MikeS

What kind of Yamaha speakers are they?

http://www.accuphase.com/index.html Bummer they don't have A/V receivers.

Think of that amp like a donkey........you load him down enough and he'll just sit there.......

Yeah, it takes experimenting and time, no substitute for it And they're extremely forgiving of building fudge-ups, as I discovered Sounds like a type of transmission line, from they way they are stuffed by ear. A TL might a nice option for my B&C 12CXB's. Although they do rather well in a four foot bass reflex cabinet tuned to 49-50Hz. From Bill Evans to Mortician.....they play whatever you throw at them.....

If I would guess I'd say it's just a fancy way of saying they're shielded. I thought magnetic fields don't really affect plasmas or LCD's. Just CRT's. Am I wrong? Good question to me.... Anyone willing to run a magnet across one's plasma or LCD to find out?

"plasma-friendly speakers" WTF is a plasma friendly speaker? Good lord......reminds me of the "digital ready" trip they used to blather about when CD players first came out...... If I were to recommend modern Klipsch speakers, I'd stick with the Reference series line. Some of the '80's-'90's Legend series aren't bad, either. I had Chorus II's. My audio buddy has Chorus I. Forte I or II would be a good speaker for the right price. My Chorus II's stock had a hot midrange, with kind of thin but tight bass. They had 15" direct radiators in the back, and corner placement helped strengthen the bass. But I have chitty corners..... I even went boutique on a crossover upgrade with caps, resistors, and inductors. But those Chorus II's always seemed hot in the midrange. I kinda wished I played with attenuation with respect midrange, before I sold them and bought '83 Cornwalls. My audio friend picked up a pair of Chorus I's local for dirt cheap. He thought the midrange was hot as well. He found the TS parameters for the 15" woofer used on Chorus I, (K-48) and quickly seen that the enclosure size is too small for that 15" woofer. He ended up using polyfil in the enclosure and came out with lower and smoother bass response. Cornwalls have a much more laid back midrange than the Chorus II, way more tolerable. They have a bit of a bump around 60ish Hz or so, which seems to work well with classic rock n roll. Cornwalls sound pretty good with about anything, except straight up grindcore or something....but that usually applies with all Klipsch. Cornwalls are good bang for the buck Klipsch speakers. One Legend series I would like to audition or own, would be the KLF-30's. If Klipsch has a speaker that can play rock n roll well, I'm pretty sure it would be the KLF-30. Forget about Klipsch Heresy....unless you want the bass to promptly roll-off at 60Hz, with a screechy mid/top-end because the bass is so attenuated, that the midrange and tweeter seem accentuated. Klipsch Lascala's with a mediocre solid state amplifier or receiver can sound absolutely wretched. But take the same LaScala's and hook them up a nice single-ended triode tube amp, and they turn into musical beasts of beauty......I never met more of a finicky speaker with regards to amplification...... Klipschorns tightly sealed in the corners for best bass response, and in the right sized room can sound rather nice with the bass. They can dig down like subwoofers, and can couple up a smaller room pretty quick with not much power. They are like LaScala's with actual LF response....... I heard a pair with Trachorn's, Beyma tweeters, and ALK ES crossover networks. That was quite a refined sounding pair of Klipschorns. But even a stock pair of K-horns still sound great. LaScala and Khorn throw off a big house filling sound. I have heard the Klipschorn Jubilees, and they throw off even a bigger sound that dwarfs the other two. There is my blathering braindead lowdown on Klipsch...... See how all these speakers have their own sound characteristics....and it's just one brand. Mike

So you are basically saying you can spend up to 800-900 bucks for a pair of floorstanding speakers? You live in a fairly large city? Maybe hit one those boutique audio joints.....not to buy anything....but to listen to some different types speakers, and get a idea of what is offered. Then hit Audiogon...... There is many different types of speakers, and one has to figure out which one floats one's boat. The best audiophile experience to you, may be someone else's worst audiophile experience. We all hear different, and we all have different tastes in music. One guy may think cones and domes are boring and dull, where another guy thinks they sound smooth and balanced. One guy may think horns speakers are dynamic and lively, while another guy may think they are bright and harsh. This is why cheap solid state amplifiers and horn speakers don't work well together, unless it's for PA use. Where it doesn't really matter about sound quality, and it's more about power/SPL/reliability. So when you mention you are looking for the best audiophile experience in speakers for 800-900 bucks, you won't get much in the way of recommendations. Someone may chime in and say yeah, such and such a speaker was the best I ever experienced for that price range, but will it be for you? For 800-900 bucks, you could make some rather nice kit speakers that would trounce the Polk entry level floorstanders.

