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A year or two ago, I spent some time trying to find the best way to listen to Internet radio thru my receiver and Cornwalls. Most sound cards are in a very electrically noisy enviroment. My solution was the Pro Hi-FI Link from Xitel.com. $49.95 at the time, $99,95 for the deluxe. Comes with decent cables. USB out of the computer to the Xitel, then cables to an audio input on the receiver. Now i can listen to my perferred jazz stations from all over the county with perfectly acceptable sound.

Are you looking for a CD burner to add to your PC or a stand alone unit to attach to a stero? Easiest and cheapest is to add one (many good brands available $40-50) to a PC, hook up stereo to PC sound card and record. Good DVD burners now under $100 for PC - will burn CDs too. Newegg.com for good prices and reliable service for PC stuff.

My Adcom 535 amp has been powering Cornwalls for almost 15 years. Run almost every day. The 535, although the lowest power of the series - 60 watts per channel - was generally regarded as one of the best amps Adcom made. Its companion GTP-400 preamp/tuner is now relegated to phone stage work as a NAD A/V receiver is the pre-amp & powers the center & surrounds. The 400, however, was not totally trouble-free. The company went thru a lot of changes in the late 90's so I couldn't vouch for any of the later equipment. Adcom amps are generally regarded as good value for the money.

Thanks for the suggestions. My favorite is WFCR.org - public radio from Amherst, Mass. Classical during the day; jazz in the evenings. Jazz with Tom Reney, 8-11 Mon thru Thurs. is the single best jazz program I've heard.

For years I've used an Adcom ACE515 line conditioner. Not as fancy as the big boys but it does filter EMI and made a modest improvement in my sound (fairly dirty power here.) The improvement was mainly in a quieter background. The ACE also serves handily as a "control center". The other components are plugged into it and it turns the amp and the accesories on and off in sequence. (Thanks also for the good explanations above)

Jazz in the classic tradition (Ellington, Armstrong, etc.including younger players in that tradtion, i.e,not "smooth") Mon-Fri. Sat. big band, swing, sometimes folk; Sunday, classical. Classic rock in the car and sometimes when doing chores. Jazz 80% of the time.

My vote to move it back

If someone is deeply depressed, its hard to get interested in anything; its hard to concentrate. Some physical activity, running, weights, swimming, etc. is good because it an actually change your body chemistry & help recover from the black moods. Otherwise, is there anything you've always wanted to learn? play a guitar? repair/build a PC? There's a lot to learn that can be done without a huge expense. Keep in touch.

If the $1700 includes a monitor, you should be able to include a cool 17" (maybe more) flat panel. If you must go brand name, Dell is probably the best choice. Building one is not hard, it's fun, (and educational!) You won't save a ton of money but you'll get much better components and a lot of expandability. Dell, Gateway, etc. are often hard to upgrade or expand because many of their components are proprietary, i.e., limited to that machine or manufacturer. If you go brand name, get a machine configuration that will last you 3 0r 4 years. Go for at least 512 ram; Windows XP pro instead of XP home. A middle ground between brand name and build-you-own would be a "white box" PC from a local computer dealer. They can build them to your specification with quality components and give a warranty just like the big guys.

lynnm: Retail items with a manufacturer's suggested retail price usually work the other way around: $1,000 suggested retail less 40% = $600 dealer cost. So they can clear at 30% off and still make 10% although that's not much of a profit.

I use bare wire (solid Audioquest) from Adcom amp to Cornwalls. Bare copper will oxidize over time so once or twice a year, pull and clean them with a contact cleaner or occasionally I just sandpaper them back to brightness.

If you still interested, do a search for Internet radio as a topic on the general forum. A month or two ago, I posted a longish message about my own research into devices to reproduce sound from my computer thru the Cornwalls. My final choice of cost vs value was a USB converter running a 30' cable to a digital input.

"Mobile, as stated by MANY other people here. You can be a real @ss*#($! But I think you rather enjoy that. This was the first time I have read this and I thought it might be good to share with others. Mobile Well Done you are seperating yourself from the pack once again. A man on too himself ETC. ETC. It would be scary if you were indeed the SMARTEST, SHARPEST, and overall most interesting human EVER. Please get over yourself. All the best, Guy" Rather impolite and out of place, I think, for this forum. One side of this "arguement" will never convince the other.

Remember, too, that vinyl needs to be cleaned to sound best and reduce wear. At the least use a record cleaning fluid and a quality brush. (Check out audioadvisor.com and musicdirect.com ) Plenty of articles on the web too if you google search. Real vinyl fanatics use record cleaning machines, especially good, I hear, if you buy a lot of used records. The stylus needs to be cleaned too.

Got mine yesterday. Nice touch, Klipsch. Good advertising too. I may actually put one on the Audi although I normally dislike stickers. Only 400 entries? How could I have not won?

I listen to jazz 90% of the time on my Cornwalls and have had no problem with the bass. They are in the corners and toed in. Amplification is SS (want to try tubes some day). They are on factory stock risers to which have been screwed small casters (4 on each, not noticeable) and sit on a suspended hardwood floor. I think the risers really help and suspect the casters are acting a bit like spikes.

