System #171 (Odyssey)

[philox]

Thanks Robin, the system was a 5.1 HT in a small 1930ish beach house around 1998 to 2001, but the wiring from the house was poor and the HT couldn't operate at full protenal.

Please notice the custom table that fits a 36 inch HDTV on top with a Martin Logan Logos center underneath. The amps below that were the Aragon 8008BB dual mono for the SL3's and an Aragon 8008-X3 3 channel for the Logos and Script rears.

When I moved into a large house, as I know that you are planning to, I upgraded to mono blocks (thanks Bill for the sweat deal) addded a sub to balance the room, and put in an in-wall 5.1 HT in another room. Your right, I love music more than movies, me and my wife watch mostly 1950 to 1970ish movies which don't require an awlsome sound system. Also running mono blocks and keeping all the wiring separated cleans up the sound.

By the way, where is Calistoga? We have a Martin Logan fan club here in the LA basin

 

[Robin]

Great System Listening...

John,

Listening to great music is wonderful, as you know, especially with properly driven gear, like your beautiful system... :cheers:

Calsitoga in at the northern most end of the Napa Valley. It is just a small town of 5,500 souls. However on the weekend it balloons-up in population to 20,000 or more due to the tourists that come to visit. Calsitoga, in addition to being in the wine country has lots of natural geothermal activity ~ 60 million years ago it was at the center of a volcano which blow-up. Calistoga's 'Old Faithful' Geyser is at, what would have been, the base of that volcano. Calistoga has over 500 capped geysers and at least ten tourist Spa / Hotels with associated mud baths, and such. Folks come from all over the world just to enjoy the mineral pools and / or mud baths. Calistoga is known as 'Mud City' because of the geothermal mud baths. It has been a destination for vacationing San Francisco Bay area folks for over 150 years.

Their is nothing like sitting in mineral spa with an excellent glass of wine whilst listening to wonderful music over your ML speakers with someone you love...

 

[philox]

Robin, that's right, I remember now where Calsitoga is. Me and my wife went on vacation to San Francisco in August 2004 and we took an one day trip to Napa Valley where I visited a lot of the wineries. I specially loved Sterling winery. When the Los Angeles Martin Logan Club meet at one of our houses to test out equipment, we normally have a few bottles of fine wine and yes...pizza. We first test out the 2 channel stereo section of a system and if it has a 5.1 HT, we finish off with a movie testing out either the HDTV or projection unit. One memeber got a deal on some Wilson Watt Puppies and sold me his Odysseys. What a difference from the SL3. I am relistening my favorite CD's. Say, I can only download photos from my computer and can't get the URL working to get photos from the web. How did you put in those photos?

 

[Robin]

Posting Photos...

John,

Your So Cal ML listening meets sound fun. :cheers:
The best way for posting photo's are as follows;

OK... Let me see now... I'll list the process in steps, it makes it easier for me to explain:

1). Find the photo you want, say Amazon.com, then left click on the photo and then save it to your "My Pictures" on your computer.
2). Go to ML Club and your new post page, scroll down below the message section to the, "Additional Options" section and click on 'Manage Attachments" button. Then click on "Browse" button at the top, of the new screen.
3). It should take you right to your, "My Pictures" section of your computer.
4). Then scroll down and find the photo, which you had just saved a few minutes before at the Amazon.com website. Then double, right click on the photo and your photo will be immediately transferred to the ML - "Manage Attachments" screen.
5). Next, on the ML - "Manage Attachments" screen you click on the "Up Load" button. Hopefully, if your successful, you'll see recognition of this as you will see your photo file has been up-loaded, a line listing your photo will have been added, just below... If you have not be successful then you'll see at the top a...
*** Please note*** massage...: If your photo is too big it will not get transferred and you'll see a note to this effect - stating why at the top of the "Manage Attachments" screen.
6). Successful or not you close this screen and go on...

If your photo is too big and you really want it, you'll need to re-size it... I opened-up a PhotoBlucket.com account for just this purpose. Photo bucket is a free website, which helps you re-size website or digital photos. Here is just how to do this after you have set-up a Photo Bucket account for yourself:

1). Click on your Photo Bucket account's "Browse" button. It will take you to your "My Pictures" section.
2). Then double, right click on your Amazon.com photo, which you saved to your "My Pictures" section of your computer and your photo will be up-loaded to your Photo Bucket account's saved pictures.
3). At your Photo Bucket account, click on the "Up-Load" button and your photo will be transferred to your Photo Bucket account.
4). Scroll down on to your Photo Bucket saved photos and click on the newly save photo.
5). At the new screen you'll want to choose / click-on the "Re-size" button. You will immediately see a list of photo sizes to choose from. Click on the size you want and your photo will be re-sized, permanently (their is no going back).
6). Now you can either save the newly re-sized photo to your "My Pictures" by left clicking on the photo or you can just click on the - URL line - to the right of you photo. Your photo will be instantly URL copied.
7). There is a URL line option on the ML - "Manage Attachments" section. You would then just go back to the Ml - "Manage Attachments" section and right click on the - URL line.
8). Now left click to "Paste" your URL photo information from the Photo Bucket website to the ML - "Manage Attachments" URL line.
9). Next you click on the "Up-Load" button to the right of the URL line and you should be successful...

HTH

 

[Jeff Zaret]

"By the way, where is Calistoga? We have a Martin Logan fan club here in the LA basin"

Did I miss something about this??

