garyrc

Just because you mentioned theaters, I'll mention that: Starting in 1953, 35mm CinemaScope had magnetic 4 channel stereo -- three channels behind the screen, and a 4th for surround that could either play through all the surround speakers at once, or left side, rear or right side. In cheap theaters, or the boonies, the projectionist had to manually switch them. In the better theaters, the switching was done in response to a low pitched beep in the surround channel (surround didn't go much below 50 Hz), that, when detected, automatically switched. 70 mm Todd-AO was introduced in 1955, with 6 channel magnetic sound by Ampex, that sounded great! Ampex hired JBL (then known as Jim Lansing) to design and provide the speakers. Later the Jim Lansing company licensed Ampex to make the speakers they designed. Todd-AO used 5 channels behind the screen, and a single surround with switching similar to that of CinemaScope. By 1957 we were used to wide, deep, dynamic multihannel in the theater, but heard the vinyl soundtrack records at home in unexciting mono. When stereo records came out a bit later, those with extra money immediately "went stereo." Others pooled equipment for a few days at a time. At the next HiFi Fair, Klipsch showed up with 3 channel stereo from a 2 channel source. We had to have it! For one of us it took 45 years.

La Scala will be cleaner and have snappy, tight bass, so percussion instruments will sound good. You won't get much response below 60 Hz, but that's a good place to bring in your subwoofer. Some people don't use a sub with La Scala IIs, but I think you'll want one if you 1) play recordings of organ music, 2) like bass a lot, 3) use the speakers with home theater. Many people think that La Scala IIs are a bit harsh sounding without a sub, but fine and powerful with one. Others don't hear a problem without. YMMV.

Others may contradict this, but a downside of having 2 speaker systems per channel in the same room is multipath distortion with comb filtering (jagged frequency response). On the other hand, some people get away with it. Two speakers in front and two in back, from just a two channel source, can sound pretty exciting. Consult an expert to make sure that it doesn't result in too low an impedance for your amp. There are circuit boxes that may help. See Parts Express. There are some circuits you can use to provide extra spaciousness from multiple speakers, 2 in front (right and left channels as usual) & 2 (right rear and left rear) in back, including the Halfer ambience circuit or Dynaquad. I had something like this c. 1974, and it worked well, most of the time. I heard that it puts a strain on some amplifiers. I have no idea if that is really true. Someone else may have more info. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hafler_circuit. Once again, see if Parts Express mentions this. Some pre-amps/receivers have PLII (Pro Logic II) that creates 5 channels from 2, but you need extra power amps (or channels). Some settings on receivers called something like "Multi-channel stereo" put out 4 channels from 2 channel sources, but, once again, you need more amps. Right now, for 2 channel sources, I use 2 channels or Dolby PLII music for 5 channels (3 of them simulaed), depending on what sounds best (always). For SACD music disks in 5 channel, I use 5 channels, plus subwoofer. For Blu-ray movies I use 5.1. All of these sound great, almost all of the time. In my big collection, there are some "problem children." I wanted nothing to do with Dolby PL II until a friend persuaded me to try it. Wow! I used to have a "Beware of the Dolby" sign posted above my sound equipment. Those days are over. Go ahead, fall down the rabbit hole -- it's fun!

Trivia: there is a Frazier in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, in Sharon Tate's place, I think. It takes place in 1969. But the Frazier is a different model speaker than yours (a different shape and size). (From Allan Songer's post Finally Analog here in the high desert --in 2 channel Home Audio on this forum. See that thread for a list of more equipment seen in the movie).

Right now, we no longer have people in, 5 at a time, for movie night. In the future, I will probably leave more distance between myself and others. Social distancing may be here to stay.

Isn't 10K a little high? As you say, you will determine this empirically. My guess as a starting point might be just above the highest fundamental (4,186 Hz on the piano?), or split the difference?? The JBL Paragon crossed over to the 075 supertweeter at 7K. The presence/absence of the tweeter was quite audible, yet didn't screw up the fundamentals. I think at the HiFi fair they ran it turned up quite a bit.

I've never heard them. Do you have a link to an article or info? Actually, in a liquor store I was once in, there were 2 Radio Shack supplementary tweeters of the kind Stereophile added to the Bozak Concert Grand for their review. They were just plunked on a couple of shelves on opposite sides of the store (not near the main speakers), among all those diffusing/reflecting bottles! They did sound fairly spacious and airy, I guess. Of course there were speakers in the past that were rear firing; Bose 901, some JBL Aquarius (as the name implied, they sounded best with a little vegetable aid), the Empire Royal Grenadier, etc. PWK's response to these was that it would be hard to avoid a diffuse, reverberant field if the listener was far enough from the speakers. He considered normal listening distance to be 16 feet. I found that to be true in fairly "live" rooms, like my parents' old living room. Here is a Realtor's picture of it, using the customary, deceptive, wide angle lens. Back when I listened in that room, it had a large Persian rug, and diffusing wooden Venetian blinds, so it wasn't that "live" then. The sound was marvelous! So ... when my wife and I moved into a new house, we built a music room/home theater of the same dimensions as my parents' room -- and, by coincidence, PWK's. The sound is quite good, but not as spacious sounding as my parents' living room. We are gradually removing absorbing materials from the room, bit by bit, while leaving the diffusers and vases, etc. in place. I heard of a guy who aimed the big mid/treble horn of the Altec A7 (I see the number 511B gliding through the mist of memory) toward the wall.

