PhilDent

I agree @Daddyjt. I have this album in multichannel and it sounds fantastic! I agree that the beginning is a bit rambunctious, but I think it is a common song formula - create tension with dissonance in one passage and then resolve it in the next. It makes the good part sound even better. I’ll have to crank this one up tonight, although wifey doesn’t dig SD at all.

Damn! If it’s worth doing - it’s worth overdoing! Well done my friend. I don’t remember any lack of bass in your pre-flood HT setup. I can’t imagine how good it sounds now. I think an in person audition is in order.

So my 3.3's were having a very strange distortion/vibration at certain frequencies. I'd typically hear it with female vocals, and I heard it in both speakers. Sometimes it would be more noticeable on the left and then it would migrate to the right speaker. I hesitated pulling the drivers out and troubleshooting because of the fear of destroying something in the process. Yes this is foreshadowing. The right speaker eventually got so bad that I couldn't ignore it anymore. Fiona Apple and Aimee Mann convinced me that it was time. I removed the screws and attempted to remove the driver, but it was stuck and wouldn't budge no matter my persuasion techniques. My solution was to remove the tweeter below it so I could apply pressure to the back of the driver. This technique worked too well. As I tried to balance the tweeter in one hand and apply pressure to the back of the driver with the other, it suddenly released and dropped to the floor ripping the wires off of the voice coil. Well if the driver wasn't bad before, it was definitely toast now. OK, time to formulate a new plan. I decided to remove the driver from my AC2 center channel to see if the driver was a match. I figured that I could do without a center channel for a while if it meant solving my issue. Turns out it is a match. This driver came out easily and I installed it into the right 3.3. After some auditioning I still heard it - just slightly less than before. The vibration was still lurking - like that annoying thing that your car does regularly until you take it to the mechanic. There was still more troubleshooting to be done. I called NHT hoping that they would point me in the right direction to find the replacement drivers. To my surprise they have original drivers for sale. Score! After consulting Mark @Daddyjt we decide that we should ask what other parts are available for these magnificent speakers since we want to keep these speakers running as long as possible. Antonio from NHT was amazingly helpful. He had been with the company for decades and had worked on the production of the 3.3s and in his opinion these are the best speakers they have ever made. He took the time to educate us on which speakers from their lineup used the same drivers, woofers, tweeters and what they had available to replace aging parts and what issues they had seen in the past. They even have new crossovers and will even service and repair the old crossovers. Antonio even gave us a great price on tweeters and drivers and both Mark and me had our order in a couple of days - truly unbelievable support of a speaker that is 30+ years old. So back to the original problem. In my trouble shooting attempts I had noticed that sometimes the vibration would go away and then would reappear. It turns out that the driver wasn't the culprit - the wires attached to the drivers were touching the side of the cabinet and vibrating/resonating at certain frequencies. I buried the wires deeper into the foam filling and since then - problem solved. I'm guessing that the moving of the speakers caused the wires to move from their original position and contact the cabinet. To get the speakers in position in my "Music Room" I had to muscle these 123lb monsters up a flight of stairs with a dolly. I'm still impressed that I was able to pull this off by myself. So in the final analysis I didn't need any new drivers after all. I just needed to move some wires. But the process revealed how much NHT supports their products. I am confident we can keep these speakers purring for years to come.

I started watching Chernobyl on a long flight and I have to admit that it was the first time that I was disappointed when we landed. I wanted to keep watching. I need to watch it again.

Your component rack is different than the custom one I remember. Did you make this one or buy it?

