Wilson Laidlaw Posted May 5, 2008 Author Share Posted May 5, 2008 Many thanks for the suggestions guys. I have just upgraded from Safari 3 to the Webkit version (effectively Safari 3 1/2) and it has cured some formatting problems on other sites but not on this one. So a trial of the two suggested method - two quote marks "" and secondly the HTML method Well does it work? No RF-83's yet. The Italian and French couriers are a bit like the Irish builders who were restoring a big old farmhouse outside Dublin for a Canadian friend of mine. When he and his family were still not in the house after a year, when they had been quoted a maximum of 6 months, in frustration he asked his architect "do you Irish have a phrase that means Mañana, Mañana?" The answer was "to be sure we do sur, but nothing that conveys the same desperate sense of urgency!" Wilson Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
billybob Posted May 5, 2008 Share Posted May 5, 2008 Tommorow won't do, but your sun is sinking lower. So much for Courier service, that promise the moon, but are lost in the stars. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Arky Posted May 5, 2008 Share Posted May 5, 2008 Wilson Welcome, I like your humor. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Wilson Laidlaw Posted May 6, 2008 Author Share Posted May 6, 2008 Well just a day and a half late the RF-83's finally arrived this afternoon. They are both in position, connected and running. I am sure that it's not a serious hernia. I am very impressed for new speakers and the sound is remarkably open. The bass is about as good as I have heard. However I feel that there is more to come in the middle and upper middle ranges and that they will open up even further over the next few days. If, as I suspect, they have been sitting in a warehouse in Genoa for some period, maybe up to a year, the cone surrounds are bound to have stiffened up a bit over that period. A few days playing at reasonable volumes should make them supple again. Wilson Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jeff Matthews Posted May 6, 2008 Share Posted May 6, 2008 Over the years, literal attempts to translate "Manana" to English have resulted in a flawed meaning of "tomorrow." Correctly interpreted, the best translation is "not today." Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Wilson Laidlaw Posted May 10, 2008 Author Share Posted May 10, 2008 Well I am sorry to disagree with someone who is obviously very knowledgeable on Klipsch speakers but even after about 75 hours, my RF-83's have changed for the better considerably. To begin with the bass and treble were very good but the middle was just a touch on the thin side. Now some 70 hours later, the bass has improved from good to excellent and the middle has filled out very nicely. What I was struggling with initially, was speaker placement to get an even sound stage, without a hole in the middle. As I am sure you all know, these are heavy lumps to move around single handed, as all my family are currently back in England. The room they are in is very irregularly shaped, being an ultra modern French style house from the early 1970's, built by one of Le Corbusier's pupils out of large blocks of limestone, aluminum and glass. It has sunken areas and projections into the ceiling from sunken areas from the floor above. Many of the walls are curved and I don't think there is a right angle wall join in the house. the sound stage is still not perfect but it has improved hugely. I am guessing this is because timing has improved on the speakers. I also noticed this on my other cera-metallic cone speakers, the Infinity Kappa 200's. It may be with cera-metallic cones, a stiffer roll surround is used, which takes more breaking in. In order to get my speaker placement perfect I feel I really need a test disc. I had lent my RR/HiFi news CD to a friend, who appears to have lost it. I have therefore ordered one of the XLO HDCD test discs and hope that will do the job. Wilson Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kev313 Posted May 10, 2008 Share Posted May 10, 2008 Could you post a pic of the exterior of your house when you get a chance, if you don't mind...sounds really interesting. Welcome back. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Wilson Laidlaw Posted May 11, 2008 Author Share Posted May 11, 2008 Kev, I have posted pictures of the inside and the outside here: http://tinyurl.com/6fqpvy and http://tinyurl.com/5lo6oo Wilson Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Coytee Posted May 11, 2008 Share Posted May 11, 2008 Wilson, You should hook up with Ralph (dhtman). He lives a bit west of London (I'm not sure where you are). I think he's probably 20 minutes from Heathrow....at least, if I read the map correctly. I'll be over that way next week and hope/plan to stop by to visit with him. