Good Evening Steve, How was your Monday?

Wet.... I rained here all day... Otherwise not bad, got my sales rep back so that was a plus.

how was your monday?

Good morning Steve, hope all is well!:)

So Steve what's happening with our friend Rhett :D

Hey bill, sorry Im so late, but I hope you have a great Wednesday.

He's been doing a lot of working out and getting healthy. I know he's been buying a lot of Tubes for his Octave IA. I know he comes on here every now and again, but not very often, and he usually doesn't post.

Happy hump day Steve:)
Hope you have a great day today!

Hey thanks guys... I didn't look at my thread yesterday... I hope you guys have great weekends.

So my wife just randomly asks me about what IA that I want tonight... NOW I know we aren't getting it for Xmas, but the fact that she just asked was amazing. I told her I really want the Naim Nait 5i, but that I do want to listen to the Creek Audio and MF again, plus if I can hear the Simaudio and Arcam that'd be awesome. But I don't think that the Sim has a HTBP option, but that will kill that idea.... So afterwards she says, well then we'll talk again about it in February or March (OMG) thats when we get our taxes back. I love that woman... Im gonna buy her a Coach purse that she wants, its like $250-300, nothing compared to the $1500 she's gonna let me spend. Wow, she's awesome.

Sweet, as I said try to compare the A28 it retails 1800$ if I am not mistaken, it is moreless the performance I get out of my AVR400. I loved the 1500$ Nait 5i. I would not consider the A18 as this one is not so powerful. The A38 would compare to the XS.

Now wich will you prefer I will leave this up to you Steve. Arcam are still worth a listen.

Have a good one bud g2g man I am tired. I am very happy for you that the wife is thinking about you so much :D

Thanks Oliver... Ill see if I can demo the Arcam. The Naim XS only has 60 wpc into 8 ohms.... the 5i is 50 into 8. They are close to each other, plus I told her if I could get an XS used online, that would be high on my list too.

:whistle: Same tune different day :p

TGIF & have a great weekend Steve:D

Yeah of course the XS still edges the 5i it,s not just about the power ratings.
The guts of the amp make a difference in sound too as you know.

But I have to say i have heard the Uniti driving some tribes V and it's got some really good power even rated at 50wpc.

hey guys. anything exciting happening this weekend? hope you both have a great friday.

no I know that... the XS is a little more laidback then the 5i also. they have their differences. We'll see, have to get to that point first. Ive seen the older Nait 5i powering the Contour S1.4s, so Im sure if I ever get those, then Im still good with the Nait.

Awesome sign!:rock:

Wife wants to get back to the Coach store in the outlet mall, thank the gods. Last trip, I let her go to LV because I bought the AVR for Christmas that year. This year, I am not getting any new gear, so she isn't getting any new purses.

Well have you compared side by side with the same speakers to say that the XS is a bit more laidback?

I found the 5i to just as laidback and even cpmpared to tubes, but I did not compare one after the other. I think the XS has better seperation too but the 5i is great for it's price point.

rhett did and that was his position on it.

I know what you mean, I have to buy a new car for the wife in order to upgrade speakers agaiin....

What speakers did he try, maybe the Rainmakers are not as revealing as what he tried.

What's up Steve?

I've also been trying to put some hours on the new center, it's everything that I wanted. The front three are very dynamic for HT now, my listening levels on the mv have actually went down a bit. Even -20 is really loud, I don't know if I'll ever try and get this amp /speaker combo up to 0 on the dial. I have no idea how accurate the LED meters on the XPA-1's are ( probably not very ) but watching TF 2 today at -22 and the meters were jumping up to about half way. I'm using a 60hz x-over for the front three at the moment, no problems blending with the sub anymore.

I tried watching Conan tonight and only made it about 40 minutes in before turning it off, it's pretty bad and I can be entertained by some pretty crappy movies. I may try and finish it tomorrow morning but it'll be a struggle.

Cowboys and Aliens wasn't that great either but was much more entertaining than Conan, still not worth purchasing for me. Have you seen it yet?

funny you mention C&A, I am watching it right now.... lol. To me it wasn't great, but its not bad, its at least entertaining. Id probably buy it when it hits the $7.99 marker.

I refuse to buy Conan too. From about the first 3 seconds of the movie I knew it would be terrible. however I made it thru the movie, but it was very bad.

Thats awesome to hear about the new front soundstage. Im glad its coming together the way you want it to. I think you made the right decision on the center channel, when you get to the bigger room, youll want it there to really drive the SPLs in that room. So are you still going to sell the XPA-5? When are you going to get the other Mono for the center channel?

I was reading a couple reviews on the Excites and they were both HT type reviews, and they said that Mike from Dyn USA told them to set the speaker levels to full range all the way around, and that when they did, the setup sounded much better. The setups were X32s, X22, X12s, so I moved my center channel to large and I could tell the bass in the center of the screen seemed deeper and punchier, I had it at 70hz. Also you could hear the vabrato better in mens voices... I like this much better. Large is definetly the best way to run the Excites.

