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garyrc

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Everything posted by garyrc

  1. I had a McIntosh c28 preamp that had up to about 20 dB bass boost via the tone controls AND two Bass Trim controls that has about 2.5 dB more at 100 Hz, and 5 dB at 20 Hz. It worked great in optimizing bass in many recordings, with many speakers, including Klipsch, JBL. ADC, etc. It was a marvelous preamp in all ways except one; the right phono channel kept going out, was repaired several times, then sold. Even better was an very expensive Luxman integrated amp, L580 (I think) that had a choice of THREE turn-over frequencies for each tone control, AND a Low Boost switch (4 dB) for either 150 Hz or 70 Hz. I tended to use Low Boost 70 Hz and bass tone control + 2 at the lowest turnover (150 Hz) on my Klipschorns. The bass was incredibly clean, warm, and impactive. On Fanfare for the Common Man, my desk would go out of square, and windows would rattle at the other end of the house. Windows in the music room had to have wedges (shims) put into them so they wouldn't rattle. More recently, in another house, we converted to combo music listening room and home theater, and settled for a Marantz preamp processor, and several NAD power amps. Its tone controls are limited to +/- 6 dB, but, fortunately it has Audyssey, which measures the room from the main listening position, and provides up to 20 dB cut and 9 dB boost. This works well most of the time, and I can further EQ for idiosyncratic recordings with the tone controls at +/- 6 dB. Sometimes that is not enough, but when it is, it's great!
  2. garyrc

    What Is Wrong

    A Martin Scorsese film written by Paul Schrader, the team that brought you Taxi Driver, Raging Bull, and others.
  3. About 30 watts to provide THX fs of 105 dB at about 15 feet away in a large living room. If you're going to really crank it, add a subwoofer.
  4. Small of them! I lived in California for 60 years. I loved it, the weather, the diversity, the all-channel net, and the stimulation of San Francisco, Berkeley, and Oakland. There always seems to be a good conversation in progress on a street corner, in a coffee shop, or at one of the many Universities and colleges. The reasons we moved away were the increasing traffic, expense, crime, and to outrun global warming. Well, scratch that last one. I hope you stay on the forum, and enjoy.
  5. garyrc