Check out this ported beast with a XXX 18 someone posted on the Klipsch forums.

That polish Black Metal band Behemoth doesn't f*ck around. I'll have to pick up a recording or two of them. I'm about a million years old so what I listen to is a little dated. Hell, I remember when Slayer "show no mercy" was a new album. I pissed many folks off with "Live Undead".

What sort of application do you have? Would they be mounted on a wall or something? I guess one would have to figure what type of dispersion pattern the horn has, and what pattern would work best in a car enviroment. Which is more or less nearfield I suppose.......Getting things sounding correct on axis and off axis are something to maybe think about. I dunno....most those horns (I would assume) are designed for public address/sound reinforcement applications, where you are more than 3-4 four feet back from the speakers/horns.

In fact I recall looking at the Selenium D250x once when I was shopping for midhorn drivers for Klipsch LaScalas. They would make a good cheap replacement for the Klipsch K400/K401 midhorn, as opposed to the K55 Klipsch driver. (Atlas) I did end up finding a pair of K55V midhorn drivers locally.

The Selenium D250x is a midrange driver with a one inch throat. You'll still need a horn. You would have to figure what horns are recommended for the D250x driver, and what type of horn will work best for your application. I've heard the D405ti with some rather large constant directivity horns once, they are huge drivers with some ungodly sensitivity and power rating. I could only imagine a pair in a car (van?) with 100 watts to each one.....that'd be loud as f*ck.......

I use a pair of B&C 12" coaxials intended for commercial ceiling applications, but for two channel home audio use. I think most kick toms run around 45-50 Hz, right around where the enclosures are port tuned at. I dunno...whatever.....but they can churn out the death metal with punch. At 98-100db sensitivity with 400 watt max rating, they can get real loud rather easily. When I was working out port tuning, I used a sine wave oscillator, a VTVM, and a Sepultura CD for music reference.

Don't ever get hung up on home audio........especially vacuum tube amplification and high efficiency speakers. And if your about half a pack rat......it can get rather ugly. A pair of Klipsch LaScalas. A pair of Klipsch Cornwalls. My homebrew cabinets with the B&C 12CXB dual concentrics. (Everyone needs to try a good dual concentric at least once.) Polk Monitor 10A's. Dynaco A25's. Some Knight speakers with cheap Jensen drivers. Heil cabinets with the smaller AMT tweeters. A pair of Altec 415A bi-flex drivers. SVS 16/46 subs. Audio control crossover with NAD power amp. A mountain of speaker drivers that I can't even keep track of anymore. A homebrew 2A3 SET amp. Two Magnavox SEP 6BQ5 amps. A Magnavox 6BQ5 PP amp. A modified Admiral 6BQ5 PP amp. Eico ST-70 7591 integrated amp. Altec Lansing 345A EL-34 PP amp. Four Hammond organ tone cabinet amps using 6BQ5. Four or five Hammond 6V6 PPP tone cabinet amps. Piles of tube PA amplifiers, a couple tube recievers and tube integrated amps. A pile of output iron and power supply transformers I'm pretty sure I have well over 1000 vacuum tubes, fom exotic to mundane. A HK 330B SS amp. A JVC SS integrated. A Nikko integrated. More broken solid state amps. Two good working SS ocilloscopes, two tube boat anchor scopes for parts. Two tube DC HV power supplies, a Lambda and Heathkit. A Lambda 35 volt, 10 amp power supply. A cheap variac. A half dozen or more DMM's. My Triplett volt/ohm meter. A Hewlett Packard 400H VTVM. A Simpson sig generator and Heathkit sine wave oscillator. Two tube testers, a Heathkit emission tester and B&K mutual conductance tester. And tons more crap I can't remember. I'm telling ya, don't go there......I'm gonna hate life when I have to move eventually.

Look's like he's done camping for awhile.....

