Steveo I am excited for you to add the SC XXL and that you like it so much!!!!
That was a good move man!!!!
For me surround sound is what it is all about anyway, so at least you have that down.
Yes, I am holding my breath to see what you find out to fill in that void you have between your Ones.
This has been going on too long. But I would have done what you did, get that surround sound up and really running.
We will wait to hear what you find out.
Happy listening to surround, God Bless, Wayne

Steveo wrote: Hi guys partial update and a long post please excuse in advance. I went to a couple of dealers yesterday and spoke about my situation. They agreed I should fix up my source and then consider a separate amp just for L and R. Rather than buying a stereo amplifier I am going to look at my source. Thinking of the Sony HAP-Z1ES. Also considered the bluesound vault but it doesn't have WiFi and might not sound as good as the Sony. If anyone is running either of these for 2 channel music let me know.

I also ordered some QED Xt40 cables. I couldn't find the cables that the forum members recommended to me locally and the dealer recommended these. Based on a quick google search I was happy with the advise based on this.

www.whathifi.com/qed/xt40/review

Looks promising and further research last night shows me I couldn't find a bad review on these from shopping websites. I will report back on this to see if it makes a difference as the dealer had to add the plugs on them and the store was busy so he is shipping them next week.

To be honest I have come from the mindset that wire is wire however many people disagree so it was worth a shot. No point in buying a Ferrari and filling it up with poor petrol I guess so let's see how it goes.


Anyway another update related directly to this thread. My wife was working yesterday so I a lot of time fo back to my goldenear dealer and he had the XXL in a box ready for me for a free home trial. He was smart because he knew if I took this home I was going to buy it.

I have to say stepping up from the 60c is a huge upgrade! More so than I thought. I was never unhappy with the performance of the 60c matched with the triton 1s for movies and I have to say the Yamaha that I complain about is an excellent performer for movies. This addition of the xxl took it to another level I didn't even know I needed.

Impressions: I noticed an immediate difference in impact as well as an increase it immersion in any film I was watching. The centre improves actions scene in a huge way but it the subtle improvements on normal scenes and dialogue that is the surprising thing. Footsteps, doors closing, dialogue, background noise and more have all been improved massively. This is not only an upgrade for action movie buffs but any sort of normal rom com or drama type movie. Everything has been improved.

It may seem I am talking down on the action movies. Let me tell you I am not. This XXL is audio heaven in action movies. I was testing "The dark knight" last night. The punches, the explosions just everything was incredible. The low frequency sounds I am getting from this is great. It's like someone else said it's like a mini T1 on its side. It is so much better having low frequencies coming from the centre (I am running it in large I will keep testing small and different crossovers but large sounds incredible on the rx1040)

As others have mentioned these are born to play with the triton 1s. I feel now I have a wall of sound coming from the front of the screen. Another improvement I wasn't expecting was how much better this speaker images with my SS3 surround I have in the back. Compared to my 60c I feel that the XXL plays better with the SS3 too. I am watching scenes I am familiar with last night and I feel more immersed with the surrounds. I can feel now when a helicopter goes from front to back and bullets are racing past my face to the surrounds SO much better. I don't understand why this is happening but I am not complaining.

For any T1 owners or for anyone with any goldenear speakers I would recommend an audition on of one of these in your set up.

This XXL barely fits on my cabinet cause it is on my TV stand. I have to lean this speaker on the stand and I had to push the TV back just to make it fit. I had to add a piece of foam so the speaker would sit flush on the stand. I will have to wall mount the TV now.

I will leave you all with this thought on how much this is a good speaker. Now I normally hate anything obstructing my view in the screen. If my wife tries to put an ornament or anything on the table in front of the TV I always swiftly remove it. Even if it's in the corner if the screen. Because this speaker is so big it is actually blocking about 1 and a half inches at the bottom of my screen. This xxl is that good that I am willing to overlook this to get the sound it is producing.

I know I need to fix my 2 channel set up and probably should be spending money there but let me tell you my 5 channel set up sounds heavenly and it was worth it!

Steveo,

I have the SCXXL and the T1's as well and they are epic. I love your review!!

I was crossing the SCXXL at 60hz and now 80hz. I might try Large now

Do you have a separate Amp in your Home Theater Setup? Or Just your Yamaha powering the T1's, SCXXl, and SS3's?

I am using an Emotiva XPA-3 to power my L/C/R speakers and its really nice (using Monoprice premium RCA cables from my Denon to the AMP, wondering if any better RCA cables would really make a difference??

