All the extra BS is just a means to an end. Wiring is cheap, and outlets compared to anything in the system are practically free. If you can get a little more out of the system, for such a small investment, to me it's worth it.

But the bottom line is: if it doesn't aid in the enjoyment of the music, it was a waste of time and money.

Remember, snake oil is cheap compared to amps or speakers.

Hi, Harry --

You said, "...I'm not really sure that there is a lot of difference between a thousand dollar CD player and one that costs two to three times as much." In my experience, assuming that the $1000 model is a good one (junk is available at any price point) and the ones double and triple the cost are also good ones, differences are at the margin, in the details. And somewhat software-dependent. I hear more space (depth and width of soundstage), more delicacy and refinement in the soft passages, and less grain in the upper midrange and highs. The lower-priced models have improved SO much over the past 8-10 years, that any gross differences that used to exist just aren't there any more. Of course, there are other issues that relate to build quality -- sensitivity to vibration, trouble-free mechanical operation, how well the laser mechanism holds its alignment over time, etc. When you listen casually for gross differences, in a showroom setting, you probably won't hear anything that will motivate you to spend more. But, if you go back a few times and start to listen more carefully, small differences will start to crop up. Only the individual listener can decide whether the added expense is, indeed, good value. If you could somehow get, say, a good thousand dollar machine and a good three thousand dollar machine into your own listening room (with your Ariels), over a month's time, you might well change your mind and begin to think the CD player is more important than the amplifier. This is all necessarily too general -- but it's the individual listener who makes the difference when assessing value. My favorite thousand dollar machine is the one Art Dudley reviews in the current issue, the Rega. If I were on a tight budget and buying a new system from scratch, that's the one I would start with. But that's just me. Cheers, Clifton

I highly recommend using separate dedicated lines with their own breakers for your audio equipment. I have 3 dedicated lines for my rig. One line with a 15 Amp breaker for my video equipment and the power supplies for my ESL's, a second line with a 20 Amp breaker for my power amps and a third with another 15 Amp breaker for my source and control audio gear. I have a basement and my gear is on the first floor so it wasn't difficult for me to run the lines. I have the power amp line and the video equipment line on a different phase than the one for my source and control equipment. I used hospital grade outlets for all three lines. They grip the plugs tighter than regular outlets. Lastly, I hammered a 6Ft. grounding rod into the dirt in my backyard next to my meter and use that as the ground for my electrical service.

Too bad a 6ft ground rod is an NEC violation!!! 8ft baby, and did you do a soil test to make sure the soil resitivity is within specs, if not, you of course KNOW you must run another ground rod in order to satisfy NEC requirments, and what size wire did you run from the panel to the ground rod..I think 6gs is min, for a residential panel and of course you used a UL listed ground clamp on the UL listed ground rod, riiiiight? and of course your cable is also grounded to the same ground point in your panel is you do in fact have cable tv..another NEC requirement. How bout' your phone system?

Is that redundant? Separate and dedicated? I also have to use 3 differetn 15A ckts so I don't pop the breakers, When I get energetic I'll finally put in the 20A ckt so I can stop using a non audio grade extension cord to get some of my amps on the under utilized ckt in the other room. Also do you realize if you have continuosu duty, which is 3 hours or more only 80% of teh rated breaker is supposed to be used, thus for a 15A breaker only 12A, for a 20A, only 16, so wire accordingly, or don't listen for more than 2 hours 59minutes, then it's NOT A VIOLATION!!! When I crank it, I have managed to get almost 18A draw, with some deeeeeep deeep bass. According to the Furman line displays in the 3 noise/spike suppresor units feeding all the stuff. Very inefficent audio amps are, what goes in, and what comes out, a lot of wasted energy as HEAT,not sound out of the speakers, coming off them fans at high speed. I'll wind up with one dedicated line and two shared, just enoguh to distribute the load, without popping the breakers. Non audio grade breakers of course. But if I plug something else in teh "dedicated" outlet, guess what? It's not a dedicated line any mo' is it? Like what if I plug my cell phone in for recharging?

As mentioned in my direct e-mail, you have purchased speakers [Aerial 6's] that will partner perfectly with a sub placed in one corner behind the speakers. I did it with an REL and achieved low bass response that I could never approach with full range speakers. It's simply the laws of physics. This underlying bass support is indispensible to the musical experience, regardless of what you listen to.