The Virus won't get you there! Is that near Joshua Tree National Monument or 29 Palms? A friend and I made a short film there when we were in our freshperson year in college. Great rock formations and friendly lizards. Wow, is that a Metregon? What drivers? How does it compare with any Klipsch you have (had)? I had a TD125 with SME and Ortophon moving coil (the one coded "light," because the transformer -- or ss amp for moving coil -- was separate so as not to make the shell heavy). Probably the best sound I've ever had.

I, too, think head wear or dirt on just one channel is not likely, but, just for the heck of it, run a cleaning tape through it about 5 times. If that doesn't work, inspect the internal wiring leading to the recording head (I assume there are separate record and play heads on your unit. Someone else, perhaps a bench tech, will take you from there. P.S. Avoid cheap tapes that shed or stretch. Back in the day, shorter tapes were sometimes thicker than long ones, and good brands were Maxell, Ampex, Scotch (3M), TDK, etc. The cassette medium was a big compromise, but not as much of one as 8 track. Some Metal Tapes were rather high fidelity This may be obvious, but you may have a bias switch and an EQ switch. EQ affected playback only, but bias needed to be set for the tape type before recording.

Grieg's Peer Gynt on 78 rmp disks. Walt Disney's Fantasia in the theater (first re-release)

I don't know if we are getting one. If we do, and we are doing O.K., we will look for a local family who needs it more, or look for a charity. Everyone should spend it, somehow. I'm confident that the needy will do that. Everyone else should spend it to help the economy.

For years and years there was a marvelous, probably homemade, old speaker up on a high shelf next to the always-open doorway of a bookstore called RamBam (i.e. Moses ben Maimom, aka Maimonides) on the corner of Dwight and Telegraph in Berkeley. Later, the bookstore was sold, and became Shakespeare and Company. The speaker stayed, playing away, entertaining all of us who would stand in front of the magazine rack reading I.F. Stone's weekly, Commentary, and the like, for free. The grille cloth started out yellow. By the time I left the area (after about 40 years) the part of the grille cloth that was in front of the woofer was black with dust, dirt, tobacco smoke, that other smoke, car exhaust from the street that was right there, and from time to time, tear gas, that had been sucked in by the magnet. Hopefully, the speaker with the dirty yellow grille with the big dark circle in the center is still there.

I think the going price is about $75.00 to $100.00; calibration does not come cheap. You may want one that allows you to enter the calibration their lab derived when measuring the mic into REW (which is free).. Look for a USB mic so yon won't need a mic preamp (I think). There is an LVC thread on this. I recommend reading it. https://www.minidsp.com/products/acoustic-measurement/umik-1

RIP

If anyone has a chart or something that compares these, I'd appreciate a comparison of the sensitivity and subjective sound of the T35 round magnet, K77, K77M, K77F (and D). Thanks.

They aren't 6 feet apart! I know, I know, they have 24 feet between them.

Are they? For 5.1? I'd try the minimum first. Make sure that all channels, including surrounds, are at the same volume. Use an SPL meter. The Pink Noise usually used to balance is band limited to 500 to 2K, so, since this is midrange, a Radio Shack meter is OK. If need be, turn up your surrounds. I find that the amount of surround on different movies varies considerably (!) from nearly none to overwhelming. TV is another varying hare. So you might need 3 different settings 1) Average movie level, 2) Average TV level 3) Average multichannel disk music level (have you tried these? Many good ones from many classical to Pink Floyd; I prefer classical, but their surround varies a lot). I was totally against adding surround to disks that were strictly 2 channel, until a friend persuaded me to try it by using PL II. It really opens up many classical recordings, so I use it about 60 -75% of the time with 2 channel disks). If you decide to put out the $$$ for a new AVR, I'd think NAD would be good. I use Heresy IIs for surrounds, and since my 5.1 system is mix and match, to a degree (see my signature), I use 1/2 of a NAD power amp with one Heresy II, and 1/2 of a Yamaha power amp with the other Heresy II. The one with the NAD sounds better. Other NAD power amps sound great through my Klipschorns and Belle Klipsch. I don't know about their AVRs, but they have a good rep.

