Gentle reader,
As you no doubt have figured out by your previous visits to my humble blog, I have a thing about listening to music. Well. In other works as realistic as my lowly budget will allow.
Some years ago, to my utter delight, my weekly (Wednesday, 25% off) trip to the local Salvation Army store paid off, big time. I found a set of three Adcom components, Pre-Amplifier, Power Amplifier and AC power conditioner. They can be seen in this very early page:
Years later, I noticed the left channel stopped working, and found the woofer's voice coil (the part of the speaker behind the center cap that the music signal flows through that makes it vibrate and produce sound) had overheated and jammed the cone.
Research indicated that Adcom power amps are prone to capacitor failure. I looked and could not see evidence of that, found the left channel fuse blown [fuses blow (open the circuit) for a reason] so just replacing it and hoping for the best is well, at the least, naive. So, I sold it on ebay for what I paid for all three and hopefully, the new owner was able to fix it.
So, anyway, the stereo system developed a loud HMMMM when the volume was at zero, it sounded like the 60 Hertz sound that AC house current produces. Much anguishing and trouble shooting revealed (at last) that there is a bad connection in the output RCA jacks on the rear of the Adcom GFP-565 pre-amplifier. Moving the interconnect cables will eliminate it briefly, this is all three pairs of outputs. So, I took off the cover (remember, I am a professional that works with high voltage five days a week for decades, so don't you try this) hoping to perhaps squeeze the internal terminals where the center plug fits. As shown below, they are not readily accessible.
So, my co-worker/fellow stereo lover suggested that I check to see if the outside terminals (the round connection that you CAN see on the back of components) is grounded to the chassis. I have not done this yet. I DID discover that the headphone jack (on the front) is not affected by the hum, so thanks to ebay, I bought a headphone to stereo RCA adapter and connected the power amplifier that way. No hum.
Cool thing about the Dynaco ST 200 power amplifier is that it has two volume controls on the front, so one can do without the whole preamp thing. I hooked the OPPO universal player directly to the Dynaco and tried it. Pure music came out of the speakers.
I had an epiphany, that perhaps I have TOO MUCH equipment in the listening room. You think so? Take a look at the aftermath of my taking both the stereo and six-channel surround sound kits apart:
14, count 'em, 14 speakers! And stacks of component and I don't know how many feet of wiring! So, I decided that since I only have a handful of surround sound SACDs and not much interest in buying more, that it was time to retire the surround sound kit and pass the parts on to new stewards.
A note on my choice of the word, STEWARD. I think/feel that we own exactly one thing, ourselves. Everything else in our lives that we purchase, we are stewards of. We don't "OWN" the land our house sits on. No one does, it's simply a very, very tiny portion of the dry land of this planet we call Earth. Of course, based upon the ratio of wet to dry, Water might have been a better name. But aside from that Kevin Costner movie, Waterworld, most people choose to live on the dry portion of Earth.
As an example, some brands of cars, Porsches say, are highly sought after and collectible. I had the pleasure of buying and driving one for a few years and made a few subtle changes to it, then I passed it on to someone else who took over it's stewardship. Here it is:
Pretty, yes? I added sheepskin seat covers to protect the Porsche Cloth fabric on the seats. It was a fun car and I am glad to have had the opportunity to call a Porsche my own for a while.
Enough about that philosophy. Back to the music equipment simplification. Since the SONY A/V receiver is too big and heavy to be safely shipped, I decided to replace the long serving Yamaha in the living room with it. Here are comparison photos:
Like many of the newer A/V receivers, the SONY has a door at the bottom that reveals less-used controls. It makes for a neater, less busy front panel.
My wife commented on how many connections there are on the SONY. Some of the more expensive and newer ones have many more. They also include HDMI sockets. I think the manufacturers are supposed to make them backwards compatible, thus all the obsolete inputs for composite, component and S-video cables. Note also, that the SONY has all three-way/banana speaker jacks, and has low level (RCA) audio inputs and outputs as well as multi-room capability. That and it's 6.1 so it has speaker and RCA outputs for the extra two surround channels. WAY more than I'll even need. So now it sits on the bottom shelf in the living room and the Yamaha will be seeking a new steward.
Below are detail pictures of all the STUFF that was once connected:
Above and below are the various RCA interconnect cables. Lighter blue are Liberty Cable brand and the rest except the black ones are Monster Cable brand.
Below are the aftermarket power cable and factory ones as well as a couple extension cables I made. Beneath them all is the surge protector.
Below are the various speaker cables. The top pinkish ones were for the tiny rear surround speakers and they ran under the Asian rug. It's OK to do that with speaker wires, no current like AC power cables have.
Above and below are the small speakers. You are seeing those AR speakers for the first time. I found them at Salvation Army and they are a currently produced model. Here is a link to the rave reviews they have been getting. Oh, got them for $15.00:
The tall one on the left, above, is the Polk Audio center channel speaker, that is an acoustic match of the silver-faced stereo speakers on the top right. The tiny silver one was the rear surrounds and their mates still serve us in the living room for the same duty. The ones on the left, below the silver ones are those Radio Shack Minimus 11 speakers that I modernized.
Note above, that the mid/bass driver (woofer) is the same size as the midrange driver on the comparatively huge Cerwin-Vega speakers to the right of it. Below is a closer shot of the Linaeum tweeter. It has the same ribbon on the rear so that upper middle and high frequencies are radiated 360 degrees.
It's funny how digital photos, since they make huge pictures on monitors, one can see all the tiny flaws or in this case, dust not easily seen by eye alone.
Above is the stack of two Adcom ACE-515 AC conditioners, Realistic ten-band stereo equalizer, JVC three-head cassette deck, Adcom GFP-565 preamp and Dynaco ST 200 power amp.
Above, is the OPPO universal disc player, newly found at Salvation Army, a very pretty Denon universal disc player, TDK CD recorder, Yamaha universal disc player, Nakamichi CD changer and SONY SACD changer. Below is the Denon turntable, JDM (Japanese Domestic Market) Audio Technica headphones and extension cable, all atop the SONY AVR.
Now, since I no longer was going to have the Six-Channel Surround Sound kit, I decided to move the metal and glass shelf to the front of the room. I moved the teak shelf to the left wall along with the subwoofer (at this point, not connected) with the 200 CD rack atop it. They are not shown. Below are a series of images showing the components that I am keeping, arranged on the shelf and the progress of wiring them:
Now, above, the various stereo RCA interconnect cables have been installed and secured the same way. Note that I moved the power cable for the OPPO to the inside of the "X" brace.
Above is what I had when I finished. It has changed since this image was made. The speaker switch is no longer there and the turntable is aligned with the components below it. The silver Denon was being tested (see the stray cables on the right side?) and also is not there now. Plus the Radio Shack adapter now replaces the tiny wires you see plugged into the Adcom preamp's headphone socket.
The components are, left top to bottom: Denon turntable, OPPO player, Adcom preamp, Adcom AC conditioner, Dynaco power amp. Right top to bottom, less silver Denon: Nakamichi changer, TDK CD recorder and JVC cassette deck. In the middle on the bottom shelf is the headphones as seen from the top.
In a future post, I will reveal the SONY multi-channel preamp that I bought to replace the wounded Adcom.
Thanks for looking,
Scott
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