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Tweakers' Asylum Tweaks for systems, rooms and Do It Yourself (DIY) help. FAQ. |
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Tweakers' Asylum Tweaks for systems, rooms and Do It Yourself (DIY) help. FAQ. |
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In Reply to: First Tweaks for a budget-constrained mid-fi beginner - opinions? posted by LBuzzer on March 2, 2006 at 06:46:43:
Speaker placement and room treatment are paramount as others have said. Solid support for the CD player and receiver are also important. Make sure the electrical connections in your system are clean and lubricated (Caig De-Oxit and ProGold or similar), including the wires attached to the AC outlet.Once these are taken care of, just enjoy your system for a while. Let the speakers break in, and find some music samples that represent what you particularly like, that you can sacrifice for analytical listening later on (once you've played the same song 100 times, you will no longer enjoy it as a musical experience!).
Please don't do anything to your outlets that will create a hazard or give your fire insurance company a reason to deny your claim. Hard-wiring your receiver to the outlet is such a thing. If you are very careful, you can apply a conductive grease to the wires attached to the AC outlet. There is a cheap version made by Circuit Works that is available from Hosfelt Electronics or Mouser ($12-16). You should hear a nice improvement in detail if you apply this after you are familiar with your system's sound.
Other cheap tweaks include lifting your speaker and power cables off the floor. You can make lifters by constructing cylinders of stiff paper, wrapping them with Teflon thread-seal tape, and filling them with plastic sandwich bags containing clay granules (kitty litter), all for a couple of dollars.
CD players generally sound better if they are supported by objects that isolate them from horizontal vibration. You can make your own roller-ball suspension devices from soup spoon bowls cemented to acrylic bases, and steel balls.
Both of these tweaks are cheap and easy to undo if you don't like the results. A more expensive (but still reasonable in audio terms) tweak is to install dedicated AC circuits to your system. This is easy to justify if your circuit breaker panel is old and dangerous, or if you need other electrical work done at the same time, as the additional cost is low. Install several circuits, not just one, as the isolation afforded by separate circuits is better than even very expensive power conditioners can provide.
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Follow Ups
- Get a good notion of your system's strengths and weaknesses first. - Al Sekela 09:58:52 03/02/06 (0)
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