artto

ditto on Paul's, Dean's & Craig's comments

Yeah, I had a great time too. Alfredo was a great host. I even ran into a guy knew from about 25-30 years ago from my early college days. Passive Chappy's Croft OTL valve amp driving Craig's Heresys, TASTY! That amp sounds real good on Klipsch!!!!!!!!! I WANT ONE

I have an old Rabco arm (1960's?) by the way...this "straight-line tracking" stuff is nothing new, nor "1980's"........how's about the original Edison cylinders?

PULL THAT SQUARE STICK OUT OF HIS ***.

As much as I really don't like mr. kh, nor agree with the majority of his opinions, I do sometimes take exception. Like Kelly, I think Nak's are the best. I know a mastering engineer who swears by Aiwa decks. Considering the Neumann mastering console, lathe & tube gear & Urei time-align surface mounted speakers, etc, in his studio, to me, its kind of surprising that he likes the Aiwa decks. Just something else for you to consider. I'm a Nakman myself. But a good Nak Dragon will probably still set you back a grand........and so it goes.... On turntables...... an old Thorens thats in good shape. Linn if you can afford it. Rega is good too

I was thinking the same thing Tom. I'd like to put my two cents at this point since I often use both solid state & tubes. While many of you may not like solid state amps like Crown, here's the real deal on hum & noise comparison with tubes: Hum & noise seem to almost always MEASURE better in solid state amps. The listening experience is something else. With ANY of my Crown power amps (D60, D150 or PSA2) turned all the way up (all preceding sources muted or switched out), hum/hiss is clearly audible pretty much anywhere in the room (albeit, its a very quiet room). Hook up the Luxman MB3045 tube amps, same scenario, you can put your ear right up to the tweeter or midrange horn (Khorn) & its DEAD SILENT. Fascinating when you consider that any of the above Crown amps actually measure greater than 20Db less noise than the Lux units. Makes you wonder what they're actually measuring! I'd also like to add that the Crown amps, while made to withstand the rigors or professional touring & 24/7 use for years on end, also have some physical (or mechanical) hum from the power supply transformer which is also not present on my tube amps. All the amps are somewhat the same vintage. And its been years since the tube amps last had their tubes changed.

Jim, please contact me at artto@attbi.com regarding the Klipsch Audio Papers. Thanks

If its transparent, how come we can still see it?

SCARY

did u take a plane or ship to the Bahamas?

hornheads?......oh yeah, like bulls. Bulls have horns too. Hmmm.....ponders......BULL**** I get it

On this particular project, so far, only this machine, a Dell 420 Precision Workstation, dual 10Krpm 60GB drives made for A/V editing/processing, Sony CRX140 CD-RW drive that came with the machine. I'll try reducing the speed first. If that doesn't do it I'll try the image file burn. Hell, maybe I'll have to re-install the software too! My printer software was acting up too & Lexmark said to just re-install it. Maybe thats the real source of the problem.

Yeah. I use a 2 mic picup too. When recording live-in-concert I don't always have much latitude in where I can place the stereo pair. I read somwhere about making an image file of the whole disk, indexing & everything, & burning the CD from that. You know anything about this?

Dave, since you do live recording & use Sound Forge too, maybe you can help me on this. I havent run into this problem before, at least not to this extent. On my last recording Im getting mistracking/skipping on the final CD's. This is the sequence of what was done. The live concert was recorded on a Sony A7 DAT at 48Khz. The DAT tape was transferred to hard disk using Sound Forge in the 48Khz sample rate. The transfer was done from the analogue outputs into the computers analogue input. I then edited the recording, the usual stuff. Inserting 4 seconds of space between what would eventually be the individual tracks. Fade-in, fade-outs, getting rid of all audience applause, speechs, etc. Then I wanted to listen to a CD of what I edited to make sure the timing & feel of things were right, etc., so I had to resample the file down to 44.1Khz using the highest quality level setting. I burned a CD of this at 4x speed with no indexing or tracks on it. Everything played fine. I then took that file, made a few more changes such as lower the volume level on what would be the first track, & took out some minor, but excessive peaks that didnt contribute anything, so I could get a little higher level on the CD after normalizing it. I then took that file & applied the cathedral reverb over the entire file. Then I normalized the entire file. Used CD Architect to index the tracks. When I got done with that, Im getting a major defect rate, like maybe 2 or 3 out of 4 disks mistracking. The disc has about 64 minutes of music on it & 21 tracks. Some of the discs start skipping on track one, most in the middle somewhere, or even on the last track. I take all the usual precautions such as defrag the hard disks, reboot off the network, optimize the registry, etc. etc. Ive never had so many disc failures. These are even discs from the same batch I used on the last project. Whats your ascertainment of whats happening? Any suggestions on how I can work around this? At this point Im thinking that maybe it had something to do with the 48Khz to 44.1Khz resampling, AFTER I edited the file.

