50 Tips to get the best from your Hi-Fi or Home Cinema

50 Tips to get the best from your Hi-Fi or Home Cinema


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Very useful tips. Thanks for the link! 

Thank you... is really helpful.

Have you ever wonder why some equipments only come with a two pin plug without the earth and fuse? Throughout this life time, I have not experience blowing any 13A fuse in the power cord.  Hence, it's surprising why we would ever need a fuse in the first place.

I have taken out/modded all my power cords with direct connection of life wire without the fuse.  You will hear the improvement in your set-up and save money on exotic fuses.  If you opt to do that, you must also prepare to bear the risk (haven't we already knew that most equipments have internal fuses?).  Try for yourself and you be amazed. Do unplug all equipments if not in use.  Just a word of caution.

The US, Australian and European plugs also come with 3 pins and do not have a fuse just like the 2 pins Japanese plug. The British plug is required by their CEI to have a fuse. You are correct in saying most audio equipment have an internal fuse. This fuse is rated for the equipment and is seldom rated at 13amp. That is why you have not experienced the 13amp fuse blowing, the internal fuse will blow first.
Quite a number of Audiophiles DIY to bypass this 13amp fuse to improve the sound quality. For the hardcore audiophile, they prefer to use the US plugs for two reasons, no fuse and also US plug has a better sonic quality than UK plug.
Electricity is dangerous to play with, so take caution when you want to bypass the 13amp fuse.

Dr Who - thank you for the tips.  

I am starting to experiment with IC and speaker wires recently.  Silver seems to gell well with tube-based systems. 

I have changed all my IC to DIY silver OFC cables, silver OFC speaker wires for the mid/tweeter and silver plated copper OFC speaker wires for the  bass-unit.

Wise choice mthoi. As you know almost all my cables, except for the high frequency clock cable, are of heavily plated silver cable. Great nuance details.

in need of more tips to improve set-up. Why some passive preamp can't drve a dedicated power amp but has no prob driving an intergrated feeding into its amp-in slot?

Hi Bro Wong,
    Good day, must be something to do with those Exposure amp u r playing around with?
I am sure it got to do with the input impedance and input sensitivity of the power amp. It needs to match the Pre amp.

From what I read, and try to understand, the input impedance(at Power amp) must be much higher than a output impedance of the pre-amp.

Your meaning of cant drive the dedicated power amp, refer to the sound is flat and not dynamic from the speaker? It does get loud when you max the volume from the passive amp?

Hi Adrian,

That's exactly how it sounded, flat and not dynamic.  It just get louder when u max the volume.  I guess the safest bet would be to check the output impedance of the matching brand of the pre-amp (similar brand) and use that as a guide to purchase a pre-amp of other brands.  Thanks a million.

An experienced and qualified technician should be able to modify your power amp to the matching impedence of your preamp. The speakers could also be the cause.

Hi Scwong,

Are you using AVC /TVC as passive preamp? If so, most source can't drive these transformer volume control properly. You need to find out wherether your source have enough gain, drive and headroom to drive the poweramp with passive preamp.

Cheers,
Cheah

hi 88,
Its a eva ldr popularised by diyparadise. I'm a layman. So, when u mentioned about measuring drive of d source, sorry to say that my kepala starts to pusing.  So, my best bet would be to look at d spec of d preamp of my choice n try to match it with d pwr amp. All solely based on the advice of our learned forumers and thru literature found in the net.

Hi Bro Wong,
     88 mean of source will be ur CDP, Media player, or Turntable phono amp RCA outputs. Passive Pre amp only offer attenuation of voltage, no gain. So if the source output isnt powerful enough, it doesnt produce good enough current to "drive" the passive pre amp. Either you do the void warranty technical change like Dr.Who suggest, or change power amp or pre-amp. From what I do understand, source output rarely goes above 2.5V, those that did are mostly high end stuff. Most normal stuff will be around 2V.

Hi!

Yes, most CDP have an output of 2VRMS, except for those hiend player like DCS, ML they might have output of 5Vrms or even higher. As for phono pre, their output will be lower.

Thomas Mayer did have a write up for Gain, Headroom and power in his blog.
http://vinylsavor.blogspot.com/2011/01/gain-headroom-and-power.html?m=0


Hope this may help.


Cheers,
Cheah

scwong wrote:hi 88,
Its a eva ldr popularised by diyparadise. I'm a layman. So, when u mentioned about measuring drive of d source, sorry to say that my kepala starts to pusing.  So, my best bet would be to look at d spec of d preamp of my choice n try to match it with d pwr amp. All solely based on the advice of our learned forumers and thru literature found in the net.

Hi Wong, to explain in layman, the LDR combined with solid state amp will cause too much of loading to your source hence you get a flat sound. That LDR only has around 7Kohm impedance. Typical solid state amp has 10Kohm input. So parallel 10Kohm and 7Kohm, your source needs to drive a load around 4.1Kohm. Phew, if only your source could talk, it'll be cursing

cheers

No fuse? that is a criminal!
The fuse is not attach to the cord itself ,but after the cord before it goes to mains transformer.
Open up the player,you can see fuse by tracing from the cords input.

Hi All,
Tis is truly a great educational journey for me n certainly a mouthful one. This would surely b d 51st tip for improving yr system. My sincere heartfelt THANKS to all d SIFU.

I find that the power cord with 2 pin does give better sound compared to 3 pin. Is that due to the pin pass through the fuse while the 2 pin one does not have a fuse?

I have modified the 3 pin plug by directly attaching the life wire to the pin, thereby the fuse has been taken off.  It did showed improvement.  Do read this thread in full especially comment by DrWho.  Something worth trying but do ensure that your equipment has its own internal protective fuse in place.  Again, be cautious as you are dealing with electricity.

By the way, a forumer by the name of adrian4454 has tried it and he has indeed kind enough to brief me how to go about it.  That's a great idea to diy and save some money.