MrMcGoo

Prof. Thump, Your point about the woofers on the RF63s is well taken. However, my processor has a global crossover and the 63s would be the only speakers to go that low. Also, I'm not a fan of intermodulation. So 80 Hz works the cleanest so far. I may try 50 Hz again, but I doubt I can tweak enough to make it work. Again, thanks for the good work on this set of speakers. Bill

Kain, My preamp is a Pioneer SC-07 which feeds a Sunfire Signature amp. This was the same front end that drove the RF-7s. My second pair of RF-63s has been shipped by Klipsch, so the second half of this experiment is not far away. The only thing that the RF-7s had on the RF-63s is a better presence. The RF-63s can now keep up on bass with an 80 Hz crossover instead of 50 Hz. Two RSW subs needed better integration to make it work, but a day spent on bass sweeps on the SMS-1 did the trick. Bill

Primers are very tricky to manufacture. Modern requirements take the lead out of the primers so range officers do not die of lead poisoning. I have many old lead based primers from Winchester. They work reliably decades after manufacture. Reloading was one of my hobbies. People that do this are advised to do their homework or the shooter may end up wearing schrapnel. Not all data manuals have correct data in them. The powder manufacturers have the most reliable data. I can relate to Thumps water tale. Our community well didn't work well at all till it was taken over by a water district with a civil engineer running it. Bill

College faculty only hate the Wikipedia because students don't know how to use it. In short, it should lead to primary sources etc. And yes, college faculty do use it, but not as a reference that is cited in papers. Bill

tkdamerica, The better sound stage on my new speakers is from matched drivers IMO. The design on the RF-63s seems to be better than I imagined, so performance is on the level of other large Klipsch Reference speakers. All in all, it was a very pleasant surprise. Your side surrounds are already close to your fronts. If you have room, more RF-7s would help as side surrounds. Otherwise, stick with what you have. Personally, I barely have room for the RF-63s in back. Bill PS: Bass from the RF-63s is great now that I've tweaked the subwoofers via the Velodyne SMS-1 and my processor. B

My plan had a contingency: If the RF-63s did not have enough bass, then the fronts would change to RF-83s and the 63s would go to the rear. It looks like I'll stick with 4 RF-63s. The presence of the RF-7s will be missed a bit, but the advantages of the RF-63s will compensate in my case. For bass, I may just crank the subs up another db or two.[6] The R&D that Klipsch puts into its speakers is very apparent to me. Constant improvement of the product keep the customer happy as well as the CFO, since a happy customer is always good for the bottom line. The cabinet volume and stiffness, triple ports and motors on the woofers have exceeded what I thought the little 6.5 woofers could do, so the R&D has been followed by a commitment to excellent manufacturing as well. Bill

My new TV requires a center channel that is located below the TV. My RC-7 is vented and created echos in my cabinet. Hence, a sealed box RC-64 seemed to be just the ticket. It even integrated well with my RF-7s.[H] Then the thought entered my feeble mind that identical speakers all around might improve perfromance in home theater and with music.[6] So, I ordered 4 RF-63s. The RF-63s will barely fit as side surrounds. This gives me identical drivers all around, just a different layout on the RC-64. Since I have not cought the tapered array on the RC-64 combing, that difference in layout makes little difference, although a center located above the TV probably would be better. My dealer only had one pair of RF-63s in stock, so the first pair replaced my beloved RF-7s to complete my front aray. The first thing I noticed was that the boxes for the RF-63s were huge. The RF-63s are only 10 lbs. lighter than the RF-7s. Here are the preliminary results of my comparison: Fit and finish: Advantage RF-63s. The clean rear panel looks better. The new feet are more robust and are more difficult to break. The magnetically attached grills are harder to break and easier to attach or remove. The black ash finish is is striking due to the grain structure and lacquer quality. My hat is off to the folks in Hope. Sensitivity: Advantage RF-7s. The 7s are only 2 db more sensitive at my seating position 12 feet from my TV. This was a very pleasant surprise that I've only given up 2 decibels at my seating position. Front sound stage: Advantage RF-63s. The sound stage is more immersive with the 63s. Breadth and depth is excellent. Panning is very even. Another pleasant finding, but not a surprise. Mid-rage performance: Clear advantage RF-63s. The RF-7 weak spot has been fixed. Detail is improved. Tweeter performance: Advantage RF-63s. Smother performance than the 7s even with DeanG crossovers. I suspect that L pads were used on the RF-63s to balance the sensitivity of the tweeter with the lower sensitivity of the woofers. The result is very smooth highs, whatever the details may be. Bass performance: A tie; yes a tie. There is a slight advantage on Master and Commander with the RF-7. The 7s are a bit fuller and more authoritative with the cannon shots. However. the 63s have better detail. Crossover was 50 Hz in both cases. The opening to Lawrence of Arabia with the kettle drums is a bit better with the RF-63s. This is a total shock to me. May be the subwoofers integrated better. Yeah, that must be it![] Music performance: Another tie. The RF-7s have a bit more presence while the RF-63s have better balance, more detail and a better sound stage. My souce is a 5.1 SACD direct to the processor, Jerry Goldsmith's Film Music on Telarc. For now, color me shocked in a very pleasant way. My complements to Professor Thump. My RF-7s will become a going away present to a friend. He heard my 7s and said they were the best sound he had heard in a home, so I know that they will be appreciated. I will add more as I get to know these new speakers. When the surround RF-63s come in I will let folks know about front/back impressions. Bill

