Tech Tips
PS Audio Learning Center
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AC polarity is important at your wall socket
Not all houses are wired equally. It's unfortunate but true. The wiring in your home may be different from AC plug to AC plug. That is, there is a hot and a neutral side to each AC outlet.
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Where you plug in can make a significant difference
A common mistake we see concerns where your equipment is plugged in. Keeping in mind that receivers and power amplifiers draw a lot of current to operate (lots of watts), it is critical that you follow these three steps.
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Free Balanced Power
The chief advantages of balanced power is common mode rejection, which provides a greater rejection of noise on the AC line. Your preamplifier or power amplifier's own input power transformer can reject a great deal in the way of noise on the AC line if it is fed a balanced input.
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Let your ears warm up!
Did you ever notice how after listening to music for a while you find that increasing the volume improves the quality? On the other hand, starting out at that same high volume can be downright unpleasant."Too loud too fast" is a prescription for the auditory equivalent of pulling a muscle.
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Help your CDs sound better.
No need to purchase expensive demagnetizers for CDs. Spend $40 or $50 for a good old Zerostat. These devices don't just work on LPs.
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DIY: Or, you can use a ballon! Build this isolation base that rides on air
Here's a way to make both a sand AND air isolation platform for audio gear that costs less than $4.00.
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Do It Yourself: Here’s a simple vibrational platform you can build
Here is a vibration platform you can build. It was designed by our customers, Bob mathews.
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Your system is very sensitive to vibrations
How can this be? Some of it is obvious: vibrations can be easily transmitted to our source mediums because they are mechanical devices, turntables, and CD players. But some elements of our audio/video systems are not so obvious, yet they are affected as well: tubes, capacitors, and even transistors.
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A magnetically suspended vibration base to build
Reader Darrell Tunning has submitted an ingenious scheme to magnetically levitate the CD player. Our thoughts on this are good ones and we don't think the magnetic fields from the permanent magnets should bother the CD player laser mechanism.
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Subwoofer placement is critical: here are some do’s and dont’s and a cool way to “get it right!”
Adding a subwoofer to your audio/video system can be a great improvement because the vast majority of loudspeakers cannot reproduce low frequencies properly. They need a bit of help, and a subwoofer can provide that help. There are, however, a few rules to follow regarding subwoofer placement that can make a huge difference in the subwoofer's performance.
