Anyone with a high-end home theater sans sub?

Three Flrnlamb posts in a row and they get more rambling and incoherent each time. What in God's name is he even talking about?

Let's have some fun and try something new. Can anyone guess how many exclamation points Flrlamb used in his last post?

A. 16
B. 28
C. 46
D. So many that the author would have to be insane!
E. Both C and D

If you answered E, you are correct. Those who answered D get partial credit for make an astute observation apart from the tedious exercise of actually counting such a ridiculous number of exclamation points. Next time I'm going to count the number of times he uses "lol" or types in all caps.

Also, for a guy who has bragged about his credentials to the point of making everyone nauseous, he really doesn't want to verify what those credentials are. Flrnlamb said:

If you need your home theater (come on over, anytime folks, really!) done to a world class level, then you call me!...seems fair enough, sure...lol

I’m certainly not interested, but maybe some other Audiogoner’s are. "Come on over, really..." Where?

As a newcomer to the 'Gon, I would feel honored to get flamed by Flrnlamb, sort of as a rite of initiation. So here goes.

I would like to comment on the distinction between "passive" and "active" as I understand those terms in this thread. The crucial point is not whether or not the amplifier is inside the same cabinet as the big cones. Rather, the crucial point is whether the crossover occurs before or after the high-level amplification. I have a VMPS New Larger subwoofer, which is passive in the sense that it does not contain a built-in amplifier, but since I am feeding it an input signal that was crossed over prior to amplification, it yields the same advantages that Flrnlamb enumerates for powered subwoofers.

There seems to be a growing school of thought that the best overall sound quality, for both music and home theater, results from placing the crossover BEFORE the amplifier. The real question in predicting a subwoofer's addition to (or subtraction from) overall sound quality is whether the subwoofer starts with a line-level, already-divided input signal (best solution) or whether the subwoofer takes a full-range high-level input and then extracts the bass from it, sending the remainder to the other speakers (inferior solution).

This idea is nothing new. Audiophiles have been bi-amping and tri-amping their speakers for decades. (Although, if full-range signal is delivered to each set of binding posts, then the benefit of this appoach seems uncertain.)

I found an interesting discussion of this topic in Sigfried Linkwitz's website www.linkwitzlabs.com. Linkwitz, no slouch in crossover and loudspeaker design, designed his Orion speaker with a separate pair of binding posts for each driver, thereby requiring 3 or 4 channels of amplification per speaker. The crossover, which is custom made for the specific drivers employed, occurs at line level, between the preamp and the power amp. The result, he claims, is accuracy and dynamic range that is unobtainable with high-level crossovers (the kind that most of us have).

There are many large full-range speaker systems with flat response down to 20 Hz or lower. According to the viewpoint I am describing, these full-range speakers may have an inherent disadvantage if they divide the signal after it has been amplified. The combination of a high-quality subwoofer, high-quality line-level crossover or surround processor, and high-quality amplifier, would seem to have an inherent advantage over the other system design.

Javachip

Certainly sounds like a vote toward the dsp8000 then! Just that it is digital until the crossover.

Javachip - sorry - my post should have been addressed to Dmurfet

"The people who tend to achieve the best sound are those who have significant experience in high-end two-channel audio."

I wish this were the case, but often the experience rarely transfers. I think a good ear is a good ear though no matter how many channels. But two channel setup dudes never can seem to wrap their mind around 7.1 channels.

"I actually love both, and believe that many who are home theater enthusiasts could benefit from some audiophile experience."

Well an experience with well selected "audiophile" equipment would be more to the point. I once made a horror movie called the "Audiophile Experience". Kind of like Psycho without the shower scene, but there was an incident with record cleaning fluid. ;)

"Audiophiles" are too diverse a creature to define as two channels inability to be satisfying when the signal is represented most accurately leaves the masses to seek religion more than truth because the truth is a bit thin and shallow and downright uninvolving. So now it is audio patch work time with fuzzy tubes, 12" full range speakers and other weird solutions, Dipole, omnipole....anything one can do make it music sound more realistic except real surround sound.

Fear of the Rear channel: Circumauraphobia

Later