Thursday 16 June 2011

System maintenance

You would have thought that a Hifi system would be fairly stable and unaffected by time and use. But just a few simple maintenance jobs can keep it sounding as good as new.

All connections whether copper, silver tin or gold plated are susceptable to dirt and/or oxidation ... so, every six months or so it is worth simply unplugging everything and plugging it back in again ... this cleans the contact point and restores low resistance. If you want to spend time with contact cleaners or even sandpaper ( works well on mains plugs ) this is very worthwhile.

Speaker spikes can work loose ... stability of the speakers is paramount. A speaker is a device that works by transmitting complex resonance, so any contra movement will blur the resonance by reducing certain frequencies and accentuating others.

In a similar vain, speaker drive units will work loose .. again every six months check their tightness ... it is not unusual for a speaker bolt to need a half or even a full turn ( take care not to use excessive force ) .. the improvement after tweeking in this way can be quite spectacular.

I had a customer ring to say his system was sounding awful recently and couldn't get on with it ... when I when around to check, it certainly was ... the reason turned out to be loose speaker units .. the mid/bass units were so loose they were a quarter of an inch adrift at the top.

Make sure all signal cables are fairly separate from mains cables ... this isn't always easy, but if they have to cross, try and do it at 90 degrees as this lessens the effect.

More on this in later posts

http://www.cheshireaudio.co.uk/

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