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Wilson Laidlaw Posted May 11, 2008 Author Share Posted May 11, 2008 Wilson, You should hook up with Ralph (dhtman). He lives a bit west of London (I'm not sure where you are). I think he's probably 20 minutes from Heathrow....at least, if I read the map correctly. I'll be over that way next week and hope/plan to stop by to visit with him. Coytee, When I am in England, I live about 4 miles north of Lewes (the county town of East Sussex) about 50 miles south of London. However at the moment, I am at our other house in the South of France, where I spend about 6 months of the year. www.tourisme-tourtour.com/indexa.php3 I retired from working in the City of London about 4 years ago, when I also realised a long term dream of owning a house in France. I had been looking for about 8 to 10 years, not found a house I liked and finally found my perfect house on the last day of a two week house hunting trip. Wilson Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
leok Posted May 12, 2008 Share Posted May 12, 2008 Hello Wilson, To very effectively break in a pair of RF-7s I used a sine sweep, 20Hz to 20KHz, loud enough to want ear protection when in the room with the speakers. I repeated the sweep cd track for 2 days, about 10 hours / day (20 hours total). If you do this, be sure the amplitude of the sweep reduces as frequency goes up so that the high Freq. horn is not damaged. Leo Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kev313 Posted May 12, 2008 Share Posted May 12, 2008 Wilson, You should hook up with Ralph (dhtman). He lives a bit west of London (I'm not sure where you are). I think he's probably 20 minutes from Heathrow....at least, if I read the map correctly. I'll be over that way next week and hope/plan to stop by to visit with him. Coytee, When I am in England, I live about 4 miles north of Lewes (the county town of East Sussex) about 50 miles south of London. However at the moment, I am at our other house in the South of France, where I spend about 6 months of the year. www.tourisme-tourtour.com/indexa.php3 I retired from working in the City of London about 4 years ago, when I also realised a long term dream of owning a house in France. I had been looking for about 8 to 10 years, not found a house I liked and finally found my perfect house on the last day of a two week house hunting trip. Wilson Perfect house, indeed! Beautiful house and it looks like a beautiful location. Thanks for posting those pictures, Wilson. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Wilson Laidlaw Posted May 12, 2008 Author Share Posted May 12, 2008 Hello Wilson, To very effectively break in a pair of RF-7s I used a sine sweep, 20Hz to 20KHz, loud enough to want ear protection when in the room with the speakers. I repeated the sweep cd track for 2 days, about 10 hours / day (20 hours total). If you do this, be sure the amplitude of the sweep reduces as frequency goes up so that the high Freq. horn is not damaged. Leo Leo, Many thanks for the suggestion. I think as I don't have a signal generator or breaking in CD, I will just live with the more lengthy but maybe safer process of running in on normal audio. I have seen quite a few posts on other audio websites which recommend against such a strenuous breaking in procedure and council more patience, especially with loudspeakers. Wilson Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kaiser SET say Posted May 12, 2008 Share Posted May 12, 2008 Welcome aboard (or reboard) Wilson and I second Kev on your beautiful place not to mention the M8. Still got my old M3[] You know what those two Vultures had to say about patience while staring down some fresh roadkill right[] Enjoy the RF's Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Wilson Laidlaw Posted May 13, 2008 Author Share Posted May 13, 2008 For those of you who left very kind comments on my French house, I thought if you liked the house, the view might just blow you away. There is a 60 foot drop some three feet in front of the tiled terrace you can see (very useful for getting rid of visitors who overstay their welcome) and then it drops more gradually away some 1,000 feet to the valley of the Bresque below. The mountain you can see in the far distance on the left is Mont Victoire