By Alan Lofft - Secret #1: How to Create a Seamless Soundstage
Got a problem getting a smooth, seamless soundstage from your left main speaker across the center channel to the right speaker? Does much of the image seem collapsed into the center? First, carefully adjust the center-speaker distance and level in your receiver's setup menu. Many enthusiasts run the center too loud. Adjust the center level loud enough so dialogue intelligibility doesn't suffer, but no louder. Try placing your main speakers so their front panels are even with the center channel, with the center channel further back, if possible (wall-mounting it behind the TV is another alternative). If the three main channels form a gentle arc facing your couch, with the center speaker the furthest away, you should experience a significant improvement in the forward soundstage.
Secret #2:
How to isolate annoying background hum
Hum lurks there, in the background, omnipresent. As long as the music or movie is playing, you can forget about it, at least until a quiet passage occurs, then there it is again: HUMMMMMMM! Be gone, bad hum, you think. But, like a bad odor at the back of the fridge, it takes some dogged persistence to track it down and eliminate it.
First, lets define it: Hum is a steady low-frequency noise, usually at about 60 Hz or 120 Hz, that results from voltage differences between true ground (what youd get shoving a copper pipe into the ground) and the ground of your receivers chassis, or any components connected to it. When this situation occurs, its called a ground loop, and its darned annoying. Here are some tips to banish hum.
First, isolate it. Power up all the components in your system. Do you hear hum from every source (DVD, VCR, CD, TV, etc.) or only from one source? Say you hear it on the VCR input. Try reversing the VCRs AC plug in the wall outlet. (Sometimes the polarized prongs don't let you do that). Did the hum go away?
While youre at it, check your powered subwoofer. Turn it on (with no cables attached) and listen for hum. Reverse the AC plug in the wall if you hear any. Now reconnect the sub to your receiver or amp. If the hum is gone, youve triumphed! If not, disconnect the RCA jacks of all the components connected to your receiver or preamp, including the line-level cable from the Subwoofer Output. Is the hum still present? If it is, reverse the AC plug for your receiver or amp in the AC outlet. If the hum is gone, but only recurs when you reconnect one particular component, then reverse that components AC plug.
Finally, if all else fails, your cable-TV system (or satellite dish and decoder) may be the culprit. Disconnect the cables feeding your TV, VCR(s), a set-top cable box, or a satellite decoder. If the hum disappears (and you dont use a dish) complain to the cable-TV company. They may have to run a copper rod into the ground outside your house or run a ground wire to a metal cold-water pipe.
If nothing else works, and youve isolated the hum to the cable-TV feed, build an isolating transformer. Buy two 75-ohm to 300-ohm cable transformers for a few dollars each, and connect the two pairs of 300-ohm pigtails together. Now insert it between the incoming cable-TV feed and the 75-ohm input terminal on your cable box or your TV. That should, finally, put all hum to rest, blocking it from entering your system.
Secret #3: How to Find the Best Place for Your Subwoofer
Want to crawl around on your hands and knees like our four-footed friends? It may strike you as a bit odd to do this in the pursuit of smooth, deep, and even bass, but its really the best technique to find the ideal spot for your EP125, EP175, or EP350 subwoofer. (Still, I wouldnt advise doing it within sight of family or friends.) For that matter, this low-profile approach works for any subwoofer. And youll only have to heft your subwoofer twice.
Heres how:
Move your subwoofer as close as you can to where you sit. If its a chair, move the chair aside and place the sub where the chair was. If its a couch, slide the couch temporarily out of the way and put the sub about where you usually sit.
Play a DVD with lots of low-frequency effects or a CD with plenty of deep bass, the kind that really kicks your sub into motion.
Now the action. Get out the kneepads and crawl about
the room in the general area where you were thinking
of locating the sub. Go several yards in each
direction--near the wall, out from the wall, towards
a corner, away from the corner, and so on--while you
listen for smooth and extended bass response.
At some locations, the bass may seem really
exaggerated and boomy. In other spots, it may almost
disappear. Pick a location somewhere between these
extremes. Thats it! Mark the spot (no, not like a
dog or a wolf would!), then move the subwoofer into
that position. Now put the furniture back.