Although I've never been able to try a speciality power cord (none of my stuff has detachable ones), I do believe that the AC out of the wall can make a difference, sometimes substantial. Some power systems, especially in cities, can be "dirty", full of grundge and interference. I could hear a difference when I installed an Adcom AC Conditioner. I also heard an improvement in sound when I had an electrician in to do various work in the house and had him add an outlet that ran straight to the circuit breaker box and into which is plugged only the TV & the Adcom to which all the stereo components are plugged. This was a relatively low-cost "tweak" which had an obvious beneficial effect.

Thanks, guys, for an interesting thread and the leads to www.bottlehead.com/ and tubecad.com. Hadn't known about these and Bottlehead looks especially good. Used to solder together radios and ham gear a number of year ago & these might get me involved again.

Thanks for the tip about KCSM. Also check out WBGO, all jazz out of New Jersey. My personal favorite program is Jazz a la Mode with Tom Reiney on WFCR Amherst, MAss Mon-Thur from 8-12 EST. His taste in jazz is impecable.

As most of those on this forum are primarily into audio for the music, I thought I'd pass on my experiences with Internet Radio. Jazz is my main music interest and in the past, it has been difficult to decide what to buy, especially new artists. Reviews might be a guideline but you can never be sure if you'll like what the reviewer likes. Radio has been the traditional way to hear new things but if you're a jazz fan (or classical or many other areas other than pop) and not in a major metropolitan area, there was little or nothing available. The internet now offers many many choices for listening from regular radio stations (usually FM ones) who offer streaming audio feeds to internet only music channels including Spinner & Netscape radio. These ofered me a much greater choice but I was not thrilled with the sound (I have a decent set of Cambridge Soundworks, not Klipsch) nor did I always want to be sitting near the computer. What I wanted was to listen thru my Cornwalls while in my recliner. So I looked for ways to send the sound output from the PC to my stereo. My budget was under $100 which eliminated promising options such as the Turtle Beach Audiotron. A simple analog feed from my sound card (a Santa Cruz) allows too much interference & noise from the electronics of the PC. After much searching, I came up with 2 possibilities: devices from Xitel.com and the Sonica from m-audio.com/, a maker of professional sound cards & equipment. The Sonica sells for $80 & uses a optical cable (not included) to connect from the USB port of the PC to the stereo. Xitel offers 2 choices: for $50 a small USB device to convert the PC signal and 30' of what looks like a decent quality analog cable (RCA jacks.) For $100 or so, they sell a slightly larger device with your choice of analog output, digital output or optical (toslink) output. They also include 30'each of all three cables! This last choice seemed to me a good deal as the cable alone can cost quite a bit if you price them at Ratschack. So I bought it. Fortunately, my computer is in the dining room and with the 4 feet or so of cable from the USB connector to the converter itself, the 30 foot cable was more than enought to reach my NAD receiver. I chose to use the digital cable since I had a spare input on the receiver. How does it sound? Much better than I expected. Better than the local FM stations thru the tuner. I am very pleased with the sound. Disadvantages? All sound from the PC is output this way. If you want to play a game or whatever, you need either to pull the USB connector out or use the Control Panel to switch audio back to the sound card speakers. Also, no remote control. A long post to be sure, but I felt I should share this source of a terrific varitey of music.

Don't assume you can't recover anything from your old hard drive. I'm a PC Tech & at work when a PC fails, the data on the hard drive can be recovered about 3/4 the time. Only a head crash on the drive will make it unreadable - & even then if the cost is worth it the data can usually be recoved by a professional service. The easiest thing to try is to hook up the old drive as a second hard drive in another computer. (You may need to change the jumper to make it a slave instead of a master.) The fire up the computer and see if it can "see" the second drive. If it can, the date can be copied off. Let us know if this works. There are also other tricks to try including putting the drive in the freezer overnight. Don P.S. Sony's are not necessarily bad machines but I wouldn't suggest Circuit City as the best place to buy a PC.

A good many floor standing speakers have bass problems when sitting on suspended wood flooring. I have read comments on this forum abour "muddy" bass from Klipsch speakers (Cornwalls in particular) & suspect that the floor is part of the problem. That's one reason why many 'high-end' speakers are supplied with spikes and neoprene or similar disks sold for components and speakers. When I bought my used Cornwalls, the prior owner has installed small 1" casters on the riser bases in order to be able to move them around. I have always gotten excellent bass from these in part, I think, because these casters are acting like spikes.

Yes...many thanks for your comments and suggestions on "reasonably" priced tubed components and turntables. And thanks too to HDBR for his info on quality older SS equipment.

I agree with HDBR on pricing. I've been following the ebay prices of Heresies since last summer. In Julu & August, prices were $50-$150 less than the fall and winter. And why do Hresies IIs go for so much more?

Over the years I've been a regular reader or subcriber to High Fidelity, Audio, Stereo Review, Listener, The Absolute Sound, & Stereophile, Most are gone now though I'm still a subscriber to Steoeophile thou mainly now to keep in touch. Stereo Review was probably the weakest of the group - lightweight, predictable, repetitive. I too wish that a non-advertiser mag could make a profitable venture but I doubt it.