    Truth

    "What is Truth? Pilate may, or may not, have said that, but it was a "Good Question." Empiricism vs. Rationalism vs. Intuition vs. Faith vs. Authority (etc.) ... Hawking, and his co-author, in The Grand Design, said something like, ""The math may be dubious, but all research, thus far, confirms it." The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy took a whack at dealing with Truth, here: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/truth/#TarTheTru Do not read with insufficient caffeine. It's been said many times, in many ways, but applying Occam's razor to understanding the Universe, the simplest explanation is that we are imagining it. I am imagining it, and all of you.
  6. 110 degrees yesterday. Deck thermometer (in the shade) topped out. The cat is flat on the cool tile floor. No sign of fires, yet. At least record temperatures are not due to climate change, we are assured. We moved about 600 miles to the north for many, many reasons. One was to outrun global warming. Well, scratch that one.
  7. We run movies and listen to music on the same system: 2 Klipschorns (AK4), 1 modified Belle center (now uses the same midrange horn as the Khorns, in a DIY top hat that is deep enough to accommodate it, otherwise stock), and 2 Heresy II surrounds. This system sounds great on both movies and music, with an amazing amount of life. If anything, a good Blu-ray movie sounds better, with better dynamics than most CDs. Most SACDs are fine. We don't use an AVR. We have a Marantz preamp- processor (AVP) that feeds 2 two-channel NAD power amps with 150 real watts per channel, plus one channel of a Yamaha power amp for one of the surrounds. We have a moderately treated room with a few diffusors and absorbers, and lots of bookshelves in a room with a ceiling that slopes from 8.5 feet in the front to 11.8 feet in the back. The Marantz has Audyssey, which we painstakingly set up, and looked at the results with REW. In A/B tests, Audyssey FLAT sounds better than bypass, with more spaciousness and depth. From the main listening position, the response is roughly +/- 2.5 dB, or if fudged the way many speaker manufacturers seem to do, more like +/- 1.8 dB. Audyssey Reference, with its high frequency roll-off (-2dB at 10K) and also - 2 dB at 2K "midrange compensation," is a bit duller, but comes in handy for a few harsh, unbalanced, soundtracks (How the West was Won, Smilebox version). Our doctored version seems much more like it was in the Cinerama theater, when a woman screamed at the first impactive note, but auditory memory being what it is ... We also use a Klipsch RSW-15 subwoofer. We set the crossover at 40 Hz (after a year of futzing around), to provide a little more foundation in the lowest octave of bass. If we could accommodate a horn loaded sub, we would -- and may -- consider it.
  8. Indeed. An Altec configuration in a 70mm equipped theater with a slightly curved screen. Below is a JBL ("Jim Lansing" commissioned by Ampex on behalf of Todd-AO) version for a 70mm equipped theater. There would be 5 of these babies behind the screen, each with 4-15" horn loaded woofers (154-Cs?) and smaller surrounds around the theater (not really small, though; they used JBL c40s for surround in one 70 mm theater I knew, with 15" woofers, 3 way horn loaded, probably 6 + cu. ft.. In contrast, our local regular 35mm theater, for surround duty, , used JBL D130s -- 15" "extended range" in a very small box
  9. Well, it looks like they may have used an Audyssey microphone. Audyssey mics have no need to be flat (see ahead) and are probably not. The scuttlebutt is that the Audyssey equipped AVRs and AVPs have a frequency response correction curve matching the average response of one of their little microphones. So Audyssey's EQ will be correct except when the consumer gets an outlier microphone, providing the mic correction curve is accurate.. They say (once again, unofficially) +/- 2 dB. Here are measurements of 4 Audyssey mics, matched at 1KHz, supplied by Lukeamdman on the AVS forum. The post is labeled something like "Measurement of 3 Audyssey mics, but at the end, he measured 4. Here are those 4:Not bad, considering the cheapness of the mic. So if the compensation curve for the average Audyssey mic curve is good enough, the compensation probably is adequate. The measurements you provided the link for are in room measurements. There is no telling whether the room was live or dead. People like Atkinson of Stereophile say that in a typical listening room a good speaker will show drooping at the extreme high end, and those that don't are probably too bright (but I've just about given up on him since he thought it was O.K. to take a speaker that benefits from being near or in a corner outside and measuring it up on a dolly in a driveway). If Atkinson is right, the QSC may be too bright, and the Klipsch and the Jamo more or less O.K. N.B. The X curve is widely considered to be inappropriate for home listening, cinemas, or any use whatsoever. It is thought it was standardized much too soon, and the original measurements were iffy. There is a modified X curve for the home, but I don't know anybody who likes it. The Audyssey Reference curve starts the roll-off higher, but I still prefer Audyssey FLAT in my slightly dead room.
  10. I substantially agree. There was one good friend, though, that I car pooled with every day. We had to agree not to talk about economics, history, or politics. That worked. We made several indie films together, and that went well.
  11. Yes, it would take a great deal of good luck. I had the good luck of working for one of the biggest employers in the world, the state of California. The pay itself was on the low side, compared to that received by employees of large-ish private employers requiring the same qualifications. It is still my opinion that jobs should provide pensions. That would take more accurate predictions of both numbers of people living until retirement and number of years people would live beyond retirement. California did not do that as well as it could have, so current hires don't get as good a deal. Over the past 20 years, I think the following true: I have never studied 401Ks (didn't have to) but it sounds like a win-win as @dwilawyer said, providing there is an adequate employer contribution. A lack of fairness gnaws at me in regard to many aspects of our economy. Although CEO earnings have seemed to go down since a peak in the year 2,000 (with a few notable exceptions), I'm still reeling from reading the cover story in Business Week sometime in 1992, when several of my friends were barely scraping by. If memory serves, the CEO of the American Hospitals Organization was making $60,000 per hour ($124,800,000 annually) at a time when most people I knew didn't make that much in a year. That was 29 years ago ... maybe I misremember it ... that can't be true ... maybe it was a bad dream.
