Halos in place, Axioms sounding great !!!

Just finished with a quick sound check, system is sounding great, one courious thing. Taking a sound level reading in the usual listening area, I have gained a 10 - 14 db increase, with the same volume control setting as before, not sure if this is becaue of the seperate amps, changing to balanced cables or what. To tired to figure out why as of right now. Have the triggers all working, so when the system is powered down, the amps shut down in sequence, kinda of cool hearing the relays click as they shut down. Yes, a simple thing, but need to take what I get at this time.

Took a few quick pictures of the days progress.

Halo boxes, need to find some place to store them soon,

Sony mega changers removed to make room for amps

Three new A 21s

A 21s out of the box.

A 21s in their new home.

Looking mighty good.The A 21s are more than likely more sensitive to the in coming voltage from the prepro.How is the heat situation going for ya ?

Have only done a quick 2 hour test, listening area at 102 -107 db, all four amps running cool on tops, heat sinks just warm, looks like having seperates will be worth while for sure.

Okay! I am now officially GREEN WITH ENVY! Pant, pant! Drool, drool!

In reply to:
Have only done a quick 2 hour test, listening area at 102 -107 db, all four amps running cool on tops, heat sinks just warm, looks like having seperates will be worth while for sure.

is that C-weighted and slow response? If so....that is freaking loud!

>>If so....that is freaking loud!

Wow... you're wearing hearing protection or standing out in the yard, right ?

WHAT'S THAT ? NO, I DIDN'T HEAR THE EXPLOSION, THE STEREO WAS TURNED UP A BIT...

NICE!

You gotta love the guy for getting his priorities straight. I mean, how many months have we seen that unfinished fireplace now?????

Just ribbing you, Dennis. Congrats, man! It looks amazing. If your priorities change again, I would be more than happy to "hold" those Halo's nice and safe for you!!

Shawn

Geez, seems people are around tonight, thanks for the compliments, much appreciated.

Decided to watch League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, considering the speakers/sub are not adjusted/tweaked, the PLIIX made the 7.1 sound rather good. The new kids are still running cool, so see no problems so far. Took a couple of quick pics, room was total darkness, first the system with the flash, second no flash and only the system lights on. At the bottom of that picture, you will see the lights being reflected on the floor. Each amp has the blue 'Halo' around the power button, in the top center the red 'P' logo, which is a status light, when the amp is OFF (light dimmed) ON ( full brightness) BLINK ( problem), the two blue led lights for channel status.

Ya, meter at those settings, and becasue of the size of the listening area and great speakers <g> its not as loud as it may seem, but loud enough you can't talk to a person next to you and hear each other. lol Just a bit louder than my usual listening range, but for testing, makes the amps do a bit of work.

Actually the gas fireplace was just installed in Nov, to replace the small one that was installed by the builder. This is the Lennox LSS-40, has a 41k BTU capacity and is 73% efficent, had a chance to get it at dealer cost, and I did the removal of the old one, and installed this one. Did not finish the drywall as I knew I would be removeing it for running new speaker wire. But ya, need to get back to that and several other house projects...........some day........right after I tire of the HT system.

Thanks for the offer Shawn, but this system is not getting out of my sight, but still in need of a house/cat sitter for the Disney trip in June.

Tempting...

Hey Dennis,

Please excuse me while I climb up on my soapbox for a moment;

"Have only done a quick 2 hour test, listening area at 102 -107 db"

Careful Man, LOUD is FUN! And I am as guilty as probably everyone on these pages. BUT...
This is from OSHA; "According to the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (1998), the maximum exposure time at 85 dBA is 8 hours. At 110 dBA, the maximum exposure time is one minute and 29 seconds."

You DO want to keep hearing the music, Right?
(Not to mention conversations in crowded restaurants!)
Take it from a guy wgho spent about 10 years in the 10th row of Dead shows. Hearing loss SUCKS!

OK, I'm down off the soapbox.

I'll bet those things sound Incredible!!!

BTW, I didn't see a post regarding wether you got everything hooked up in time for your listening demo party last weekend.
Did You?
How are you liking that 2900? Now that I've worked the (operator induced) bugs out of mine I am loving it.
Tom

Well the high volume listening is not like I'm in that area for long periods, testing has been done at the high levels to see if I can brake the Halos well I'm on a test/exchange/return agreement, I'm not going to be 'stuck' with them if they do not do what I expect. So kinda putting them to the extreme ends of what I may run them at for BBQ parties out doors and such.

Think I mentioned about the party in one of the other threads, if not, yes, everything was up and working. Only one comment that I wrote off as typical lack of audio knowledge or in believing tech hype. This person upon seeing the system, went right to the Halo C2 processor, and after some time of looking at it, I walks over to see if he had a concern. He was looking to see if it had the THX rating, and then asked me if my entire audio system had been THX certified, I gave him a confused look to be nice and asked why that question. He stated that a friend had just spent $ 10k to have his system tweaked and THX certified by licensed techs.

I informed him that sadly I had not, but I was considering ordering some hi tech speaker cables for my front M80s from a cable company in the LA area, and an 8' pair was a bargain at around $ 10k.

The 2900 is great, and if you consider the cost, its a real bargain. Unlike you, I still have a lot of set up to do on the 2900, and the entire system, once the cables are secured and the cabinet finished and rolled back into place, I will be tweaking stuff for weeks I'm sure, still have the MX-700 to get dialed in and replace the Harmony that one of my roomies had picked up.

Once again, thanks to all that keep pushing me towards the 2900 and save several hundred.

He spent...

10K

to get his system set up???

Man. Just think of if he had spent that extra money on, well, anything else.

Yup, my thoughts as well, I happen to agree with an expert I know and I feel that THX is way over rated and could care less if the 'THX' logo is on any piece of my eqipment.

In reply to:
Well the high volume listening is not like I'm in that area for long periods, testing has been done at the high levels to see if I can brake the Halos well I'm on a test/exchange/return agreement, I'm not going to be 'stuck' with them if they do not do what I expect. So kinda putting them to the extreme ends of what I may run them at for BBQ parties out doors and such.

Run them on a dead short. Now THAT'S a test of how bulletproof they are!

I second Seabear's recommedation about watching how much you expose yourself to high SPLs - I do work for Workplace Safety and Health and we fight to get protection for guys working in quieter environments than that. It's a hobby - and tinitus sucks.

Bren R.

Can you say anything on the balanced cables, vice the rca cables, I would be interested to hear if there was a difference, do did you change to much stuff at one time to be able to tell?

just like to say dam thats sweet lookin. very nice! hope you like them and if you don't i'll take them (lol). you should try out hero with jet li if you can stand subtitles very good sound test for dvds.

Let me know if you decide you don't need one of those Halos

Yeah Dennis,
In my soapbox faze I plum forgot to tell you how great all of those silver boxes look.
Beautiful.

And to smokey; I love Hero. And I must have watched it about three times before I realized that you can turn on English as the dub language. Dealing with the lip synching in english is about the same as dealing with the subtitles, (not a perfect world) but at least you can watch the beautiful cinematography and not miss dialoge at the bottom of the screen.
And now that you mention it, that one has just jumped to the top of the "must watch on the 2900" list.
Tom

thanks for the tip seabear going to watch it again tonight with the english lip sync. it truely is a great show for sound and cinematography. definitly biggest surprise for movies in 2004.