Yes, @Daddyjt I was there for the speaker shootout of 2019. You are indeed, in part, responsible for my growing NHT collection. My memories of that night are how good the 2.5's sounded against the big boys and that it was the only one that had any Wife Acceptance Factor whatsoever. And to my surprise the least impressive speakers of that night were the Carver ALIII's. The first time I saw the NHT speakers I did not like them. I thought that the side mounted woofer was a gimmick and there was no way that it could sound good. Similar to my initial dislike of Glock pistols where I thought that there was no way that a plastic gun could be reliable. I was fantastically wrong twice. NHTs sound great and Glocks always go bang. As soon as I left Mark's place I began searching for NHTs. My first acquisition did not go well. I found a guy near me who was selling a home theater setup with a center channel, 2.5i's and 1.5 surrounds. He was asking $450 for the set. When I went to his place to pick them up I encountered quite the bizarre experience. His dad opened the door and let me in. The house reeked of cat piss, but they had quite the hi-fi and speaker collection set up in the living room. He called for his son to let him know that I had arrived. I see a guy, who looked to be in his mid thirties, struggling down the stairs pausing to cry out in pain, wincing and grabbing his stomach. In between crying out in pain he told me that he had a mysterious syndrome that caused him excruciating pain. At this point the dad appeared to roll his eyes and walk away. In hindsight a red flag. He said that he couldn't audition the speakers for me, the speakers were sold "as is", and he produced a form for me to sign that stated that there were no returns. Red flag number two. I genuinely felt bad for this guy who continued to cry out in pain as I signed my nom de plume "Phillip C Dent" on his form and gave him $500 so he didn't have to make change. I loaded up the speakers and headed home looking forward to re-creating what I had heard at Mark's place. That did not happen. With great anticipation I swapped out my Elac speakers and... the 2.5is sounded like total dog shit. The windshield wiper sized needles on my M500tmkii were slamming to the max and still the level wasn't all that loud and it just sounded wrong - very wrong. Why did the NHT speakers not sound like they did at Mark's? As I suffered for weeks with their disappointing sound Mark enabled the purchase of a pair of Silver 9t monoblocks. Surprisingly these powerful amps even struggled to make these speakers sound like I remembered them. WTF?!! Eventually Mark made it out to my place and I auditioned the speakers for him. IIRC I played The Chain by Fleetwood Mac. I can still remember his reaction: he just looked at me and said, "No". He got up, examined the speakers and to my embarrassment said, "your drivers are frozen". I find it hard to believe that the seller didn't know that he sold me speakers with drivers that did not work at all. As it turns out the room correction software of my receiver had been trying to push all the frequencies through the woofers causing the amps to work like crazy. Mark did some quick research and discovered a solution. The rear 1.5 speakers had the same drivers. He did a quick swap and... they sounded like I remembered. So since then. I have collected: 1.5's AC 2 Center Channel 2.5's (2) 2.5i's 2.9's (Mark enabled during covid) 3.3's My recently acquired 3.3's have an issue that I haven't figured out yet. The top drivers have some distortion going on intermittently. I'm sure that I'll get it figured out - maybe I'll need another visit by @Daddyjt. The journey continues...

Good to hear that you’ve got the Home Theater back up and functional. I can’t wait to hear it. You are having the same experience that I have searching for multichannel discs. Some are pure money grabs often employing gimmicky nonsense. One example that comes to mind is Metallica’s Black album in multichannel. I bought the CD when it was originally released and listened to it thousands of times over. So I was excited when I found the multichannel disc only to be immediately disappointed. The multichannel mix added nothing. In fact at times it was downright distracting. In one song they had a guitar solo circle the room - moving to each speaker for the duration of it. I haven’t pulled it out since my initial listening. Mark I would recommend looking at the liner notes and find out who did the atmos mixes that you like. You might find, as I did with multichannel, that there is an engineer who knows how to do it. In my case I will buy pretty much anything mixed by Elliot Scheiner

I’m looking forward to seeing that system. It sounds as if you’re living the mantra: If it’s worth doing - it’s worth over-doing.

I just found and snapped up this one. I didn’t even know that it existed in multichannel. I know it’s a good listen when I play it the whole way through without skipping a track and then played it again from the beginning another time. I looked at the liner notes and the 5.1 was mixed by Elliot Scheiner. For you multichannel guys out there I would recommend buying anything that he mixes. My setup for multichannel playback is Oppo 103 into Anthem AVM60 processor. L/R amp = RAM 285, Center = M500Tmkii, Rears = A400x. Speakers are all NHT: L/R = 2.9, Center = AC2, Rears = 2.5i. I was thinking of using my Crimson 275 for the rears, but that just seems so decadent. As if using my Crimson 275 paired with a BillD C1 and NHT 2.5’s as my garage system isn’t decadent enough already.

Does the creepy guy in white come with it? This gives me Eyes Wide Shut vibes.

Good topic question, and I think it would also be interesting to hear what everyone’s dream speakers would be. And Mark I’d like you to audition Sandman on my system with the Ram 285. I think it would be a much different experience than last time.