Nice pics, Dave. For what it's worth, I've got a page of pics on my site - you can see 'em here .

Nice pictures. And this is why I don't go to the movies anymore.

OK maybe it wasn't such a good idea to see photo's of others' Home Theatres. Now I'm feeling inferior. Those chairs look comfy, I'd probably fall asleep in them. Very clean setup especially for having children. Only thing missing is a nice art piece from Gonk's Dad!

Missing from here too, at the moment. Got to retrieve the small pieces and two panels one day this week. The beloved turtle panel may have found a new home, though...

Really?
I like that sea turtle copper panel very much.

I have spent most of my life at sea (21 years in the Navy - submarine force) and really wouldn't mind some sealife art around the house. Please let us know when the next exhibit is.

Dave, Nice set up. I too have those ensomble and I see you have your passive bass modules still hooked up.

I did until last week when I tried the system without them. I have a LFM-1 and jsut let it do its thing and it sounded better.

After spending some time with Barry Ober at M&K sound I started thinking "less is more" and tried a few tweeks.

With Redundant crossovers in both the sats and the passive subs you can just remove the sub hook up and experiment.

The Ensomble's served me well for 15 years and its time to retire them. My Outlaw gear as lsted below is inroute and I have a lot of work ahead of me the next few weeks.

Try it with the bass modules and see what happens.

The bass modules were fine for music, but they just didn't cut it for theatre so I added the AR sub.
I'll have to experiment without them.
I like the ensemble, but the black formica finish was peeling over time and I had to keep fixing it.
With the crossover adjustments on the 970 I can probably unhook the modules and just use the sub although sometimes I just use the bass modules for music.

Have fun setting up your new system.

Let the threadjacking continue...

Yeah, we found out yesterday that someone is interested in buying the turtle. The museum rarely sees much work sold out of exhibits (to the point that the staff had some trouble with requests during dad's show), but four pieces out of dad's show have sold - assuming he can catch up with the people and make arrangements. We had the turtle at the end of our hallway for close to two years, and our daughter used to always run her hand across it when we carried her down the hall. I'm really going to miss that one.

Dad rarely exhibits his work, especially in a one-man show like this, but I'll let folks know the next time it happens. He has a number of pieces that are always "for sale" even though they live in my parents' house (or, in the case of the turtle and the jellyfish, our house). The turtle, waves (which are mine), gator, gator tails, and jellyfish were all made on an island off the Mississippi gulf coast called Horn Island - it's where Walter Anderson used to do a lot of his painting. The Memphis College of Art (where dad teaches) takes a group of students there for a week every May and dumps them on the island for a week to create art. They were made with minimal tools (one or two hammers), shaped against wet sand, and annealed in a bonfire.

Since you were in the sub service, you might be interested to know about the five-piece silver service on the USS Tennessee. When the navy commissioned the Tennessee in the late 80's, the state of Tennessee offered to hand over the silver service from the old 1920's era battleship. The navy pointed out that a sub really didn't have room to store a 100+ piece silver service complete with punch bowl, and they turned the state down. Instead, the state commissioned the Metal Museum to oversee the fabrication of a small, custom made service specifically for the sub. The museum hired dad since he was the only person in the state (if not the entire region) who could design and raise a silver service like that. There is a sterling silver tray, tea pot, coffee pot, creamer, and sugar bowl riding around on that sub to this day that dad made at the museum smithy back in 1988 or 1989. The design reflects the submarine, with the bottom mirror smooth and the top chased with a heavy texture to represent the ocean both below and above the surface. The two sections were separated by a rough wavy line, and the state seal of Tennessee straddled the line to represent the sub's place on and beneath the surface.

The submarine world is a small world indeed. I visited the USS Tennessee two years ago in Kings Bay, GA. I might know a few members of the crew.
When I was in, one of my jobs was to make sure the "presentation silver" was inventoried and appraised yearly. Submarines treat these gifts of silver received during commissioning almost as a baptism certificate, and I am sure that your dad's work has been treated with the same reverence.
You'd be surprise the artistry you can find onboard a nuclear power submarine.
To sort of get back on topic, let me say that we have nice sound systems too (indoor and outdoor ).

Wow. Those systems look great! Keep the pictures coming. I find I get more inspiration and design ideas from looking at a few pics of people's home theaters than I do reading a hundred articles on the subject.

BTW, since we have veered off course anyway, I am pleased to report that I am picking up my new amp today for my mains. (yeehaw) Once I live with it a bit, I'll have to post a mini-review.

And don't worry about the thread-jacking Gonk, I actually enjoyed reading the story behind the USS Tennessee silver service -- your Dad is obviously very talented an respected in his field.