$325 Worth of What?

This! About 3 years ago, I was randomly looking on eBay and came across a Rotel RB-956AX being sold "As Is" with one channel out. If you aren't familiar with Rotel, here's a little bit of the "back story". They are a British audio design company that is now owned by Bowers and Wilkins (the speaker people), that have for some time had it's components manufactured overseas (Japan, Taiwan, China). This allows them to nibble at the edges of high-end sound at a mid-fi price..... the high end of mid-fi mind you, but close enough so that normal people with high-end asperations can dabble. A "bang-for-the-buck" company. Very similar to NAD, or Proton (back in the day). It's a bit expensive, but you get a lot. What does this have to do with me?

 

So, there was this 956 which was 30watts per channel RMS by 6 channels that nobody was bidding on because it had a duff channel. Here's the thing on this amp (and several other Rotel amps); each pair could be "bridged" into a mono amp for a great deal more power. In this case 90w. So a 5 channel amp pretty much makes it a 30w x 5, or 2 and a half low powered pair of speakers, or 1 pair of fairly high powered and one random speaker. All this made this an awkward amp that's neither nor. So I got it..... cheap. If I remember right, it was a little over $100 with shipping. It sat for most of a year. I finally took it to my friend Pat to look at and he fixed the bum channel. Then, several months later he brought it back when they were visiting about 8-10 months ago and it's been sitting ever since.... waiting for this......

No, it's not identical. It's an RB-976, which is 50watts per channel by 6 channels, but can also be bridged by the pair into a number of combinations, but 150w x 3 is what I want out of it. It was on eBay for $225 and $56 shipping. I offered $160, and he took it. That makes the total a little over $200 and if you add the other one for about $100, they end up being somewhere north of $300.

Roughly, creating this: an amp stack of 6 channels that's 150w across the front Left, Center, Right and 90w across the rear and back center channels. If you're wondering why I would do this since my Integra DTR6.3 does a pretty solid 6 channels of 100 watts, here's the deal. When I had my KEF iQ5 mains and Q6c center, the 100w out of a good A/V receiver was fine. However, if you've ever heard truly dynamic speakers being driven by a stand-alone power amplifier with substantial power reserves, you'll know that there's a difference. If you'll look at the insides of those two amps in the first set of pictures, there shouldn't be many questions on why they'll have a lot of power on reserve. No; I'm not going to be listening to my music at different levels. I'm going to be taking my listen to a different level. In short, when I push the system, these amps will drive the new B&W DM603s/LCR 600 with a type of effortless power and control that I didn't have with the receiver. 

I've already spent quite a bit of time this weekend listening to the 603s this last weekend after substituting them and I'm impressed. So far, I'm not so much hearing things that I didn't before, it's a qualitative difference. For each thing, there's just more depth. An expanded sense of spaciousness that wasn't there before. It was also a sense of nostalgia and took me back to when and why I fell in love with them in the first place. But there's more there. I can almost hear it and feel it. I need those amps to unlock that for me. 

Will I take the next step after that and get out the Rotel RSP-1098 that's also been sitting in the garage? I don't know yet. In case you're wondering; this belonged to my friend Pat and has a bad decoder board which had already been replaced once. So he decided that he didn't want to mess with that any more and ask me if I wanted it. Do squirrels store nuts for the winter? I might give it a try one day this summer when I'm bored, but for right now, the DTR6.3 is going to get a chance to show what it can do with more power.

I do have one more thing I'm definitely going to do this summer. You guys might remember that our house came with 2 A/V systems when we bought it. And that I sold the 2 Denon AVR-3802 receivers and 2 B&W ASW600 subwoofers. There were also 2 sets of B&W LM1 speakers. One in the upstairs gameroom and the other in the downstairs den. They're fine in the den, but upstairs is where my main system lives and most of the LM1s are just hanging on the walls doing nothing. I think, I'm going to take them down, and replacing the rears. They're a little too directional for what I like in the back. 

.....and since the wiring is already in place...... it'll be quick work to put in a pair of in-ceiling and if I get really energetic.....

a rear center as well since I have that channel in the receiver and the new amps as well.