Understood Craig. The light bulb thing is nice because it also acts as a indicator of when the caps have re-formed. Lots of guys just use the light bulb in series without a variac as a cheap way around. But you're right, an amp that hasn't been turned on for 25 years may not be able to be re-formed. The caps will probably need replacing anyway.

Glad someone brought this up. Quite frankly, I liked the sound of the old Fisher tube stuff. I think it sounded way better than the EICO & Scott stuff thats constantly being pushed by certain people on this forum. Fisher used some unique tube complements too like the 8417 which Quicksilver Audio used in their early amps (early 80's). One of my best friends got rid of his Fisher around 1972. Traded it in on a Pioneer receiver. Things never sounded the same again. In fact it was that event which eventually led me back to tubes. Like Craig said......use a variac to restart those (or any amp for that matter which hasn't been used for a long time). Another thing you can do is the old light bulb trick. In fact, I'd suggest using this inconjunction with the variac. Take a regular incandescent light bulb socket & wire it SERIES, on one side of regular 2 wire lampcord. Use a 15-25 watt bulb. Plug this into the electic wall outlet & plug the amp into the series wired lamp. When the amp is turned on, the light will glow brightly. As the power supply caps re-form, the lamp will gradually reduce in brightness to a dim glow. This indicates that the caps have re-formed. As an extra bonus, the lamp also basically acts as a current limiter. Should anything on the amp blow, the lamp will burnout & stop the current flow. I use both a variac & the series wired lamp.

I sealed my Khorns with closed-cell foam weather striping between the top & bottom units, and between the wall & outside edge of the top unit that forms the top of the bass horn. Since I bolted the tail board to a wood corner plate as I described above, the back of the corner/wall area is already sealed tightly. My Khorns are on a heavy, commercial weight, thick pile, medium height carpet. I used to have them on a tiled floor & sealed them along the bottom edge with closed-cell foam. I didn't notice any difference with the Khorns sitting on the carpet. And since the shortest wavelengths the bass horn has to produce are over 2 feet long, I don't see any advantage to the Khorn needing to be on a "hard surface" such as a tiled or hardwood floor in the corner. In fact, the carpet may actually help absorb any extraneous higher frequencies emminating from the woofer. I did not physically bolt my Khorns to the wall/foundation corner plate until they had been sitting there a long time so that the carpet pile & the underlayment could settle under the weight of the Khorn. Dave, you can bring out quite a bit more bass from the Khorns by proper room damping, acoustically. In my experience, its not really been a case of "bass shy". Its more of a "too much room midrange/treble" problem. Auralex & Sonex make open-cell acoustic absorption foam in various configurations that can be applied to the rear & rear side walls. I use a continuous run of Auralex lenrd bass trap across the top rear wall/ceiling intersection. And a combination of 3" Sonex "classic" anechoic wedge panels & 2" Auralex DST 114 on the back wall (about 70% coverage) with some extending around the rear side walls. I don't have pictures of the rear wall yet as I'm still tweaking the acoustics in this room's fourth revision. You might want to take a peak at my thread in the Architectural topic area ("artto's klipschorn room"). You can use 1-1/2 "T" pins (like those to hold papers & such on those fabric office partitions) to hold the foam panels in place while you experiment. The pins won't do much damage to drywall & it can be easily repaired if it does. http://www.auralex.com/acoustic_foam_dst_114/acoustic_foam_dst_114.asp http://www.auralex.com/bass_traps_lenrd/bass_traps_lenrd.asp http://www.mhtc.net/~lowey/Acoustical%20Foams.htm A device you might try is a pro effects unit called the Aphex Aural Exciter 204. It adds an apparent increase in bass without actually boosting the bass output. Cone excursion stays the same & it doesn't require more amplifier power. A little goes a long way with this unit so use it judiciously. Being more of a purist, I prefer the acoustic route, but the Aural Exicter is an option. They made a model 104 which you can probably buy used for $100-150. http://www.aphex.com/