Post deleted by Stephen_Mejias

Post deleted by Stephen_Mejias

Post deleted by Stephen_Mejias

Quote:
Too bad a 6ft ground rod is an NEC violation!!! 8ft baby, and did you do a soil test to make sure the soil resitivity is within specs, if not, you of course KNOW you must run another ground rod in order to satisfy NEC requirments, and what size wire did you run from the panel to the ground rod..I think 6gs is min, for a residential panel and of course you used a UL listed ground clamp on the UL listed ground rod, riiiiight? and of course your cable is also grounded to the same ground point in your panel is you do in fact have cable tv..another NEC requirement. How bout' your phone system?

I actually ran into this problem building a house and having bedrock starting at about 12 inches below the surface. The solution? I drove the ground rod as deep as I could get it and sawed it off. The inspector came by and I cussed about how much of a pain in the ass it was to drive the ground rod in all the way and he nodded as he signed-off on the inspection.

Legacy FOCUS go down to 16Hz...for real, I've seen them do it right here. And that's room shuddering Bass. FOCUS is a full range speaker system. Well designed speakers do it all.

Quote:

Quote:
Too bad a 6ft ground rod is an NEC violation!!! 8ft baby, and did you do a soil test to make sure the soil resitivity is within specs, if not, you of course KNOW you must run another ground rod in order to satisfy NEC requirments, and what size wire did you run from the panel to the ground rod..I think 6gs is min, for a residential panel and of course you used a UL listed ground clamp on the UL listed ground rod, riiiiight? and of course your cable is also grounded to the same ground point in your panel is you do in fact have cable tv..another NEC requirement. How bout' your phone system?

I actually ran into this problem building a house and having bedrock starting at about 12 inches below the surface. The solution? I drove the ground rod as deep as I could get it and sawed it off. The inspector came by and I cussed about how much of a pain in the ass it was to drive the ground rod in all the way and he nodded as he signed-off on the inspection.

Is bedrock a good ground? I bet it is a goood foundation for the house.

Quote:
Legacy FOCUS go down to 16Hz...for real, I've seen them do it right here. And that's room shuddering Bass. FOCUS is a full range speaker system. Well designed speakers do it all.

What kind of sounds do you hear?

TEH is THE short bus way of spelling. When I was a young lad, I could never get on a bus longer than ones having about 8 rows! Oh, how i yearned for just once in my childhood years, to be able to walk down teh long aisle of a BIG bus...to have to actually hang on before I got to teh last seat, as teh driver accelerated way before reaching my seat! But on MY bus ride (the SHORT ONES) I always was in teh seat before the driver gave it teh gas.....oh, how I wanted to be still standing, as teh bus drove away, and me teetering and wobbling almost crashing to the floor, of a Mentally standardized student's bus. Namely teh Full size BUS, not a SHORT BUS.

That musta' been Fire Inspector Bill!!! We wire for fire. The ground is very important for lighting strikes anywhere in teh system, which can bring teh line up to incredible levels, with no where to go, to bring them to ground. Chech and Chong did a movie about poorly installed ground rod, and poorly grounded services...remember Up in SMOKE? No audiophile line cords are gonna help in that situation. Not much of anything will...Properly grounded service panels are the prime protection for a lightening strike, and other ckt anomolys. I actually studied this stuff, I might even know about it a little. did I mention, while I was reading my Electrical Grounding books, I listen to Legacy WHISPERS with soem Vanalstine stuff driving it? so we all don't forget.

16Hz is more of a room shuddering than actually hearing much, it's like an eqrthquake!!!! It's GREAT!!! I sold my FOCUS and went on up to WHISPER....aaahhhhh, they ain't speced as deep, but teh midrange is superior, and no room interactions, incredible stuff. It's all good, it just keeps getting gooder and gooder. www.legacyaudio.com HELIX...the incredible Helix monster!!! I don't think teh floors in my house can support them.

To really do it correctly, you should use a megger, and measure soil resitivity, if too high, you can actually add some material to the soil to increase condutivity, The NEC requires a specific resitity reading, if it can't meet it, drive 2 rods like 6ft apart, tied together, with UL listed clamps of course, listed for outdoor and possible direct burial...

Dup,i'm with you on the "Legacy" thing,at least,subwoofer wise.
KEF Q-30 (sold it)
B&W ASW-800
Velodyne HGS-18 (pair)
Legacy Pacemaker (burned its amp)

The Pacemaker beats everything i own.It would cost a fortune to have the amp replaced,so,went on and bought a second Velodyne to beat a single Pacemaker and i am not reffering spl-wise.

Post deleted by Stephen_Mejias

What size room do you need to get that bass response from those 185 lb., 55' high monsters, never mind the amp. requirements ?