Birthday-paloosa 2017 Turns Into Home Theater & Lan Party

My children were born 3 days apart; well actually, 3 days shy of 3 years, making it 2 years and 262 days. So, once a year, we have a birthday weekend. When it's over we collapse. We have the condolences of all our friends and co-workers, but it's really not horrible. It's chaos for a weekend, then it's done... till next year. This year, my daughter turned 11 and my son 14. And any of you with teenage/pre-teenage children will know that it's a weird age. My daughter still wanted a traditional sleep-over with 7 other squealing girls but my son was over the theme thing and just wanted to have a few of his like-minded (read nerdy, no surprise there huh) friends over and play games, eat pizza, and drink lots of carbonated beverages. This year though, both of these things will have long-term effects on me and my hobbies.

The daughter decided that this looked like a good idea...... so we built it....... Yes, a Drive-In theater..... in our driveway. Here's what happened.

Around the time we started talking about party ideas, I was working on a projector I had picked up for $15 years ago. No, that's not it. The simple fix was to replace the bulb, but that didn't work, so I was looking around to see if there was another one on Craigslist. What I found was that old projectors taken from schools and offices are cheap. Like ranging from $15 to $50 cheap! This started the wheels turning in my head. Being a teacher, I'm very familiar with them and their capabilities, so I bought one for $30; an NEC VT480. For $30, I got a machine with 70% left on it's 2000 thousand hour bulb life and 800 x 600 resolution (1024 x 768 data) which is plenty to project a move to a pretty decent size. Thus was born, the "home drive-in" idea.

The next step was to figure out what to do about a screen. My first impulse was to hang a big sheet or two on the garage door and call it good. However, as most of you are aware, in today's world, the first step is usually to go to YouTube and research. What I found was that it wasn't very difficult or expensive to build your own proper screen. Most look like the above, using construction lumber and "black-out" curtain material which ironically is white. I also found that there's a place out there that specializes in this stuff called Carl's Place: https://www.carlofet.com/ .....and this is where my daughter's desires and my own cross paths. While researching the proper size, I realized that I could build it to fit across the front my my media cabinetry and have a good sized screen that's a normal 16:9 wide-screen aspect ration. When it hit me, I ran out to the garage, grabbed the tape measure and ran up stairs to the "game room" and started measuring! Sure enough. I have roughly 98" across, 55" vertical giving me about 112" diagonal which is pretty darned close to the correct maximum screen size for our primary seating distance (read, mine and my wife's recliners) AND was about the size I had outside on the fence to hang it!!! 

 

Here's the result, attached to out backyard fence at the end of the driveway. You can see the projector sitting on a folding card table. Total cost? About $60; $30 for the projector picked up locally on Craigslist and the correctly sized screen material from Carl's bought off of Amazon Prime and delivered in 2 days. I used some 1" x 4" lumber that I had, so if you don't have any laying around, it'll be another $15-20. I used the "pocket screw" method of building which was amazingly easy. I did buy the Kreg R3 kit for $40 from Lowes, but I don't really count the cost since I've been looking for an excuse to buy one and will use it as part of my woodworking hobby for years to come. 

So, away from the screaming 5th grade girls and back to the home theater. When all is said and done, I now have a screen that's sized to fit exactly across the cabinetry of my home theater in the "game room". How is that going to work? Obviously, I can't cover my cabinetry that houses the A/V gear (not to mention the 55", 4K TV) on a regular basis, not to mention crushing my wife's Morning Glories on the trellis!

The solution was to put a "French-Cleat" on the back of the screen frame. This came out of the need to attach it to the fence, but not have a permanent mount on there. So I built a mount that attaches to the top of the fence with a cleat and I'll just add another cleat holder to the top of my HT cabinetry so I can take the screen on and off of there as needed. Not very sophisticated, but elegantly simplicity and most importantly: cheap. When not in use, I'll hang the screen on the back of the cabinetry to get it out of the way. 

Sure; eventually, I'll need to pick up an actual HD level projector like this JVC D-ILA unit, but that's down the road. For now, I have a really cheap solution to having an actual big-screen  in our system.