The proximity of the woofer horn to the walls at a corner has a significant effect on the frequency response of the Klipschorn. If the Klipschorn is not properly seated in a corner there will result a response dip in the region of 250-500 cycles per second in the Klipschorn woofer. A one inch gap on one side can cause a 7 decibel loss at 500 cycles per second. Where a fit cannot be affected, one may apply a flap of flexible but firm sheeting, such as U.S. Rubber Companys one-eight inch gasket. Most important, however, is the fit against the corner.(Klipsch Dope From Hope publication Vol. 2, No 12, November 1961). You can find something similar at hardware/building supply stores thats used as stair tread covering to prevent slipping & wear. Like the black rubber covering some people use on their basement stairs. Carpet protector covering should work equally well. Or possibly even a heavy weight building/roofing felt. You could also make a corner plate out of 2"x10" or 2x12 wood, angled (beveled) at the edges to fit the corner. Use some weather striping on the beveled edge to seal it air tight against the wall. Bolt the corner plate securely to the wall, preferably into the wall's studs. If you want, you can also then bolt the Khorn's tailboard to the corner plate. In my experience, this has yielded the added benefit of improved midrange/treble performance for some reason. More detail, greater clairity. The only thing I can figure is that this must be stablizing & damping vibration of the entire speaker system. I guess you could consider it similar to a technique thats known as "mass loading". Except in this case, the speaker is basically damped by physically connecting it to the mass of the house & earth. Doing this with a strong physical connection to the foundation (as in a partial below grade or basement condition) works best. If the gap is too big it may be best to fill it in. You can "build-up" some layers with cheap wood lath & plaster over it.

Those of you who ordered the Klipsch Audio Papers from me will be recieving the spec sheets on this speaker. It really is quite remarkable. The efficiency rating was something like 110Db @1 watt at 10 feet.

The following list of names are those of you I have received payment for copies of the Klipsch Dope From Hope & Audio Papers as of Wednesday morning, February 26. The materials were taken in to the printer today. Jim McClung, you are included in the count as per our correspondance. I'll add your name to the list below when I receive your payment. Any payments I receive after Mondays mail gets in, may be returned if the printer is already done with the job. Thanks for all of your interest. I'm sure you'll enjoy it. Tom Mobley Gregg Fautley Paul Lober Ron Takchaohi Shaun Purcell Chris Robinson Richard Flynn Bobby Crites Mark Williams John Albright Dave Herkert James Phillips Kenneth Lehr Charles Turner Jeff Caban Doug Drake Tony Zorn Larry Jackson James Tidwell R. J. Kropiewnicki C&S Andy Kubicki R. Kerr William Whitesell Scott Caldwell Chad Miller Randy Bey Fred Muzenmayer Howard Halligan F. K. Sullivan Joe Mondragon Ben Clark Joe Tumminia Bert Weimer Mike Hurd Leo Keightley Robert Hixson