How much kick is kick? With your room and your speakers, For a gentle kick, but with some authority, maybe 50 real watts would be O.K. For realistic kick that sounds like a live kick drum, you might need between 100 and 200 real watts. ... plus a darn good high powered subwoofer that comes in at about 60 Hz or 40 Hz and below, maybe down to 20 Hz. KICK DRUM

You should get enough power, unless you really do want your head to explode. Based on the in-room sensitivity figures, your integrated amp and the RF7s should provide at least 108 dB peaks at 13 feet in a normal room with a true 70 watts per channel, even with a fudge factor built in. I've heard the concerns about the impedance dips causing the RF7s to need more "juice" than the specs imply. I tend to trust Klipsch that the RF7s are 8 ohm compatible, but if you want to go with a big power amp, I'd stick with McIntosh, or perhaps one of the NADs that claim to be optimized for "4 or 8 Ohms." As you probably know, you'll need to double the power to get a 3 dB increase. This one -- the MC152 -- would give you a 3 dB increase, but I'm not sure it has autoformers: This one -- the MC312 -- would give you a 6 dB increase: If you really want to blow up your head, and you win the lottery (do the second first), McIntosh makes an MC2KW 3 piece mono block that puts out 2,000 watts continuous and up to 8,000 watts instantaneous peak. Of course, you will need 2 complete sets (6 pieces) for 2 channel stereo, and produce super high SPL, but, as PWK once said, you should have a fire extinguisher handy. The 6 piece set can be yours, if you shop around, for about $160,000. `POW'

Down ... then Up.

If we are going to do this, how about $80 per month for an apartment in the S.F. bay area in 1969? I was making $346/month. What happened?

California is not monolithic. I know the OP is not looking in San Francisco, but here are some of my (biased) perceptions comparing the two cities. The median house price in San Francisco was 1.3 million last time I checked. LA may be a little less expensive, but S.F. is more intellectually diverse, IMO. I wouldn't have thought so, but every time we, or people we know, go to LA, sooner or later, we seem to run into unsophisticated or narrow-minded people who are status seeking types. I realize this is probably just poor sampling, but it seems to happen every trip. It's spooky. The San Francisco Bay Area, especially S.F., Oakland and Berkeley, where I lived and worked for about 50 years, do not seem to be that way. Neither does the "little" (population 55,000) college town we live in now. Other differences: LA ..... warm or hot wind.......... SF.... cool, refreshing wind. LA ..... high housing prices........SF.... even higher LA......still has some smog .......SF.... mostly clean air, if you avoid the freeways LA......Film and Music industry, Glitterati....SF smaller, independent filmmaking & music making. LA.....mostly moderate crime, but burglar alarm advised ... SF.... mostly moderate crime, but alarm, and never leave anything in a car. Both have extremely high crime in a few areas. In both homelessness is increasing, for obvious reasons. Politically, both are heavily Democratic. All statewide elected officials are Democrats, as are both United States senators and the governor. No Republican has been elected to statewide office since 2006. Of the state’s 53 congressional districts, 7 are represented by Republicans. In most areas of the state people registered as independent tend to support Democrats more often than Republicans. Both are sanctuary cities.

And it's growing. It was once peaceful. Now this:

It is possible for something to sound loud and not be loud in terms of SPL. Certain kinds of distortion or room ringing, etc. can sound loud; the cheap little hand held transistor radios of the '60s, or the portable TVs of the '70s could sound very loud due to a high percentage of distortion. If the distortion is low, and the room is good, and the speakers are Klipschorns, Jubs, Forte, Cornwall, JBL Project EVEREST, and the like: 80 dB = medium level 90 dB = fairly loud 100 dB = very loud 105 dB = THX/Dolby full scale for frequencies above 80 Hz in a > 5,000 cu ft room 115 dB = " '' " " " for frequencies below 80 Hz " " " " " " " " " The last two levels are appropriate, in the frequency ranges specified, for the end of a Beethoven or Mahler symphony.

I have Audyssey, Klipschorns (AK4) with a Belle Klipsch center. GOOD recordings get Audyssey FLAT, which attempts to correct the room and the speakers to achieve flat response from 20 to 20K Hz. It gets close, at +/- 2.3 dB 31 to 15K Hz, as measured by REW and a calibrated microphone from the main listening position. HARSH recordings, or those with DISTORTION between IK and 4K , or above about 8K, get Audyssey Reference, which imposes a 2 dB dip at about 2K, and -2 dB at 10 K tapering to - 6 dB at 20K. Although this setting is meant to compensate for rooms that are too live by imposing a slight treble roll-off, it helps cut the harshness of bad recordings The 2dB dip in the 2K Hz Harshness Zone is particularly helpful, although subtle. With EITHER of the above, if more bass is needed for the sake of balance, a boost of a few dB is applied, manually.