Scott Dolan

Holy moly! I had Mediacom many years ago and we supposedly had 10 Mb down, but we never got it. And it went out regularly. Sometimes for entire weekends. Got so fed up we cancelled it and went with half the speed through Centurylink, which ended up being much faster.

Me too, with "the fiber-optic thing". I just did a speed test: download was 17.45 MBPS, upload 10.73. WOW! That upload is smokin fast! Our upload stays right around 756k to 760k. Not that it matters all that much, since I rarely even need that. Just ran an Ookla test on my iPad and got 10.00 (first time I've ever gotten such a perfect number) down, and 760k up.

Last time I checked FIOS still wasn't available here. So we're still using Centurylink DSL. Which is fine. We rarely ever have any issues with it. We had some bad wiring last year which took several service calls to fully diagnose and repair, but our internet almost never goes out. And when it does, it's usually back on inside of a minute.

Mbps! What the hell was I thinking? Although a 10 GB download speed would be pretty sweet! But you're right. Our previous 5 Mbps could handle HD streams, but sometimes it was quite the slog. GA, that's an excellent deal. I'd jump on it. Perhaps. I find that to be more myth than fact. At least in my experience. The one nice thing about DSL is that you have a dedicated line straight to your house, unlike cable where you're sharing the pipeline with the entire neighborhood. THAT'S the scenario where you tend to see major slow downs at "peak" times. I run Ookla speed tests on all of my equipment on a pretty regular basis. I have never gotten less than 9 Mbps down, and have occasionally gotten more than 10. So in my experience, when using DSL the "up to" is far less of a concern.

Also, concerning those Pioneer speakers, how often do you see mass market, inexpensive stereo speakers with a 6 ohm impedence?

Man, everyone RAVES about those Pioneers, don't they? I don't need any bookshelf speakers right now, but I've been half tempted to get a pair just to see what all the fuss is about. You should have read the rave reviews of the previous model. You would have thought they were tower speakers. Yeah, I actually was referring to the previous model. Hadn't noticed your link was to the new ones. I think Guttenberg might have been the first to gush over them, but then the flood gates opened.

Depends on how patient you are, GA. If you're willing to wait a couple of minutes for the video to load and buffer than you could conceivably drop down to anything from 756 on up. If you want to reliably stream as soon as you click on it, I wouldn't go any lower than 3GB. A lot of it has to do with their servers as well. We have 10GB high-speed, and even we experience the odd problem or two with them.

Man, everyone RAVES about those Pioneers, don't they? I don't need any bookshelf speakers right now, but I've been half tempted to get a pair just to see what all the fuss is about.

Oh, so you're coverting them to .wav What about making lossless copies and saving them to an external hard drive? Hell, with the size hard drives you can get now you could even back up the .wav files without much problem.

Thanks for the explanation, Bebop. I understand now. How did your LS50's work out? Cool. What format are you saving them to?

I guess I'm missing something. Wouldn't any two-way bookshelf speaker essentially be a clone?

Don't sweat it. Soulpope makes up for it by not listing any speakers under $500.

In order: PSB Speakers Image B5: http://www.crutchfield.com/p_760IMGB5B/PSB-Image-B5-Black-Ash.html?tp=186&awkw=25288862305&awat=pla&awnw=g&awcr=6488483185&awdv=c Wharfedale Diamond 10.2: http://www.crutchfield.com/p_760IMGB5B/PSB-Image-B5-Black-Ash.html?tp=186&awkw=25288862305&awat=pla&awnw=g&awcr=6488483185&awdv=c Hard to find, but pretty amazing for the money, Polk Audio RTi4: http://www.amazon.com/Polk-Audio-Performance-Bookshelf-Speakers/dp/B0000E2XEB Actually, I've yet to hear any Polk Audio bookshelf speaker in the $200-400 range that didn't sound wonderful. I still have two different sets of them around my house to this day.

I think you meant "Only HDMI output is available on the Roku 3". HDMI output is also available on the earlier (Roku 2, etc.) models, but those also have composite video outputs as well for analog TVs. A wi-fi network is preferable but not required for the Roku 3, as it has an Ethernet port, so it's possible to connect it to a router using a standard Cat5 cable. AHA! I had forgotten about the ethernet port! Thanks for the correction, Dave.

The Roku would work just fine, but the only thing you'd be able to do with it would be to stream pictures or music from your smart phone, if you have one. Aside from that without wi-fi you'll have yourself a nice paper weight. Wi-fi routers are fairly inexpensive these days, though.

Yeah, no matter the screen size, higher resolution is always the way to go. And 1080p is so relatively inexpensive these days, there's really no reason to bother with 720 anymore.

Excellent articles, Dave! I'd heard nothing but rave reviews of the powered Audioengine speakers (mostly the A5's), but had never heard of M-Audio before. Good to know.

Lucky, and lucky. In that order. Unfortunately, I know exactly what Hardbop is talking about. Fortunately, I haven't listened to a cassette in the last two decades. Bleed-through could be a real bastard with those suckers. And yes, it was real my friends...

Are the PSB's what you recent purchased to use for mixing? Were they not adequate?

Yeah, it's pretty incredible. That's about as high an efficiency as you'll see in a loudspeaker. It means they are super easy to drive. Usually speakers average somewhere around 90dB. My Dynaudio X12's, for example, have a sensitivity of 86dB.

I don't, but I've never heard anything bad about Tascam equipment. Just curious, do you not have a CD-R on your computer?

Sensitivity 100 dB!!! Holy shit!

I beg your pardon, ALA, but all music is holy writ, so sayeth Reverend Young. Which is exactly why he has been sent to save us all from the abomination of CD sound. The Koolaid is quite refreshing on a hot summer day.

iTunes brings up all possible titles/releases if multiple ones exist. Not sure if I can change the settings or not.

Sorry, Tom. I removed them from my Facebook page because I don't do FB anymore. I had forgotten I linked them here. I'll reload them to the site when I get home.