Test the technique by playing the same deep bass selections, only this time sit in your favorite chair (where the subwoofer was). The deep bass should sound just like it did at the place where the sub now sits.
You see? It works. And I hope you noted any dust bunnies while you were at it.
Secret #4: How to optimize subwoofer levels
It's confusing. In most home-theater setups, your Dolby Digital/dts A/V Receiver has a menu for setting the levels of all your speakers, including an adjustment for the Low Frequency Effects (LFE) channel. This determines the strength of the electrical signal fed to your subwoofer's built-in amplifier. But there's also a volume control on your subwoofer, right?
So where do you set each control?
To keep your receiver's LFE output level from
overloading the input stage of your subwoofer
amplifier, and to keep noise levels below
audibility, adjust the receiver's LFE/subwoofer
output level to "0 dB", and leave it there. When you
do your level checks, start with the sub's volume
control at about the 10:00 a.m position, then use
that control to set or trim your final subwoofer
level. And of course you may have to vary it
somewhat depending on which source you're watching
or listening to--CD, DVD, VCR, or off-air TV.
However, except for some bass-heavy CD or DVD
programming, the sub level shouldn't require much
re-adjustment.
Secret#5: How to repair Scratched CDs and DVDs - at home
CDs and DVDs are remarkably resistant to casual scratches and gouges but sooner or later everyone has a disc that causes a CD player to skip, or, in the case of DVDs, show odd video artefacts. When a scratch prevents the laser beam from reading data, both CD and DVD players have built-in digital circuits with lots of redundancy to correct for "drop-outs." These correction circuits search for and replace missing data until eventually the damage exceeds the CD players ability to electronically compensate for the scratch. Thats when the machine skips.
Check to see if a scratch is beyond repair by holding a CD up to the light. If you can see light through the scratch, forget trying to fix the CD. Scratches on the upper label surface are impossible to repair. But on the shiny playing side of the disc, a quick polish with any liquid auto wax will often fix minor scratches. Apply a few drops of the liquid wax to the damaged area, then wait for it to dry to a haze. Carefully buff away the haze with a soft cloth or cotton ball. Dont buff in a circular motion around the CD - do it across the disc. Its easiest if you put the disc on an old towel on a flat surface to do the work.
You can buy special CD/DVD commercial polishes and
scratch removers, of course, but Ive found that
liquid auto wax is just as effective. If scratches
are too deep, there isnt much to be done, although
in the case of CDs, there are noticeable differences
from one player to another in the sensitivity to
damaged discs.
Secret #6:
Spring Cleaning Those Noisy Controls
Unlike automobiles, most solid-state electronics--receivers, amps, and preamps--function beautifully for years with little or no attention. But sooner or later, you may notice some of the controls on your receiver or preamp will become noisy or "staticy" when you rotate them. The volume control is the big culprit but its common enough for balance and tone controls to get noisy as well. Selector switches or pushbuttons may become intermittent from time to time. This condition may show up in as few as two or three years and its commonplace in components that are five years old. After 10 years or more, its unusual to find any electronic device with controls that are free of noise or static.
Its mostly a result of oxidation of the internal metal moving parts within the potentiometer or switch, but dust certainly gums things up as well. You neednt think these parts are wearing out. Theyre not. They just need cleaning and de-oxidizing. And what better time than the advent of Spring to clean those controls? There are special sprays intended for exactly these chores. The contact cleaners Ive found effective include ProGold GxL and Cramolin Special Spray, both from Caig Laboratories (www.caig.com), and Stabilant 22. Another similar product is Tweak. Ive tried RadioShacks TV Tuner and Control Cleaner, but Ive found its cleaning effect is very short-lived, whereas the other cleaners will keep controls noise-free for years before you have to do them again.
The trick is to get at the noisy control. You have to disconnect your receiver or preamp and remove the bottom plate and perhaps the metal enclosure. These sprays come with a tiny tube that let you insert the end in any opening in the offending control. A quick spritz is sufficient. Do it while you rotate the control back and forth. Some selector switches may have a mechanical link from the front panel to an actual switch mechanism elsewhere inside the preamp or receiver. Just follow the link and spray briefly into the mechanism while you operate the switch. Thats it.
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