The reappearance of the RF-7s convinced me to take a big risk and replace my RF-7s. In short, if I've really fouled up, there is a way back to new RF-7s. I've ordered 4 RF-63s to match my RC-64 center. The RC-64 was needed to fit under my new 60 in. plasma. If the RF-63s just don't have as good of a sound stage or lose too much slam, then its back to the RF-7s. The only 7 series speakers that I will keep are the RS-7s for surround back spealers. I'm not too worried about bass with dual RSW subs and Sunfire amps for the RF-63s. I get the first two RF-63s delivered on Monday. The second pair is on back order. The whole idea is to have as close a timbre match as possible all the way around for 5.1 music and still have strong speakers for movies. I'm going to try the RF-63s crossed over at both 50 Hz and at 80. BobG convinced me to try 50 Hz on the RF-7s and he was right after a great deal of experimenting. Bill

The Pioneer BDP-51FD only has two weaknesses. The first is it will not decode DTS HD MA until a firmware upgrade is installed which is expected next month. The 51FD will only use the 1.5 Mbps DTS core for DTS MA movies. The second limitation cannot be fixed. The machine is slow to boot and load disks. However, the 51FD is a bargain at current prices and has excellent video processing and upconversion. I love my 51FD and prefer it to my Panny 55K Blu-ray. The only feature my Panny has that I like better than the 51FD is 24P output on SD DVDs. My Kuro display does 24P conversion, but the Panny is a bit better with SD DVD. Bill

Deep Color by interpolation is not as good as true 12 bit color, but it is better than 8 bit color. Color information is sent with every other luma. The interpolation fills in the missing information. Filling in the missing information is simple in comparison to reconstructing a compressed video frame. Blu-ray and DVD both use lossy codecs to compress movies down to say 30 Gb that take up terabytes of space. The ratio of filled in information is huge, much more than 2:1. The codecs, MPEG-2, VC-1 and AVC do not perfectly reproduce the original picture, yet the best high-def picture is from Blu-ray and HD-DVD with lossy compression. People should look for themselves before they say Deep Color doesn't work. If interpolation didn't work, video codecs would not work to reconstruct heavily compressed video. Bill

Ear, Don't overlook the Pioneer Blu-ray players designed to go with the latest generation of Kuros. The BDP-05FD is out as is the 51FD. The BDP-09FD will in future probably do SACD and DVD-A over HDMI. The new generation of Blu-ray players do will also send Deep Color to the Kuro, if your HDMI cable can handle high speed (10 Gbps, 340 MHz) transmissions. Deep Color uses interpolation to go from 8 bit color to 12 bit color. AVS forum members claim to see a difference with Deep Color. I like my 51FD, but won't know what it will really do till my 60 in Kuro arrives. It's difficult waiting for it to arrive. I'm trying to decide between the various proceesors and amps. The SC-07 and 09TX are on my short list. I don't need the ICE amps, so I'm trying to find out which DACs are used in the 07 and 09. Bill

The Pioneer Elites support WMA-9 Pro which includes a wide range of compressed CD formats including MP3. The VSX-90 is being replaced with a newer line of receivers, so the price is probably a clearance price. Bill

After my last car crash, posting became a pain literally. As usual, the other fellow was uninured. I've noticed that Klipsch has been pushing the envelope while I wasn't around. The new speakers look interesting. Bill

The Transfomers HD-DVD has a high bit rate DD+ sound track that is lossy. The quality of the DD+ sound track is one of the best out there. The Blu-Ray may have a lossless Dolby TruHD sound track. Bill