You can get into a more modern reliable scope with more bandwidth pretty cheap nowdays. The ol' Heathkit boat anchor oscilloscope you have there probably hasn't been calibrated since 1965, uses vacuum tubes, (which is a good chance of a worn out tube or two) worn out 50 year old electrolytic caps, and the beast doesn't even have B&C connectors. But the ol' boat anchor scopes are a cool novelty item.....and they are excellent source of parts. I got a couple old Tek scopes. Lotsa tubes, ceramic terminal strips, pots, all kinds of goodies.... But I have a modern SS B&K 10mHz scope, and a HP 20mHz scope for testing/measuring applications.

Those damn ports make all the air leak out.......

Craigslist, Audiogon and Ebay, mostly. ZaphAudio has a plan that uses Hi-Vi drivers (I think), in a wall-mountable cabinet. Won't be the be-all and end-all, but it'd sound a heck of a lot better than some "computer" speakers.Radian coaxials in the ceiling or the walls.....

Where do you find those kind of amps? Craigslist, eBay, yard and garage sales, estate sales, pawn shops....... Pay attention to condition of these old vintage receivers/integrated amplifiers. If the silkscreening is gone, or the case is dented/trashed, and there is a ton of dirt inside and out.....pass.....unless it's free. Pay attention to brand names and what tier the product falls in. If say a vintage receiver looks cheap and only weighs a pound, it's more than likely junk. Jim mentions recapping in his reply. Electrolytic capacitors only are rated for so many years of use. If the unit is powered up periodically from time to time over the years, the capacitors will stayed (somewhat) formed and dried up caps may not be much issue. If the said unit has been sitting in a basement or garage for 15-20 years, then there could be a ruined cap or two in the unit. Bottom line, the caps are only rated for maybe 5-10 years, depending on what type and rating of electrolytic capacitor. Sometimes it's a issue, most the time the unit will work fine. Even a vintage receiver/integrated amplifier that works just fine, can still exhibit the sound of old dried up capacitors. It'll have a stale dull kind of sound from my experiences. I'm not trying to scare anyone from scrounging up a vintage SS unit, it just takes a little research and some care. You'll never know what you'll come across...... Deoxit is nice to have for cleaning pots and switches with vintage SS stuff, they are bound to be dirty. I picked up a mid-70's JVC A-S5 silver faced integrated amplifier from a guy for 5 bucks 4-5 years ago. Cleaned the 30 years of dirt out of inside of it, and cleaned and lubed the pots and switches. It worked fine from get go, but was a wee bit stale sounding. I re-capped most of all the smaller 'lytics that I had on hand, back from when you could beg Elna for free samples. There's a few Cerafines, and a couple Silmics in there. It helped the stale sound. I've been beating on this little integrated ever since.......the protection circuit is tough as nails. It's only 30 watts per side, but's it's plenty for 98db efficiency speakers.

Why would you need a uninterrupted power supply for a AV receiver? So you don't lose the memory/settings?

As long as the voltage to the amp is constant with no sagging, I can't see the need for a cap. I dunno...

What are the benefits of using a capacitor in a car system? I never could never understand the theory.......extra stored charge? Even a big 1 farad capacitor will still discharge faster than a battery in it's place.

KABUKI!!!

I had my buddy bring over a old Harmon Kardon 330B receiver that had some issues. He said it had total distorted sound. The receiver has main out/main in inputs, so you can input direct to the main driver and output PCB. Worked fine that way. Found the schematic for the series of HK 330 A/B/C. Started checking voltages. Turned out to the PS section for the pre-driver PCB had a bad diode. 1.5 volts where there should be around 30 volts or so. Swapped it out, and replaced a couple suspect looking capacitors. Sounds good now. Does this car amplifier sound dirty and distorted no matter what level it is played at? Is it a two channel amp, and can you play the amplifier through full range speakers of some sort? If it maybe has a problem with the driver stages and pumps out distorted sound, it will be more easy to notice through the mid and top-end.

Maybe try a speaker kit offering of some sort. You can maybe find something within your budget, you won't have to go through trial or error with driver selection, enclosure and crossover design. And even with a kit you will learn things, it's a good way to get started. Unless you have ways and the tools to build enclosures, and the time and patience to learn passive crossover design, or willing to invest in the modeling software to design passive crossovers. But if you got enough passion, you'll figure it out. Do some google searching with some keywords related to speaker passive crossover or other related keywords. Your choice of the kit being a bookshelf, floorstander, 2-way, 3-way, MTM, coaxial....is entirely up to you. The larger three-way or MTM floorstanding kits will be way more spendy, however.