 

What does this have to do with my son's birthday? It seems pretty straight-forward, right? Well.... it did give me a chance to compare his rig to what his friends were using and also to think ahead a little. My son's machine is built in this Azza CSAZ-103 which, two years ago was fairly forward-thinking if not cutting edge. It's "console-sized", could be turned on it's side or placed horizontally, has the now pretty common flat-segmented interior to allow Mini-ITX to be small and slender. However, after the last upgrade to the nVidia GTX-750ti graphic card it's pretty much maxed out for what it's generation (Sandy/Ivy Bridge). When compared to what his friends had though, it's a nice machine and by far the most capable, but you guys know, I'm always thinking about the next thing. 

There is of course, this..... the ever present spectre of the need to upgrade, but that's really not what got my attention. Plus, all upgrades in this house will have to wait in line behind the upgrade of my workstation from Z77/i7/Ivy Bridge to X99/i7 Hexacore/Haswell E has finished some time this summer. 

No; the rabbit hole I went down as a result of his party was this.... As you guys know, gaming in a "mobile" sense is still a difficult proposition.... at least if you want to do it inexpensively. One of the little hassles we had to deal with while prepping for his party was that 2 (not including him) of his friends do their gaming on desktops. We were lucky in that I have random monitors sitting around, so they could just bring their "tower", keyboard and mouse. Two others had laptops which they constantly complained about which highlighted the fact that our decision to build his in small-form desktop as being correct. Anyway; helping his friends get their computers set up and going got me thinking. His machine is actually small enough to put in an equipment/tool case and still have room to hold a monitor if I did a little modification.....

Can you say: Future Lan Party, HERE WE COME!?!

Which Receivers Would I Buy?

Do it even matter!?!

The year is 1997 and a war's on. I don't mean the war in Afghanistan..... I mean the one in Japan! This is known as the war of the super-receivers. By this time in audio history, the Japanese owned the market. Not that there aren't others. Americans and British are still a factor in the speaker world as well as mid to high-end. However, as far the the bulk....and by that, I mean the "BULK" of the market was concerned, the major Japanese manufacturers completely held it in a death-grip. At this point, they were out to prove a point. And that point was that they could build equipment that was  comparable to the high-end in sonic capability. 

Oh, it gets better..... Not only did they decide they could create comparable sonics, but they could do it all in one piece..... leading to the creation of the Super-Receiver! If you'll ignore the connectors on the back of this Denon AVR-5803, the inside pretty much looks like it's from a high-end amp. It's not a Denon thing; they all pretty much looked like this..... Yamaha DSP-A1, Pioneer Elite VSX-49 Tx/Txi, Integra DTR-9.1/9.1U and of course Sony ES....

There's perhaps no more obsessive company than Sony, but they were/are pretty much all like this... focused, and purpose driven. They sold for between $3500 and 5000, but I'm not certain that any of them made money on these models, but that wasn't the point. This went on for a number of years but by the middle of the next decade, it was over (maybe I'll write about what came after some time). So, what does this mean to "frugal" among us (like me), for which $3500-5000 in year 1997 dollars is a LOT of money.

......well, like I said last time: electronics hold no value. That's versus not having value. These devices in a functioning state hold a lot of value. Most of them had 7 (or more) channels of power conservatively spec'd at between 135 and 170 watts RMS. Plus they all have pre-outs if you don't think that's enough power, or if some of those channels fail. They all have a bewildering array of features ranging from multi-room control to automatic microphone adjusted surround set up. Wi-Fi? Bluetooth? USB? Smartphone App? Uhhh....no, none of those things. Probably not HDMI switching either. But the sound of them!!! And the build quality!!!

And quite often, they originally came with remotes like these that can be programmed to control virtually anything. They can all be purchased on eBay for between $100 and $300 on any day. If you're a patient sort, I'd wait for one that's sold "for local pickup only" that's close to your location. Why? It'll save you $50 or more in shipping, the wear and tear of shipping, and most importantly, limit your competition. 

