[Mark Russ]

Bump for the edit to my last post.

[John Garcia]

Since I haven't solved my power issue in my new place, my current HT is STEREO.... My GR Research A/V-2s powered by a Marantz PM7200, no sub hooked up at the moment...and this weekend I will dig out the 2900 to fire up a movie for the first time in weeks.

[LanceJ]

Mark: that NHT external xover looks very useful. Based on some casual scanning of other forums via google, it looks to be around $300 I guess (there is no price on their page and the links to their 3 authorised dealers don't lead to the X2 anymore & doing a search on those sites results in 0 hits. I hope they still sell it).

John: what's your power issue exactly?

[John Garcia]

I moved to a new place and when I have high current devices running, I get major voltage sag, to the point where the breaker trips. My Panamax actually disconnected my gear and I haven't even hooked up my monoblocks and sub amp....it read just 90v, the lowest I have ever seen it. The house is ~30 yrs old and likely has some wiring issues. I am in the investigation process now... So far it does not appear to be something simple like I was hoping.

[LanceJ]

This may not be your problem, but about 5 years ago in our house (built around 1978) fluorescent lamps slowly got dimmer and dimmer and most obviously, the images on most of the TVs visibly shrank, so EVERY channel was "letter boxed"!

Turns out the main ground for the house had deteriorated and when it was replaced, everything immediately went back to normal.

And you probably know this but just like too much voltage, UNDERvoltage can cause physical damage to certain electronic and electrical gear too.

[Danny Tse]

Regarding bass management when a sub is used, wouldn't the Outlaw ICBM be the perfect "processor" in that situation? As I remember, Canadian speaker manufacturers like Paradigm, Mirage, and Energy used to make some inexpensive, like $200.00 - $300.00, electronic crossovers.

[LanceJ]

The ICBM was originally intended for multichannel b.m., but I'm pretty sure someone could also use it for stereo applications.

[John Garcia]

Many have used it for stereo applications, though it is a bit expensive for that, and it has also been discontinued for about 2 years. I don't know if Paradigm still makes the X-30, but you can find it very cheap used and if you look hard, ICBMs show up every once in a while too.

[LanceJ]

If you like to hunt for used gear (or in the following case the *gear* kind of found its new owner) check out what can be found out there:

"Found in the trash: Technics monster receiver" (w/pics)

This SA-800 model has 130 watts per channel but since this receiver weighs @50lbs, this is a real 130 watts, none of this 40Hz-20kHz at 1kHz with .9% THD stuff. And this wasn't even Technics' most powerful model back then --> that was the SA-1000, with 330 watts/channel.

[Kevin C Brown]

Hey Lance- I looked, but I couldn't find any mention of what HDMI rev it has.

[LanceJ]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Kevin C Brown

Hey Lance- I looked, but I couldn't find any mention of what HDMI rev it has.

Well, when a 25" TV was considered large and satellite dishes were reserved for NASA and James Bond movies, such a thing just wasn't a big priority back then.

BTW: hefty receivers like this were mostly built to power speakers like these:

Acoustic Research "9" Series of speakers. Many more companies back then shared AR's use of acoustic-suspension woofers which while sounding great, could suck up lots more power* than a same-size bass reflex design (that huge AR9 needed the SA-1000 but really needed a separate power amp to operate it at its full potential**)

Infinity Quantum 5

BTW: I'm more of a fan of Infinity's designs - AR's could be on the dark and too-warm side for me.

The Infinity from link above ("a moderately-sized speaker" - how times have changed).....





* if the designer wanted a less power-hungry model, he could sacrifice some low bass capability in exchange for more efficiency. Advents and those from EPI were examples of this: for example, their 10" models could get down to "only" @35Hz but a 30-50 watt/channel receiver was all that was needed for most people.