiophile.. who knows, perhaps one day we won't be seen as heretical infidels... naah, it's more fun this way

---------------- On 2/2/2005 3:11:30 PM ooteedee wrote: The topic has officially "digressed". Some of you answered clearly...thank you. I will rephrase the question. If a professional singer walked up to you and started singing right to your face...it would sound great. It would sound natural. But if we recorded that person singing and played it back with "the worlds most perfect full range speaker that exactly mimics her voice"....and placed that speaker in a "horn".....will it sound like a voice through a bullhorn? If so, why have a horn in a speaker system? ---------------- Is this guy serious, or is he just trolling us? This last question makes less sense than the original. FWIW, the world's best speakers allready have horns. I'm trying to figure out your post, and I can't. All I keep coming up with is that you're implying that horn speakers have a megaphone coloration. Is that the intent of this thread? To answer your latest strange question: IF the horn is designed expressly for the speaker being used, no, there should be no 'megaphone' coloration. Be aware that a full-range speaker, let's say a Lowther PM-type, would require a horn that would dwarf a K-Horn in size. And I say "full-range" loosely, I don't believe there's a single-driver speaker which can do the 30hz-20khz range alone.

---------------- On 2/1/2005 11:17:14 AM ooteedee wrote: Funny posts all! Explanations make sense. What is the difference in sound between a compression driver with a horn for midrange ......and a cone speaker for midrange? ---------------- The horn will be noticeably cleaner, devoid of the "crackling" distortion common to coners. I don't know how else to describe the effect -- to me, anytyhing short of a compression horn or maybe a ribbon has a "am radio" type roughness to it. Horns don't do that. That's why I use horns. Complete smoothness .

---------------- Thoriated Tiger, I recall you had an ST-70 for quite a while. I know there's lots better out there, but mine is sounding quite sweet with either my Heresys or my JBLs. Although it isn't really a Dynaco anymore. Weren't you having issues with yours? Marvel ---------------- Mine still has (she's in storage) the original 7199 ckt -- and that's what makes it what it is. I actually think quite highly of the little 70. I'm in no rush to get rid of it, it'll make a fine office system, for example. I had some minor issues, yeah. Nothign catastrophic, plus they're quite easy to work on. Mainly my biggest issue was 2 popped EL34s in less than 2 years -- but that I think was the tubes themselves. The one that gassed was more crooked than Nixon, the one that went chernobyl was from the same batch. I can't really think of a better learning tool. What driver board are you using? I didn't mod mine beyond what I had allready done because to me, it would no longer be a Dyna, so I looked elsewhere.

Coytee, just re-read your entire post carefully. The glow you see is inside the plates, yes? LIke a beam running top to bottom? You see it through the 3 little holes on the side of the plate? (those holes are there to align the screen and grid while the thing's being built.) Congrats, that's the "beam" in Beam Tetrode, which the KT88 and 6550 are. Again, nothing to be alarmed about. Even my EL34 (which is supposed to be a real pentode) had that beam. On both the KT88s and 6550s I've ran, it's *really* intense when first turned on, then it mellows out. As for bottle shapes, SED (ex-svetlana) 6550s are straight, others may be coke-bottle. The original 6550, the Tung-Sol, was of the coke-bottle variety.. the GE 6550 was straight. We really should put up a FAQ. Too much bad mumbo-jumbo out there, some of it potentially damaging. As for tubes going bad? I've had one, make that two, 12AX7s go bad (microphonic) and two EL34s fail (one gas, popped instatly, sounded like a lightbulb frying, another lost its bias and went Chernobyl). The 12AX7's were JJ, the EL34s were old SED (vintage 99-00). Tubes go bad, yeah.. but sporadically. If an amp eats tubes out of habit, it indicates it is running 'em out of range.

---------------- On 1/29/2005 8:31:06 AM JJKIZAK wrote: The tubes glowing blue are gassy. They have "getters" inside them to very slowly suck up the gas. The gas may or may not hurt the operation. Audio not so much but in RF it's a disaster. My old Fisher amp had blue glowing output tubes and the blue would pulsate with every bass note. JJK ---------------- Not quite that easy. If the blue appears to be just underneath, on, or *outside* the glass envelope, that is called flourescense and is caused by electons exiting impurities in the glass. Cobalt is very common in glass, so that's the blue glow. Nothing to be alarmed about. If that blue glow *dances* with the beat, you need new filter capacitors -- the glow is directly propotional to the juice being fed to the plates. If the blue glow is all over the inside of the tube, that is, it glows like a flourescent bulb, now you've got a gassy tube. Coytee, don't worry about your blue glow, from your description it sounds like flourescense. I'm actually dissapointed when a new quad of tubes don't do that -- it lets me know the vacuum's weak.