  12. BREITBART? Give me a break! I try to take a grain of salt when (very rarely) reading sources that are extreme, even when they are merely selecting materials, rather than writing editorials. Breitbart, Fox News, the late Russ Limbaugh and the like can be strangely interesting from time to time, the way a snake pit is. They belong with fellow reptilians like The People's World, The Spartacist Youth League and Pravda. @henry4841 As another old coot on SS benefits and a very modest pension, and a very, very few stocks, I get the crunch, but I also think the following, in regard to long term employment for those younger than us: If someone is working at a job, but won't be getting a pension, even a small one, there is something wrong with the job. If someone is not eligible for health benefits, something is wrong with the job ... but a single payer, full coverage health plan would fix this. If someone has no investments, a solution was proposed in The Capitalist Manifesto (it's not what you might think). employees should be given at least a living wage for the area, plus, a few shares of stock every year. These probably should be selected from the market as a whole, rather than stocks from the employer's own company -- BUT -- once in a while, that can work: How Walt Disney's Housekeeper Secretly Died A Multi-Millionaire
  13. When Edmund G. Brown (Jerry Brown's father) was governor of California, in the early '60s, they issued an advisory to the DMV that most cars were unsuitable after 60,000 miles. Mechanics kept some going to beyond 100K, though. A friend of mine drove around with a hole in the floorboard of his car, you could see the road speeding by through the floor. Of course, he had one door tied closed with a rope. A cloud of bright white/gray smoke &/or steam would shoot out of his car's exhaust pipe when he started up.
  14. I continue to point West and get the oceanic feeling Freud mentioned in Civilization and its Discontents.
  15. Covid will go away, and fuel shortages due to the Suez Canal fiasco will pass. So, shipping costs should go back down. Will retail prices follow?
  16. When I was growing up, This was a horn: t And these were lenses: ... and we had to walk 5 miles through the snow to school.
  17. Just what I was going to say! The midrange horn flange should hold things firmly -- or not? Small baffle boards don't resonate as much as large ones??
  18. Oh gosh! Our thoughts and prayers are with you.
  19. I'd vote for #2 third La Scala for the center. When PWK introduced 3 channel stereo from 2 channel sources ( 1958, crediting Snow, 1934 for the first experiments) --- "Wide Stage Stereo" -- he initially thought it was O.K. to have the center channel be a direct radiator, like the Heresy or the Cornwall, with flanking Klipschorns. Later he changed his opinion a bit (real scientists do that) to recommend that the center channel be fully horn loaded (a La Scala or a Belle Klipsch), because the amount of modulation distortion perceived tended to be that of the "worst" speaker, even if it was an excellent one. Direct radiators have more of this type of distortion than fully horn loaded speakers (with the bass, too, horn loaded). He revealed that the Cornwall, as good as it is, has 3 times the total modulation distortion as the Klipschorn, and that at a lower SPL. In our home theater, we have Klipschorns front left and right, with a slightly modified Belle Klipsch center (fully horn loaded, and after our mod with the same midrange horn as in the Khorn and La Scala, sunk in the wall, a bump out on the other side of the wall to accommodate the extra depth), making the Belle very similar to the La Scala. With good Blu-ray sound (maybe 90% of the disks), it sounds fantastic! We use the same system for critical music listening, and for almost all SACDs, DVD-As, and most CDs, it is marvelous!
  20. So sorry, Teaman! Heartbreaking. Beautiful Quote! Well, hardly ever. I had a dog and a cat when I was growing up, who worked together .... but we loved them so much. Since then, my wife and I have had 3 cats, and one frequent visitor.
  21. We like the sound of the k77, both the round magnet type and the flat magnet, and have both in our house. Both types are flush mounted, i.e., not behind the baffle board, ------------------------------------------------------------- The round mags are both connected to the bedroom TV, as the top end, 3.5K up with a 12 dB/octave crossover, mated with a Klipsch Promedia 2.1, believe it or not. They immediately give the Promedia more depth and better imaging. The round mag tweeters are oriented horizontally, just like in the Khorn, La Scala, Belle, Older Cornwall, etc. These emit a minuscule amount of sibilance, rarely -- I'd say about twice a month, and who knows if it was in the original recording, in which case I want to hear it. I also want to hear it when used deliberately, as in a literary device. We used to sit close up at the American Conservative Theater, almost always with no sound reinforcement, and could not only hear sibilance, but could see actors inadvertently spitting. Also, if you put your ear as close to some people's mouths as some hand held mics are held, in some cases, you will hear sibilance. Try it. Most of the time, engineers try to remove it. I've had these round mags many years, and back when I had top-notch hearing, they didn't seem to have any more sibilance, and I could hear 16K from behind the speakers in a fairly live room. --------------------------------------------------------------- The flat mags (K77F) are in our AK4 Khorns and our Belle Klipsch center channel, in our home theater/music room. Just as the round, the flat are both horizontally and flush mounted. With movies, no sibilance (and once in a while I ask the young people who see movies here to listen for it). Male and female speaking voices are startlingly present -- Bosch & his screen daughter, for instance. With critical listening to music, they sound great. --------------------------------------------------------------- I don't have the spec sheet right in front of me, but, I believe both the round and flat versions have superior dispersion occurring when vertically mounted only just above the crossover point typically used by EV (3,500 Hz). In a Klipsch product using the K77, i.e. either 6KHz at 6 dB/octave or 4.5 KHz with a 36 dB/octave Klipsch crossover as in the AK4 and AK5, the inferior dispersion may be out of there by the time the tweeter cuts in (sorry, blends in) -- I'll have to check the sheet when I find it. Even with the 3.5K Hz, 12 dB/octave crossover EV designed the originals for, c.1956, the dispersion is not too bad on that vulnerable low end, but they are pointed at my wife, the cat, and me. I'd rather see off axis treble, 3.5K to 4.5K bury itself in the rug or hit the high ceiling, than I would for it to hit the side walls. Even so, we had acoustical padding where even horizontally oriented tweeters might direct the sound. ------------------------------------------------------------------------- FWIW, in 2009, or so (I think), Greg tried a blind test (literally, with a blindfold) of three randomly numbered tweeters, and his wife activated them one at a time, with a repeating piece of music, at a 10 foot distance. He quickly eliminated the Beyma, and had her switch back and forth between the K77 square magnet and the Ciare. He really couldn't decide definitively, but finally picked the K77 square magnet, because it seemed a bit smoother sounding!
  22. "Recently sent back to Klipsch and updated!! New woofers,new horns and concentric tweets!!!" I wonder why this deception? If the mods are high quality (e.g., part Volti, etc., etc.), even if some more work needs to be done, they could bring a good price, honestly represented.
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