Why do this? The sound for one. These things sound amazing (make sure it's in good condition). And if you've ever owned anything that's "top-of-the-line" (even used), it's a bit of a revelation. I've owned, sold or used a number of these devices. The only thing I can compare it to was the years that I owned a 1988 BMW M5. It was the only series of these that were hand-built at the Motorsport facility on Preussenstrasse in Munich. There's no good way to describe it. Does the fact that there were NO options for that car tell you anything? When I sold it, a guy flew to Lubbock, Texas from Seattle for it.....

 

A New Receiver For A Friend

I received (pa-dum), an email from an old friend (old as in having been friends a long time vs. age) yesterday after a misadventure involving the "Spam" folder. Apparently, his long-faithful Pioneer VSX-3800 receiver is struggling with some rather serious ailments and it's time to consider a replacement. He's look around a little at the typical big-box outfits and ended up with more questions than answers. So he shot me an email....and here we are.

The time was the 90s. For those who don't remember or weren't born at that time, let me do a quick refresher to clarify some concepts. At that time, I could still be thought of in this age range. In fact, I had my 40th birthday in Chicago where this friend was in attendance. I was still very much in the home audio/theater game. In fact, when I we moved back to Texas two years later, I worked part-time in an audio store. What I can tell you about those years in an audio equipment sense is that they may have been the last of the really good years for Japanese manufacturers before they had to move production over seas and endure "quality control" issues, along with loss of profit etc. By the mid-2000s, that time was gone and home audio that wasn't "high end" was basically a commodity.

From the late-60s till about 10 years ago, you could call those 40 years the golden age of Japanese home audio. With few exception (we all know who they are), the brand didn't matter. A person could go with Pioneer, Sony, Kenwood, Onkyo, Denon, Harman/Karden, Technics, Yamaha, or any number of other manufacturers and they'd be fine. What happened 10 years ago? We enter the age where the "big box" stores like Best Buy took over the market. The gear became commoditized. What does that mean? When some product is first introduced, brand often does matter because certain companies have patented (proprietary) technologies which did in fact made them either better, or different... often both. As a product gains maturity, patents run out, competitors get things figured out, but more specifically, the consumer becomes jaded and focuses on the "next big thing". In a market of commoditized product, only, pricing is important. Feel free to go back and peruse your fundamental economics textbook. Therefore, brands ranging from Sony to Nakamichi... basically, anyone willing to get in bed with Best Buy or Circuit City at that time fell prey to the world of building cheaper and cheaper gear to have higher sales numbers. Eventually, it devalue the brand and we are where we are in 2017!

Today, we're in a dicotimus world. One can go "high-end" with Krell, Martin-Logan etc., or buy what used to be called "mid-fi" from the big box stores. Today's mid-fi isn't what it used to be. It's built in China or some 3rd world country and sold on features programmed into the micro-processor. These boxes aren't something you want to open up and examine the transformers, heatsinks or capacitors! It may still say Pioneer, but pick it up. The difference will be apparent immediately. If you're looking for something to amplify your iTunes, then you're in luck. If you're looking to actually listen to music from a CD or maybe a record, then you're in trouble. You might think; I could just pick up an old receiver or Pre-Amp/Amp combo in good shape and call it a day.... but what if you're like most people and would like to do some home theater as well? Do you really want to have two different systems?

This is what I would do. Well.... it's what I have done, come to think of it. IMHO, the mid to higher end of any line of receivers from the mid-90s to the mid-2000s are collectively the item that solves most problems. They have all the features anyone would ever want, tend to be conservatively rated in the 100 watts per channel range regardless of the number of channels. Mine has 6, some have 7, others have 5. The brand isn't that relevant, although, the "Lexus" lines of the various companies tend to be a bit better built and thus came with longer warranties. That'd be Elite for Pioneer, Integra for Onkyo, and ES for Sony. Some companies such as Denon and Yamaha didn't participate in that marketing strategy and their products are just as good. Be careful though; many had a special line with a different model numbering system used especially for the big box stores. Stay well away from those items. Unless you pick up one that's been abused, they tend to stay in good shape, like my Integra DTR6.3. As an added bonus, they also tend to come with universal or programmable remotes as well. A "dirty little secret"? They like all electronics don't hold their value worth a darn. I bought mine for about $125 and it originally sold for about $750. The image above is a Pioneer Elite VSX-49 TX. My store sold these and they sounded fantastic! They MSRP? A cool $4500!!! What have I seen them sell for on eBay? $91 in working condition. So, lets say that I have $300 to work with and can walk into a Best Buy and pick up what they have for that amount, or hold out for a pristine VSX-49 TX for $200 or so plus shipping? What do you think? I might just do a follow-up on what some great deals might be floating around out there.