Happy Listening Everyone and Thanks for the help

One more thing.

I have PSB B4 Bookshelf Speakers as my surrounds. I know this is a biased crowd , but would SS3's be much of an upgrade? (I understand the timbre matching factor but its just surrounds)

Hey airbraun: once upon a time I thought timbre matching wasn't critical. I was using T2's & SS60C up front, Aon 3's surrounds, and Paradigm studio rears. The Paradigms always drew attention to themselves in a negative way. After coming to my senses, I replaced the Paradigms with GE SS3'S, and now all speakers work in unison with no one speaker drawing attention to its self. I think you would have a much more enjoyable movie and music experience with All speakers being matched.

Would a better interconnect from your Denon to your amp be beneficial? Absolutely...there are many good ones on the market. I use Audio quest Jaguar/Columbia, sounds great.

anthem wrote: Hey airbraun: once upon a time I thought timbre matching wasn't critical. I was using T2's & SS60C up front, Aon 3's surrounds, and Paradigm studio rears. The Paradigms always drew attention to themselves in a negative way. After coming to my senses, I replaced the Paradigms with GE SS3'S, and now all speakers work in unison with no one speaker drawing attention to its self. I think you would have a much more enjoyable movie and music experience with All speakers being matched.

Would a better interconnect from your Denon to your amp be beneficial? Absolutely...there are many good ones on the market. I use Audio quest Jaguar/Columbia, sounds great.

Anthem,

Thanks for the reply. I ordered 3 Emotiva XRCA cables to run from my Denon to my Emotiva XPA-3 for L/C/R. I hope it's a meaningful upgrade from the monoprice RCA cables I am using now. I just can't justify getting crazy expensive audio quest cables now.

Regarding my surrounds, the issue is that I have Front height, surround, and surround back speakers that don't match. I would need $1.500 worth of SS3's which I just can't justify for speakers that are used much less and make a smaller overall impact on the overall eclxperience. I could just do the surrounds as those are more important than the other two pairs. Such "first world" problems we have

Any thoughts or comments are welcome

Hi Airbraun
Thanks for your kind words. I am using a emotiva XPA 5 gen 2 so I assume we would be getting similar sound at least from the L C and R channels.

Now Rca cables are the next frontier for me. I bought rca cables from the local store. They were higher quality than just the normal rca cables with the thin black wire but I am sure I could get 'better. ' However I am not sold yet on how rca cables could make that much of an improvement. I have just bought some pretty decent speaker cable on the weekend that is still on its way. I am upgrading from old wire I had in an old jamo home the after I had for a couple of years. I will report back to give my impressions on the cable to see if that made a difference. I am yet to be convinced the sound could improve that much but I will probably be wrong. I think with any cables you can get a 'sweet spot' and the law of diminishing returns I think would apply very much with cables. Yes a $30 a metre cable might sound a lot better than cable for $1 a metre but I don't think you would get even 50% of a jump if you went to $1000 a metre from 30. Once again I could be dead wrong.
I like goldenear because they are high quality products priced extremely well compared to the competition. Are the T1s better than a $200k speaker? Maybe not. But if I am getting 80-90% of the way there for this pricing I am more than happy.

I would appreciate if anyone had any feedback on rcas as it would be interesting to see any real reviews in rcas making a decent improvement. Keep me posted with your emotiva rcas when they arrive.

In regards to your SS3 question I personally am using 2 ss3s for surround duties and that's it. It sounds excellent as I mentioned paired with the T1s and Xxl. I can't comment on your paradigms but I am sure having the ss3s would give you a more congruent sound signature and better timbre matching. . Ask your dealer if he will lend you 2 pairs and why don't you experiment?

To be honest I was testing the xxl on a free loan from my dealer to see if it would make a difference from the 60c. If it was marginal I might have taken them back. Fortunately( for my ears and aural pleasure) or unfortunately ( for my wallet) they sound brilliant so I am keeping it. If you do it and find the difference negligible then take them back. I am sure it will sound better though with matching ss3s but only you can be the judge.

In fact I would love to hear a 5.1 set up with just the ss3s and a forcefield 3 or 4 sub cause they sound excellent in surround duties. I am trying to convince my dad to go this route. Unfortunately he wants BOSE. I keep telling him you can get so much better for your money than Bose (like goldenear) but he is convinced with BOSE. The marketing machine strikes again. Lol no further comment with that I am not here to bash any company of course.