Jeff

 

[philox]

Robin, oh i get it...just make a web site photo into a home computer photo. I was guessing that this web site worked by HTML codes and I couldn't get it to work. Thanks. As you can see I already added the photos instead of the URL codes.

 

[philox]

Jeff, I am just south of you. We have 4 memebers between the 210 and 60 and between the 605 to 15. E-mail me and I will give you more information. One person has 4 SL3's & Logos center in a 5.1 HT system; another had the Odyssey's as fronts, Logos as center, & Squals as rears but got a deal on Wilsons Watt Puppies and sold me the Odysseys; the 3rd has a NHT 3.3 stereo. I am the only one with an Analog section.

 

[LaserMark4]

Very nice system!

Eying the Odyssey's as an upgrade to the Aeon i's some day. They seem like a great size and speaker in the lineup.

Did you experience a big step up in performance and enjoyment when you upgraded from the SL3's??

 

[philox]

LaserMark, WOW what a photo entry you have in your system, it made my head spin I was surprise that the Odyssey was a vast difference from the SL3 because dimensionally they are almost the same, both have the same width electrostatic panel. The Odyssey has an upgraded cross over and added bass woofer that makes for a faster, cleaner sound with added bass foundation. I also believe that the 8 inch front woofer plays clean bass notes while the back 10 inch woofer plays only the power of the bass. I would have to reread the manuel to see the cross over between the two bass woofers. Tell me about the Aeon, I never saw nor heard one, what size is it between the SL3 and Aerius?

 

[Charliemike]

I get the bigger MLs when I get the bigger house. I lve in a Condo now but in less than a year I move into a 3000 sq ft home with a 800 sq ft basement that will be all mine. Here I will build an HT and a new ML 2 channel system.

Nice I'm about two months or so from the same situation. I simply cannot wait to sit more than 8' away from my SL3s.

 

[philox]

charliemike, your SL3's have the same light oak finish mine had. It's like seeing my lost buddy, my Odyssey's are soild black. Say, reading about your system it states something about moving and not listening to the speakers. Are you writing about the SL3's or the Clarity's?

 

[Statman]

Martin Logan So Cal club.

Nice system there John. Tell me more about this friend who sold you the Odyssey's?

So that's why you were asking me about wood flooring when we got together last month!

 

[philox]

Vern, I talked about the floor flooring years ago, but something else is always happening. Right now we are finishing up a bathroom. I even had strength to hang up the rear carpet behind the stereo today, but when I was repairing a closet door, one part didn't fit, so a 10 minute job took me a hour and...yes, you guessed it, the rear carpet didn't do up. I really want to get the listening room acoustically perfect. Both of us are luckily to have a room dedicated to music. Once lent is over and the house is somewhat together, I need to invite you all for a listen. Maybe you could bring over your Arye CD player?

 

[philox]

Cardas internal wires from the Grado Sonta cartridge to an RCA outbox mounted underneath the Rega Planar 3 turntable allows for after market Harmonic Technology Silver Crystal phono interconnects

 

[philox]

I replaced the standard Rega felt mat with an Extreme Phono None Felt Mat/Standard. The new mat holds a LP in place during playback and I have to stop the turntable before taking the LP off. A little slower starting and stopping LP playback but I think the extra friction and less static from the mat make up for this.

 

[philox]

Custom Made Storage

We took out a closet in the computer room and put in a custom made CD, LD, and LP storage unit. Starting at top left door is 2 rows of Classical LP's, top middle door has one top row of Classical and one bottom row of Jazz LP's, top right door has one top row of Rock and one bottom row of Folk LP's, extreme right door has LD's.

Top left drawer has Show and Movies themes CD's, middle left and bottom left has Classical CD's, top center has Folk CD's, middle center and bottom center has Jazz CD's, top right has New Age and misc. CD's, and middle right and bottom right has Rock CD's.

Middle center drawer is open with Jazz CD's from A to L. The White with Red corners CD's in the right front corner are my ECM Keith Jarrett section

 

[MiTT]

We took out a closet in the computer room and put in a custom made CD, LD, and LP storage unit. Starting at top left door is 2 rows of Classical LP's, top middle door has one top row of Classical and one bottom row of Jazz LP's, top right door has one top row of Rock and one bottom row of Folk LP's, extreme right door has LD's.

Top left drawer is Show and Movies themes CD's, middle left and bottom left are Classical CD's, top center is Folk CD's, middle center and bottom center are Jazz CD's, top right is New Age and misc. CD's, and middle right and bottom right are Rock CD's.

Middle center drawer is open with Jazz CD's from A to L. The White with Red corners CD's in the right front corner are my ECM Keith Jarrett section

Very Nice. I want to do something similar when I'm building my dedicated room downstairs. Did you have to get the cabinets and drawers custom made, or were they pretty much standard "off the shelf" components?

 

[philox]

MiTT, it was custom made by Closet World which took a while for them to do it right. They even forgot to add a strip to close off each wall that we had them come back and redo. If you buy componets from a home supply warehouse they wont fit exactly. Then again if you do a partical wall storage unit then that will be the way to go.

 

[tonyc]

Great looking system and you know I love the ARC preamp!

 

[philox]

tonyc, thanks, its the 2nd ARC pre-amp on the system. The 1st was the LS-9 solid state which lasted about a year. I have the LS-16 for over 7 years and the tubes haven't been replaced. Once they need them I am planning to upgrade the pre-amp to the Mark II if still avaiable.