 

I'm A Cheater..... In An Audio Sense That Is!

I was really bad this week! I cheated on my speakers..... my long suffering KEF iQ5 main speakers that have been with me for close to a decade. Let me say that they've been a really good pair of main speakers that did a nice job of double duty between home theater and "straight" audio. They sounded nice and were fairly detailed, gorgeous to look at..... but they weren't my dream speakers. As bad as this sounds; they were a compromise. Right sound, right price, right location, right time. Then.....

Yup. Catherine Bell..... what the......

Lt. Colonel Sarah MacKenzie or "Mac" from JAG. You guys know what I'm talking about (I like to use analogies). That one, the one that got away for whatever reason. Of course there are some of you that actually married her, but NOT ME! Not in a speaker sense anyway.

For me, it was the Bowers and Wilkins (B&W) DM603 S3. I sold these guys back in my Soundwave days. They were my absolute favorites. And as you can see from the rather unassuming look of them and that they are "mid-line" in the B&W world (nowhere close to the Nautilus Line) you can understand why I used Catherine Bell for my analogy versus say a Farrah Fawcett, or some other supermodel. 

 

When a customer would come into the store looking for speakers, and they weren't audio "high-rollers" (B&W 800 or CM series), but they weren't budget seeking (Paradigm), I'd take them straight to the 600 Series. If they were looking for a speaker that would do everything well and had a budget around $1000, the the DM603 S3 were the speakers I'd demo first..... and usually last.... before they took them home. I never had any come back.....ever. I'd have the customer come back and buy other stuff, or a referral come in to listen to them because they heard they're friend's pair, but not for repair or dissatisfaction (yes, it was the kind of store). Why the 603, and not the 604, or the 602.5? Well; here's my schpeel from back in the day. They would do everything the 604 would do (with the exception of lower bass), but was "faster" and if you were doing a home theater, you were going to buy a subwoofer anyway since the 604 couldn't do what a good sub was needed for on movies. The 602.5? No real level of bass. They were really a pair of the larger "bookshelf" speakers (602) with a built in stand, therefore requiring a sub! So, the right sub?

If the customer had the budget; I'd recommend the ASW675 every time. Tons of punch and low end rumble, but super tight and fast so doesn't muddy up the music. And the 603s were amazingly musical. Extremely detailed in the high end with the "hand-me-down" nautilus technology aluminum tweeters that have been substantially tamed since the original DM series. The Kevlar mids were just amazingly musical with the third driver an aluminum coned woofer (as in the ASW675) gave a tight bass with no break-up at high volumes. A match made in budget audio heaven.

So, what happened? I don't even remember what I was looking for, but came across some listings on Craigslist for a set of the DM603s for $700, which I think is an "OK" price, but not one that I'd pay. One thing led to another, and I found myself on eBay looking to see how much they sell for..... just on the "off chance"..... Yeah; there was a pair in Sachse (nearby suburb of Dallas) the guy wanted $600 for OBO. Since he specified local pickup only, it limited the competition for me. I offered him $500 and eventually settled at $550. So, I put up my KEF iQ5s along with the matching center channel for $750.

To cap it off, they guy said he had an LCR600 S3 that matched it which he hadn't listed yet and would sell to me for $200. It's the bigger of the two above (the other is the LCR60) and is the best match for the 603. That's a total of $750 if you hadn't notice! So, I've committed speaker divorce for my old flame that refused to die out. Stay tuned for more home theater/audio stuff. This has started me thinking about what more I can do with this quarter of my main hobbies