Welcome!!! Best center channel for a Khorn is a LaScala followed by a Heresy. Other Heritage speakers are possible for surrounds, but matching the cewnter will give the best sound. Bill

Your plasma is permanently displaying 1080p when you feed it a 1080i signal. The plasma does not use raster scan lines like a CRT display. Hence it always displays a progressive picture. The Pioneer plasma deinterlaces the 1080i signal to 1080p before it displays it. If you had a display that accepts a 1080p 60 Hz signal, you would have to decide whater your plasma or your Blu-ray player has the better de-interlacer. The only time a display is likely to have a major advantage in accepting a 1080p signal is when the signal is at 24 frames per second. Some displays support multiples such as 72 frames per second. Suddenly all the problems caused by the need to deinterlace go away. Some displays do ad new problems with a 1080p signal at 24 Hz due to design errors, but that is another story. Bill

Brett has earned his retirement as one of the greatest quarterbacks ever. I'm glad that he's out while he can still walk. It's good to hear that he also is the practical joker that he is reputed to be. He always trys to have a good time without being a bad boy. Bill

A blown tweeter can have either very bad sound or no sound. No sound is common for a blown tweeter. For a loose wire, be sure to take the tweeter out of the speaker. The tweeter will be heavy, so it will need to be supported as it comes out. Some times the clip holding the input wire barely had a connection under spring loaded clip. Restoring the connection that jarred loose has restoed many tweeters. Bill PS: I have a Pioeer that does room correction. It allows manual adjutments for each of 9 bands per speaker. I always cut the boost back on any frequency that runs more than 3 db hot. B

First, the tweeter may not be blown. Wires to the tweeter sometimes shake loose, so check that before you call Klipsch. Second, the room correction feature of your Onkyo may have added too much boost to the high frequencies. Go into the setup to see how much boost the auto setup may have added to that channel. Room correction should reduce frequencies, but not ad much boost to any frequency to reduce clipping. I run outboard amps to eliminate any chance of clipping and to improve sound quality. Receivers usually have weak amp sections, THX Ultra2 certification not withstanding. Be advised that any receiver should have all speakers set as small to reduce the load on the amp. Amp's clipping is the main cause of blown tweeters which has been made worse by auto setup systems. Setting speakers as small reduces clipping. Bass frequencies soak up huge amounts of current. Tweeters have the least tolerance to clipping, so they blow first, even though too much bass may be the root of the problem. Best strategy is to let a subwoofer take all the bass below 80 Hz. Bill

The strength of the Sunfire is that it puts out good power while it runs quite cool without a fan. The low weight is a plus as well, given the power. It also hasa good signal to noise ratio. Its only weaknesses are price and the unknown quality of the new manufacturer in Chona. Bill

I would consider a used Sunfire made in the USA. I have three of them and have had zero problems. Bill

For upconverting SD DVD: The Toshiba XA2 is currently the best, but only has advantages in 30 frames per second video and in adjustability of the output. The A30 and A35 have near as good upconvert for movies shot at 24 frames per second. The XA2 uses a Reon processor and the A30 and A35 use a processor by Anchor. I have an A35 and like the picture in high def better than the A1 that it replaced. The A35 will bitstream the new audio codecs via HDMI and it also has analog outputs for the sound. The A30 has no analog output and will not bitstream, but it will decode high def audio to PCM via HDMI. Blu-ray: They will play and upconvert SD DVDs. The two players to look at now are the PS3 and the Panasonic BD30. Future models look good from Pioneer, Panasonic and Sony look good on paper. The Denons look too expensive for what you get. Bill

And the winner is..............SD DVD. Player and media prices are too high for Blu-ray to replace SD DVD. Blu-ray is destined to be a niche product unless prices fall soon. Bill

OneCall.com has open box Walnut Heresys on sale at $500 each. The LaScala IIs seem to be NIB at $1,500 each. Bill

Separates will help the Rx-7 speakers. They need an amp that can drive a low impedance load well and introduce as little noise and distortion as possible. I have Sunfire amps hooked up and enjoy the experience greatly. A preamp is a problem at this time. The HDMI connection will rule, but the preamp must also be able to manipulate multi-channel LPCM that can be processed from 5.1 to 7.1 and decode Dolby DD+, Dolby TrueHD and DTS HD MA. These attributes are not fully available yet to the best of my knowledge. Of these, processing LPCM fro 5.1 to 7.1 is the most important, as players can decode the new codecs. Bill