---------------- On 1/28/2005 2:03:44 PM D-MAN wrote: I wouldn't regard a Denon as being overy bright sounding. I think that your original suspicion is right on the money, there IS a great deal of bad recording going on out there... I've found that if it's a POPULAR artist/group/whatever, WATCH OUT as the recording may be "boosted" in certain frequencies to sound "good" on a car stereo. Sort of "targeting your market" with the studio mixer. Sort of like what they used to do with the AM radio stuff back in the old days, so it sounded good "in the car". DM ---------------- This is where it gets *really* sticky. The problem I was having was hard/harsh/glary at the mids and highs. Mostly would show up on recordings which have the gain turned way the hades up. Like most pop music (four clicks on my vol. control winds up at ~90db with hi-gain recordings! And yeah, I got my sp6 set on LO gain...grr.) Anyway.. My suspicion is that some amps simply "dig into" the incoming signal with more tenacity than others. Why do I say this? Cause when all hades would break loose, it sounded *exactly* like mis-tracking distortion! The impression I got is that my previous amps simply could *not* keep up with what was coming out of the sp6! I need to get a nice dual-trace scope and start playing around with this... I bet this effect can be seen as well as heared. Or maybe I'm just loco...

A Tale of One Recording. Once upon a time, I thought most of my CD's sounded.. well, craptacular. bright / hard / glary / glassy. LP was better but not by much, and in some cases, it was much worse! Then I got a recording which *really* sounded sour. Really sour. I thought to myself "There's NWIH DG/Arkiv would put out something which sounds *this* bad." This recording was DG/Arkiv's box set of Beethoven's Symphonies as played by Gardiner / Orchestre Revolutionnaire et Romantique. It was really bad. Ear-frying. Intolerable. Just like Apples, Capitols, and Phase 4's. Harsh. Glary. Cold. That recording sent me on a four-month journey which culminated in choosing a far different amplifier than was my norm. You may wish to go into denial regarding upstream components, but there's one prime, undeniable fact: Klipsch speakers (and other horns) tend to be highly unforgiving of mediocre electronics. They're like miscroscopes. They're the most revealing thing I've ever heared -- and that's both very good, and very bad. An analysis of your entire system, from source to control to amplification is in order. You may have to swallow pride and even maybe take a hit -- the end result is well worth it. I did the same. I took a long, hard look at my system, in a logical, procedural manner. I had to swallow some prejudices I had, and had to let go of some icons of a time long gone. The end result, as they say, was well worth the effort. Now, most CD's sound either okkay or really good, I have *very* few that I'd consider worthless, and those are on hole-in-the-wall lables that no one's ever heared of, probably mixed on a PC and recorded via 44khz PCM onto hdd's. But from the big houses? Not in my estimation. The funny thing is, every improvement I made to my rig, it wasn't the CDP that showed the biggest imrpovements.. it was the turntable which did so. O.o As for tubes, that's the choice many of us have taken. I won't try to convince you either way -- but there are some dman fine SS amps out there. But just because it's tubes doesn't mean it's good. One of my prejudices regarded a highly regarded little amp from the late 50's which I ran for 4 years and frankly loved -- but in the ultimate analysis, it was the root of all my sonic problems. I had to let go. I stayed in tubes, but went far, far astray from 'The Norm'. The trick is, it's *cheaper* to do this right with glass than it is with sand, at least in the majority of cases. As for tube bass being lacking.. sorry.. but I have to disagree 110% there. Again, wether tube or SS, it's not the devices used, it's *how* they're used that'll make or break the amp. And finally.. you don't have to spend big cash at all. You can, if you have it -- that's fine for the economy and whatnot -- but if you go used/vintage, the bang-for-buck factor goes up dramatically. Just a thought.

