Reference treat

[colterphoto1]

I had the pleasure of helping a good friend move yesterday. My task- move and setup all the hifi goodies. Now he doens't have the love or budget that I do, but does have some Klipsch speakers (thanks to you-know-who), and wanted to give my impressions of this modest installation.

He had purchased pairs of RF35, RB35, RB15, and KSB1.1 some time ago. The RB's are in the beautiful light Cherry veneer, which is absolutely stunning. He'd had a mishmash of systems at his old house, with RF's in one room, RB's in another, KSB's at the office, and 15's for rears in both systems.

I talked him into moving all the BIG stuff into one theatre room in the basement. He's a photographer like me, so in addition to usual assortment of tv's he has not one but two Canon Projectors. Since gallery was being incorporated into the home, like at my place, he has a spare projector. So one is going into the first floor gallery/client meeting room, with a small stereo and pair of KSB1.1's neatly tucked away for soft background music.

The basement room will be his HT, trains, production room. In it I placed the RF35's for mains, RB35's for rears (just set em up on their boxes for now) they will eventually be placed horizontally on a shelf about 2' from ceiling, so train tables can run under them. He has an RC35 center, so it's a great matched setup. Have an AR sub I bought from Shane-O-Mac also. Saved a pair of RB15's for 'near field' B monitors at his computer stations. Figured he'd not always want to listen to the RF's which are about 20 feet away, I like a close up set while working at the computer for better stereo sound field. It's a Sony receiver and the menu system for tweaking distances and DSP was kind of weird, but I got through it. Interestingly, it has a SUB out control that is +/-, plus a LFE adjust which is - only. GUess you can have diff sub outputs for stereo DSP modes than for Surround movies. Makes sense. This system sounded great even though there was no upholstered furniture in the room yet. I was very impressed with the RF35 smooth response. Maybe there is something to this two-way business after all! I think he'll have 27" tv for normal use, and pull down screen and Canon projector for movie nights.

The family living room upstairs has most of the source components and is for daily tv watching. We used a pair of RB15's for mains, with KSB1.1's in the rear and a KSC-C1 for center. I know it's not a perfect matchup, but with the small reference for mains, 2 channel sounds better and it's an okay 5.1 setup. The RCA receiver actually has a powered output for it's own little sub, which sounds okay at wifely listening levels.

It was good to help out a friend and fun to play with someone elses toy's for a while. I kept all the wiring neat, the setup simple, and put banana plugs on all for ease of furniture moving (later this week) and possible swaps later.

Michael

[jacksonbart]

Youre a good friend to help out like that. Sounds like a nice set up.

[Petrol]

sounds not only are you a good friend to help out like that, your friend also has managed to find himself setup with a couple nice options for lsitening / viewing enjoyment

[IndyKlipschFan]

Why is it always more fun, (After you have your system set up the first time...) to set up someone elses system. Anything but go in and re tweek yours is a PainITA? hahahah

Great friend Michael, glad you were able to help out! Good suggestions, too, on what to use!