This may be difficult for some of you to believe, but it is the truth. And its not intended to be snotty. Read on.. I was the FIRST (literally) consumer in the USA to take delivery of a CD player & the first CDs released along with the player. I was guaranteed first from the initial US shipment by Sony & I have the letters to prove it. In fact, I had a Sony CDP101 in my system several months before CD was released in the US. My system/room was scheduled to appear in a major audio mag & I got the bright idea to contact Sony in hopes that I could buy one before the initial release (at a discount of course) in return for the free advertising they would get from the article. While they didnt quite go along with that idea, they did decide to lend me one (of the 2 present in the US dealer tour) for a short time. And they sent the Sony regional sales manager over to my place with the player & some discs for the photo session. Now this is where things get really interesting: We had a number of friends over for the event. Some music lovers, some not. The Sony rep left the room (nature call). Everyone turned & looked at each other. Finally someone said That SUCKED! It was true. I couldnt believe how bad it sucked. After all those years of waiting for the digital promise, here I was, the very first audiophile consumer to have one of these things in their own system, AND IT SUCKED! I had been listening to better for years! The Sony rep comes back into the room & asks, Say, do you have that Sheffield Lab, Tower of Power LP? (Of course I do). Hes says Put it on. I havent seen or heard a system like this in a long time. I wanna see this thing stretch its legs! Put on Squib Cake. If you could only have seen the look on his face! His jaw almost went thru the floor. He was in total awe. Good thing this guy had already gone to the bathroom. And there was no question that this was far superior to the CDs we had been listening to. Several months later, when I finally got my player, I bought 12 of the 14 original releases. I now wish I had bought all 14 as they were so bad, that Sony/CBS eventually re-mastered, & reissued them, even with new cover artwork so there wouldnt be any confusion, and the original releases have become collectors items. And when I say bad, I mean REALLY BAD. The Billy Joel CD was the worst. Even at measured listening levels 10-15Db less than that normally used with the LP, your ears would be ringing after 10 or 15 minutes of listening. It was excruciating. I was furious. I wrote to Sony, CBS, even to the producers of some of those recordings. It took a while, but eventually people started to figure out what went wrong. Producer Phil Spector (Billy Joels producer) was also quite upset by the poor sound of the CD release. Having the original analogue master tapes in his personal vault, he compared the two, & it confirmed that something had indeed gone awry. It was eventually discovered that the production master tape used for LPs (equalized to makeup for LPs inherent deficiencies), had a copy made of it, sent that copy to a west coast facility where they made a copy & sent that copy to the CD production plant in Japan, where they made a copy of it, & then used that 4th generation copy of the LP equalized master to produce the CDs. So not only was there the degeneration of several copies of copies, they also didnt use a truly original master, & the frequency & phase response anomalies of each tape deck were also compounded. My analogue stuff was down for years while I pursued other music endeavors that required the convenience of CD. When I got everything back up & running again, I was amazed at how good vinyl sounded. I was surprised at how quiet the surfaces were. Hardly a tick or pop anywhere. Yes, my record collection has always been cared for immaculately. But then I had to remind myself how many times I took LPs back & exchanged them because they didnt meet my quality standards due to ticks & pops or groove noise. This is especially profound when you consider that youre listening to a very tiny polished stone being dragged thru a pressed plastic groove (50,000+ copies/pressings per stamp master. Which number do you have?) at 7.5 inches per second & transforming that signal into something capable of driving loudspeakers producing anything even approaching High Fidelity. Amazing, isnt it? The truth is, Audio is a mature industry & has been so for some time. The best audio reproduction was achieved long ago. Its nothing new. In 1959 you could buy a Klipschorn system powered by some nice Marantz or McIntosh tube power, a Thorens turntable or Ampex reel to reel tape deck & get just as good of sound from an excellent recording such as Sonny Rollins Way Out West (1957), as you can of anything today. Everything else is just marketing so that you have more choices at more price points so that they can sell you more stuff. Bottom line in my experience is this: 90% of all recordings released suck. That was true with vinyl, its true with CD, & I'm finding its now also true with SACD/DVD.

The impedance rating of the loudspeaker has nothing to do with it. The same thing applies to a preamp (or mixers). A receiver is no different than any other amp in this respect other than having an integrated radio section. Usually when there is no "volume control" (better stated as a "gain control") on a power amp for instance, the amp is basically "wide-open". This is not usually the way to achieve the best signal to noise ratio but some people think it sounds better that way.

I'm goin' for a record guys...........

How come I didn't get MY avatar removed?

Have another bottle Deam