Not to put a fine point on it, but the first time I heared the Fortes, well, the bass was overwhelming. Then I remembered, that's what music sounds like. ^.^ You're *supposed* to feel the bass guitar. You're *supposed* to feel the *whack* of a kick drum. The orchestral string bass is supposed to make your head buzz. ^.^ I still hve a nasty bump (+10db!) at 50hz, but that's the room. Now you know why no one ever accuses most Klipsch of being 'bass-shy' ;o) PWK was on a bender to capture the sound of an orchestra. Oh brother, wait till you hear an orchestral bass drum through these...

---------------- On 1/26/2005 7:42:55 PM Allan Songer wrote: The Tannoys are in factory "Lancaster" cabinets. They're supposed to be "tubby" when compared with other cabinets for the Tonnoys, but they sound fast and lean to me! ---------------- We need an IRC channel of our own ;o) I'll look up the Lancaster, not familiar with that one. I made an addition to my previous post, I'd like to know how your cornies fail in the bass.. you've piqued my curiosity.

---------------- On 1/26/2005 7:29:27 PM Allan Songer wrote: I run a pair of McIntsoh MC-30s and a C22 preamp with a Thorens TD-124/SME 3012/Ortofon SPU table. The problem is in the bottom end--the Cornwalls just fall apart when compared with the Tannoys when playing loud rock or symphonic music. There is never any upper or mid-range harshness with either speaker. ---------------- Wow, talk about a classic rig. =o) In my (limited) experience flakey bottom-end was traced to either filter caps going flat on either the pre or power amps, or gross incompatibility between amp and speaker (impedance issues.) One thing I can say about the Forte / Audio Research combo is that it has bone-crushing bass abilities, to the point where it almost behaves like a solid-state amp at the very bottom. None of that overshooting/flabby bottom end I got from the Stereo 70. Can you borrow a pair of Fortes or Chorus and play with them? Perhaps your room / gear would like something besides the Cornies or even the Tannoys. Out of curiosity, what cabinets are your Golds in? I have a Tannoy fetish as well ^.^ I just can't afford / fit them in my apt.... not the big ones, anyway. ---- addendum: How do the cornies 'fall apart'? Thudding, rattling, just general "blah" sound, or...?? I've heared Cornies with a 250 watt arc monster and it dman near put me thruogh the wall.. (that's a story all of it's own, let's just say a rich tweeky audiophool was shattered when the Cornies blew his 30,000 dollar pair of overpriced Vifa-based speakers away.. ;o)

---------------- On 1/25/2005 10:03:19 PM Allan Songer wrote: All I know is that when I change out my Cornwalls for the Tannoy Golds Rock, Blues and even symphonic music sounds much, MUCH better. I'm guessing that the Cornwalls are the weak link? But when I play an old Blue Note, the Cornwalls kick *** over the Tannoys. Is my system "marginal?' If so, why do two equally "fine" speakers offer such dramtically different results? ---------------- Last time I heared Tannoy DCs (Churchill cabs) they were very, very, very nice -- but I'll tip the hat at the horn-midranged K's for having crisper, more detailed sounds. Perhaps the K's are exposing a weakness somewhere else? Something the Tannoys could be glossing over? I'll give my own rig as an example. TT: Thorens 145 and AT 440ML CDP: Some cheap sony thing. Preamp: ARC SP6A Speaks: Forte I. Previous speakers: a. Infinity SM-110 coners. Sounded AWESOME with the amps listed below! I was in hawg heaven! b. Klipsch SF2 (now retired to my HT). Sounded... craptacular with the SAE, much better with the Stereo 70, but still silly harsh. c. Now the Fortes. Much fatter sound than SF2, still hints of that harshness. Previous amp: SAE Two (yeah, laugh ahead, it blew chunks so badly it's indescribable. Like running a file through your ears.) Later amp: Dynaco Stereo 70, re-built, mildly hot-rodded psu. Open, dynamic, punchy, transparent, but..dirty. Result: I always had harshies. Upper midrange and HF hash. Symphonic was tough to play, most rock was tough to play, Beatles in particular, and Phase-4 Londons were utter torture. I blamed the poor turntable. It's cheap, therefore it must sucketh. I switched cables. I blamed the poor CDP. It's cheap, black and plastic, therefore it must sucketh. I even blamed the SF2! It got so bad I ripped out every Solen MKP in my preamp and replaced 'em all with Auricap (that DID sound much nicer ;o).. but still... that fuzzy harsh garbage in tutti passages, that *crrrkle* on the tympani.. gah. Then I dropped a truly clean amp in the rig, and.. well.. it's over. Very very over. I've shelved my plans for a better TT (may still get a 125, just cause I'm smitten with old Thorens! ;o). I've shelved the idea that I need a 5,000 dollar cdp. I've given up on building my own amp. I've given up the speaker quest, too. I'll get more of these to make a killer HT once I get a house.. apt dwelling and large Heritage installations don't mix ;o) This wasn't meant to slam your rig, Allen, I don't even know what it is -- just giving my trials and tribulations, and the ultimate solution to them. It wasn't the speakers, nor the preamp, nor the caps in the preamp, nor the sources. Forget the cables, the differences are minor (I'll grant AQ Sidewinders are a smidge more transparent and yes, dynamic and clear than Monster and RatShack wire, but I digress.) In my case, in my system, my Achilles Heel was always the amp. I'm starting to hold William Z Johnson in the same regard I hold Paul W Klipsch.