above Aix-en-Provence. http://tinyurl.com/5b2uh7 Wilson PS The RF-83's just get better and better. However it is showing up that my Quad 606 power amp is close to being due another rebuild. It must be 8 years since Les Wolestenholme of Avondale Audio did the last upgrade to his Mk3 spec but I did not opt at that time for the larger power supply with a toroidal transformer and Shottky diodes. I have asked my current favourite Quad man (I have three Quad set-ups in various rooms in my two houses), Peter Hickman of Fidele Audio if it is worth spending more money on the 606 or whether I would be better going for a more powerful Boothroyd Stuart Meridian 559 and just getting a standard service on that (replace electrolytic capacitors etc). My Quad 66 pre-amp has already had the full Fidele treatment and it can very easily be changed to give a standard line output of 1.5 to 2.5v rather than the 0.5v that Quad uses between pre and power amp. I had the new Burr Brown OPA 627 final op-amp set to give 2.5v and currently have an attenuator in to reduce that to 0.5v for the 606 power amp. Anybody got any other suggestions for a 200 to 300 WPC power amp - my budget does not stretch to a Krell or a Musical Fidelity kw750. W Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chris Robinson Posted May 14, 2008 Share Posted May 14, 2008 Hello Wilson, To very effectively break in a pair of RF-7s I used a sine sweep, 20Hz to 20KHz, loud enough to want ear protection when in the room with the speakers. I repeated the sweep cd track for 2 days, about 10 hours / day (20 hours total). If you do this, be sure the amplitude of the sweep reduces as frequency goes up so that the high Freq. horn is not damaged. Leo Leo, Many thanks for the suggestion. I think as I don't have a signal generator or breaking in CD, I will just live with the more lengthy but maybe safer process of running in on normal audio. I have seen quite a few posts on other audio websites which recommend against such a strenuous breaking in procedure and council more patience, especially with loudspeakers. Wilson Hello Wilson, To very effectively break in a pair of RF-7s I used a sine sweep, 20Hz to 20KHz, loud enough to want ear protection when in the room with the speakers. I repeated the sweep cd track for 2 days, about 10 hours / day (20 hours total). If you do this, be sure the amplitude of the sweep reduces as frequency goes up so that the high Freq. horn is not damaged. Leo Leo, Many thanks for the suggestion. I think as I don't have a signal generator or breaking in CD, I will just live with the more lengthy but maybe safer process of running in on normal audio. I have seen quite a few posts on other audio websites which recommend against such a strenuous breaking in procedure and council more patience, especially with loudspeakers. Wilson Leo, you crack me up !! You are indeed "the engineer's engineer". Funny, I couldn't quite figure out why all your neighbors had abandoned their homes for OSHA-regulated domiciles ... Miss you guys. Best to the boy and the Missus. Chris, Carrie and Jack Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Wilson Laidlaw Posted May 20, 2008 Author Share Posted May 20, 2008 I have bitten the bullet today and bought a Boothroyd Stuart Meridian G57 (at least 200 WPC into 8 O) power amplifier as an ex-demo unit, just a few months old. I will now put my elderly Quad 606 on eBay, where there seems still to be a considerable demand for them. I could take it back to the UK to replace my even older Quad 405 but even though that is not as powerful as the 606, it has a sweeter sound. Different folks did the last upgrade on each, which must be the reason, as they are very similar designs. Wilson Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
leok Posted May 20, 2008 Share Posted May 20, 2008 Hi Chris, Good to hear from you. I have some very patient neighbors (of course they don't care when the screwball groundskeepers at the establishment across the street run a team of leaf blowers at 10:00 PM). I tried the sweep trick on the RF-7s one Sat. when Martha and I were working in the yard. It was tough to ignore. After about 15 minutes and some "You gotta be kidding me" looks from Martha I shut it down. I only lasted that long because I was curious how long she'd last. I don't know why the neighbors didn't call the police or at least say something. After that I learned the out of phase trick. I hope the spring is going well for you folks, Leo Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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