Just a regular room. 11 X 18 or something along them lines. VanAlstine OmegaStar EX amps of course 4 in mono through Vanalstine Ultra Hybrid phase inverters. 4200W RMS available roughly . 2 X 900 2 X 1200 or so. Watts is good, Watts controls the drivers, and lets the things do what they really can. I actually heard my current models kinda distort at a store demo, they where only using 250W pc RMS amp, at the levels I want to get, it really just wasn't up to the job. as efficient as the Whispers are, they are 4 Ohm, they need lotsa current. The VanAlstines deliver, super stable, powerful, reliable.

I have the same size dedicated room [12X18] and I can't imagine such heavy hardware in there, as you describe. I'm talking about 60 lb. Aerial 6's, driven by a 125 watt amp with a medium powered woofer in the corner. And with that, I'm listening at about 75 db. at 40% setting, w/ a passive volume controller and tube buffer, delivering down to 20 hz. [verified w/ a Rives CD and Radio Shack meter] ! Your setup seems like total overload for that room size.

I agree, in theory, but you never know until you are in the room. My 26' X 14' room was too small for the Mirage M1-si's (at 5' high and around 190 pounds, in the same size category as the Whispers), and it seems about perfect for my Triangle Volante's,
but, repeat, every room is different, regardless of size, and generalizations are meaningless. Let's not forget individual preferences. If you like them, the walls melt away and size becomes irrelevant. My eyes popped out when I saw "11' wide," because I didn't think 14' was NEARLY big enought for the Mirage, and the Legacy Focus models I tried were borderline, but my 26' X 14' may have "smaller" acoustic space than DUP's 18' X 11'. Generalizations just don't work in this pursuit. You have to just throw 'em into the room and see if they work. Clifton

75dB? You sure the amps are even turned on? Background is like that....Crank it baby!!!! It's not overload, it's ALIVE, it's REAL, it has IMPACT and visceral excitement. The hairs on my arm don't just stand up, they BOOGIE!!!!!

The adjoining room is wide open next to the room where the speakers are, so it kinda vents the extra pressure!!! Sometimes i open the sliding door in the adjoining room if i really wanna CRANK it, to vent the room pressure some more. don't want the house to over pressurize like an over inflated tire. It's all bout' moving some air, and it has to have some place to go. some of teh worst sound I've heard has been in larger live venues, all BOOM and BLOSE notes ie. it's all 80Hz Boom and mud. Not so with WHISPERS, I previously had FOCUS. Whispers just work entirely different in the same room. High power is not just for SPL, it give control, and keeps them drivers in control. Wonder what a double Whisper system would do, like the old double Advent setup from the 70's. That worked for me for years, back in the early days. Moving air needs drivers. Just like a moving van needs a driver to move the stuff.

I had the Mirage -3si in the same room and these sounded the worst . They're omni-drectional and overloaded the room something awful, so the type of speaker does matter.I firmly believe that there is a relationship between speaker and room size/configuration, and the trick is to find it to preserve the subtely of the music. The rule I have evolved after many years of experimenting is try the least size speaker you can get away with so as to provide the most air around the speaker.

Yes. The big Mirage designs (both the M-3si and the M1-si) needed a LOT of width -- I would say at least 18'-- and enough length to put you at least 10-12 feet in front of them, while the speakers themselves needed at least 6' behind them. I heard both models in very large demo rooms and they sounded terrific. DUP is right, though, in saying well-designed speakers need a certain minimum power, even if they are quite sensitive. My Mirage's were just too damned power-hungry. DUP's Whispers are quite sensitive (around 92 db, as I recall) yet are designed to take an enormous amount of current without flinching, and (from my limited experience with them), they DO sound best when cranked up a bit.

DUP, I DID like both the Focus and the Whispers, especially in the bass (I liked the Focus bass a bit better -- a room thing, probably), but as one who attends many live symphonic concerts, I just needed to hear a more "out-of-the-box" presentation, more "air" on top, to capture the spread of massed strings I hear live. You just gotta realize that preferences are subjective. The Van Alstine preamp (his top-of-the-line hybrid, about $1600 as I recall) I had for awhile just had to much "glare" in the 4 kHz range for me, and sounded splashy in my system. When I called Mr. VA, he said he could fix it with different tubes, but I just didn't want to fuss with another round trip. So I went with preamps that have less of their own character, the more neutral-sounding ones. My current favorite is the new VTL (costs and arm and a leg) in my system in Incline Village, but for the money, I don't think you can beat the Adcom 750 and the Musical Fidelity 308 that I currently use here in my apartment with the Triangles. Please do not take this as a recommendation. Your tastes may differ. Clifton

lATEST TOP O' D' LINE IS NOW CALLED ULTRA HYBRID EC WITH PHONO,REMOTE, SOMETHING LIKE $2300. hYBRID BRINGS OUT THE TUBE AND THE FET