My 2¢: A speaker which can't do it all is not worth owning. Mine are equally at home regardless of what you're feeding them. They'll do Guns n' Roses with as much verve as they'll do The English Concert or Ron Parker. Don't let the marketing BS some companies have sway you. Pretty names and pretty cabintes with pretty high prices do not guarantee performance.

Try it in an inconspicous place first (if possible.) I cleaned up my Stereo 70 with Mother's Metal (the blue stuff in a jar), and it didnt' do anything untoward to the silkscreen lettering. The 70 was nickel-plate, fwiw. It took a lot of doing, but it went from dull/hazy to nice n' shiny in about 3 passes. The first 2 left the rags so black no amount of washing got rid of it.

---------------- On 1/21/2005 2:16:39 PM Clipped and Shorn wrote: Anyone using these? I noticed that Curcio sells all kinds of upgrade kits. Why would anyone invest $600 upgrading this Preamp? do you end up with $800 worth of preamp when done? Just curious. I used a stock Pas3 a few years ago but was not all that impressed with it in this stock state. What other $800 preamp might compare with such an upgraded Pas3? Sometimes you can find them for under $200 so an upgraded one could come in for closer to $600. C&S ---------------- I had a PAS3 for about six months, although it never entered my system other than for evaluation. Rebuilt it stock with new parts, good resistors, decent caps, new can cap, etc. Dull n' lifeless. Put in the Curcio full-reg power supply, still dull, but now dynamic. At this point I cut my losses after realizing I'd have to drop in his linestage and phono board to even start to compare to something else. For 600 you can get an Audio Research SP6 a b c d or e, either of which will completely demolish the little pas, even when hot-rodded. Can't say about a full-blown PAS re-do with Curcio boards 'cause I never tried 'em, but his stuff does have a rep for sounding good. For a little more you can get into an SP8. Careful with the SP6. You can blow stuff up with it, it sends a huge DC shot a few seconds after you shut it down or power it up. The mute switch is life-or-death on this one. ;o) (or time your power supply to kick the pre first, wait 30, kick power, and do reverse on shutdown.) The crazy thing is I got the PAS *after* the SP6 -- I wanted to see first-hand what the hubub was about, bub. There's nothing of note about it. =o/ Now, it'd do great mated to a Stereo 70 feeding small cone/domers in an office... I may yet do that to it. Don't even bother with the full-reg psu for the office, a stock one will do just fine, and still sounds better than most vintage 'office' fare. =o)

---------------- On 1/15/2005 3:00:09 PM MrMcGoo wrote: Try the Pioneer VSX-1014TX-K for around $400 or its replacement, the 1015TX-K for a few dollars more. These receivers put out an honest 100 wpc. They should work well with your Synergy speakers. Bill ---------------- I'll look at those too. My problem isn't wattage, it's the *quality* of the wattage. My current receiver is 100 wpc (or so it claims). It's still as dull and dynamically restrained as a wet blanket. I don't play loud, be it HT or 2-ch. I run my fortes on 60 watt tubes, and it's overkill. But the quality of those watts is such that at 70db this thing will kick the listener past the rear wall. Without having to play loud. That's the effect I'm looking for. Lots of dynamics and punch at low levels, with the option of cranking it if the mood strikes. It's just I don't have the budget to do it the way I know. Not yet anyway. Primarily, I'm looking to get *away* from the typical receiver sound and into something a little more refined. I find typical mid-budget receivers to have sibilance and harshness issues, and if they don't, then they're dull and un-involving.. hence the desire to run off-board amps.