Steve I just hope your future upgrade plans become reality soon, your wife is amazing for discussing IA alredy with you, trust your ears as always for waht you prefer, buying an Arcam would leave you no other choice to go with the A28 but it's quite expensive at $1800, the 5i is sweet sounding and at $1500 I find it hard to beat at this price point.

Is it you Naim dealer that carries Arcam as well? I don't think it's worth driving across the town to audition an Arcam as it will be quite difficult to take a clear decision. I think side by side comparaison is a must to decide which you prefer.

The Creek does seem relly nice too. I just can't wait for you to get that IA :D it.s killing me man. I know the X16 sing alredy but oh man will they sing with a good IA.:rock:

I think I will try that too and just let the LFE signal handled by the sub.

It's transformer hum that I'm getting from the XPA-5, the hum isn't coming through the speakers. I bought a PS Audio HumBuster III which I should get next week. If that doesn't work then I'll see how much it'll cost to send it back to Emo and return the HumBuster. I'm hoping that it does as I'm tapped as far as any more gear. The third mono will have to wait until the Holiday sale next year, I'm hoping i can swing the amp and another SubMersive next year.

How does your Integra handle running your front three full range? I suppose I could do that but right now I'm liking 60hz, according to the ARC graphs the S6's can stay flat down to 30hz in my room, don't remember what the center was off the top of my head.

Most receivers and processors run the LFE channel up to 120hz now, my mains are 60hz but the sub is 120hz. I'm pretty sure Audyessy does the same thing.

Yeah absolutely i believe ya Andrew, I just say i will put my speaker to large and only the LFE signal will go to the sub, what was intended to go to left center and surrounds will go to the speakers and not to the sub.

Thanks Olivier.

My Dyn dealer carries Musical Fidelity on hand, he sells the Arcam rDAC and its on hand, but no IAs. He has some Naim there also, but not the 5i or XS, he has the Unitiserve.

There is a Simaudio dealer about 15 mins from him, that has Sim and Totem, he told me he could get the Creek in from Music Hall(who distributes Creek and Epos), but said it would take a week or two to get it, but if I wanted to check it out and buy, he'd get it in. He said I could bring my Dyns if I wanted. Id like to hear the Sim, but if they don't have a HTBP then they are basically usless to me. But if they do have a HTBP, then Id like to know if they are good for me.

NOW, if I drive to LA, there is a dealer there that has both Arcam and Creek on hand, and Id just have to take my speakers with me to audition. So this is probably something Ill do when the time comes.

Hopefully the humbuster will work for you. that would be the best thing I think.

Yeah the Integra seems to be handling the 3 set to large just fine. Sorry, I was off looking at IAs after Olivier brought them up.

I don't run the surrounds at large, the missions would probably die....

Have you had them bottom out yet? They did for me quite a few times, I think I was using 80hz for those. It didn't seem to damage them in any way though.

Yeah Sim I think you would have to get the 3.3 and this thisng is 3.5K as the i.1 did not impressed me driving the X32. Maybe you can get a good price on the i.1 since they have a new line of IA, the 220i, the 250i and 340i.

Not sure maybe the new 250i would be better but I doubt it has Moon says the i-1 has been renamed by 250i.

No but my Rainmakers do extend a tad lower than your missions don't they? ;)

They are in fact going lower than your X16 :p

In talking with the guys from Dyn, its not about just the Frequency Extension, but more about driver design and the crossover. No Dyn monitor speakers have extension below 40 hz, so thats not a big deal to me, its the bass they produce and the depth that pleases me.

OH, Totems website said the Rainmakers extend to 42 hz, the X16s go to 40 hz, but Im sure that doesn't actually matter.... 2 hz, I mean.

Ive never heard Sim, I know that John seems to think its good, so if I get the change to, Ill listen to it to see if its what I like or not.

Pairing is a must bro and they do pair well certainly with Monitor Audio but I believe that I prefer the 5i and the A28 over the 250i aka the i-1.

Supernait and C1 OMG that was amzing :D

Simaudio is not bad at all it's not my preference but as I told you the 3.3 was good tho.

Well the Sttaf goes to 39hz and it was not noticeable vs the Rainmakers, but yeah Totems are the same way anyways I'll make you here some depth if you come to Montreal :p

The Rainmaker is no slouch I tell ya.

To my surprise my Forest do indeed have a Hi-Vi aka Accoustic Technology International driver as their woofer but what caught my attention is that it's a 6 screws so it is very hard to distinguish it from the Dynaudio drivers :p I know it's a Chinese knock off but man it's not bad at all.

They usually have 12 screws on those. I wrote to Totem to find out why.