---------------- On 1/15/2005 3:00:09 PM MrMcGoo wrote: Try the Pioneer VSX-1014TX-K for around $400 or its replacement, the 1015TX-K for a few dollars more. These receivers put out an honest 100 wpc. They should work well with your Synergy speakers. Bill ---------------- I'll look at those too. My problem isn't wattage, it's the *quality* of the wattage. My current receiver is 100 wpc (or so it claims). It's still as dull and dynamically restrained as a wet blanket. I don't play loud, be it HT or 2-ch. I run my fortes on 60 watt tubes, and it's overkill. But the quality of those watts is such that at 70db this thing will kick the listener past the rear wall. Without having to play loud. That's the effect I'm looking for. Lots of dynamics and punch at low levels, with the option of cranking it if the mood strikes. It's just I don't have the budget to do it the way I know. Not yet anyway. Primarily, I'm looking to get *away* from the typical receiver sound and into something a little more refined. I find typical mid-budget receivers to have sibilance and harshness issues, and if they don't, then they're dull and un-involving.. hence the desire to run off-board amps.

---------------- On 1/16/2005 4:29:37 AM DrWho wrote: Denon AVR-1905 MSRP: $499 http://www.usa.denon.com/catalog/products.asp?l=1&c=2 This would totally fit your bill and you might not even need to spend the extra $100 on the other amps (though I have a feeling you're going to get them anyway) I would suggest getting the reciever first and if you're not satisfied with the sound, then trying the external amps...but with the option of returning the amps if you don't find them to be an improvement. ---------------- Thanks for the linkie.. found 'em in several online retailers. I never did progress to Denon in my SS days.. my cash went to Carver (flammable) and to Sumo.. then I ditched SS fer good and returned to tubes. Denon's gear is decent, yes? Not the typical black-box sound typical of 80's and 90's "black box" receivers?

Greetings. Now that I've put non-sucky speakers (got all-around Synergies now) in my HT, all they do is spotlight how un-involving a mediocre bottom-dollar receiver is. I however don't have the budget to create an HT rig along the same lines of my 2-ch rig. I have 2.5K earmerked for the HT, but that's mainly for projector and screen. That leaves precious little (~600 bucks) for reciever or pre/pro + amps. So, I'm thinking of cheating. Use this newfangled Tripath technology to get near hi-fi sound for decidedly no-fi money. ;o) I tried the Panasonic XR-25A, a friend has one. It was a bit dull and dead with the SF2s, but with the Fortes it was 10 times worse. The Panny just doesn't seem to have the ability to drive horns to any good degree of *whack*. Weak PSUs perhaps? Impedance issues? What I plan to do is use 3 Sonic Impact 30-dollar digital amps hooked up to either a moderately priced HT receiver (HK?) with pre-outs, or the same amps hooked up to a moderately priced pre-processor. Several Heritage owners have remarked the Sonic Impact does well with Heritage, and if it does well with those, the Synergies should be no sweat.. The problem is, I can't seem to find a pre-processor around the 500 dollar mark. It'd need to have at least 3 video inputs, remote control, and the most neutral, clean, transparent sonics I can get for those 500 bucks. Any ideas?

I get my Formby's (a little goes a *long* way) at ACE Hardware. I imagine any decent hardware store will also carry 'em. The cleaner is a rather strange shade of green, the lemon oil looks like, well, lemon oil. Use the cleaner first, apply as noted on the label. Buff 'em dry with a soft cloth. Then, the lemon oil. Mine soaked up the first coat in about 20 minutes, each subsequent coat would take longer to soak, till finally all that was left was a soft, iridescent type of glow. =o) Oak will probably glow even better than OW, as it is a shade or two lighter. If you have (I hope not) 'glass ring' stains on the tops, you can lightly rub the stains, following the grain, with Nev-R-Dull metal polishing cotton wad. Sounds contrarian, but it works. =o) Congrats on the Chorus. Careful you don't crack plaster with 'em. ;o)