Getting my old stereo working again - from about 1992!!!

BS Dave

BS Dave

BS Dave

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Joined
19 Oct 2004
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My partner bought me some new speakers (Elac Debut 5.2s) to go with my aging Sherwood amp from the 90s - an ax4050r (this was repaired in the last 3-4 years), but I need a few bits to get it working again, so was hoping to get some tips from you guys/gals.

I need a CD player and was hoping to get one 2nd hand and was also thinking about getting a cheap DAC too (again 2nd hand if possible)

My sources will be Apple Music via my iphone (I'm currently with Spotify but I'm getting sick waiting for their hi-fi option) and my old CD collection.

Are there any CD players I should be looking out for? Is a budget of £50-75 reasonable?

For the DAC is there anything I need to look out for so that it'll work with my iPhone?

I've got some old speaker cables in the loft and connectors, but they're gonna be as old as the amp...

ALSO are there any cheap tricks and tips for getting things to sound better? Clean power supply etc? I know there's a lot of snake oil vendors out there...

I know my amp is probably the thing that's going to let things down but I'd like to get things running and see how much use everything gets before potentially spending more cash

Thanks in advance

Dave
 
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CD players - I'd keep an eye out for ARCAM. There's an ARCAM Alpha CD7SE on the Bay at the moment, boxed and looking very tidy, for a BIN of £59. London area, though that really doesn't narrow it down. eBay item number 195913210654

I know some folks will say that with a DAC it doesn't matter what you use as a disc spinner because the DAC works miracles. "Even an old basic DVD will work great", they say. I'm not so convinced. A decent CD player with either optical or coaxial out is where I would put my money.

DACs to work with your phone; I'll leave that to others, but you should mention a potential budget.

Speaker cable - as long as it's copper rather than copper coated aluminium (should be copper if it's pre-2000s) and hasn't gone green underneath the jacket then there's nothing stopping you trimming up the ends to clean bare metal, cleaning up the plugs and then refitting them. Grab a can of electrical contact cleaner, spray a cotton bud and give the RCA plugs, sockets and speaker sockets a bit of a spruce up.

Have a play around with speaker positioning. Bass reflex speakers too close to the back wall will sound tubby and bloated. Too far away and they'll sound thin and anaemic. Avoid room corners. Once you have the bass balance dialled in then it's time to get the sound stage nailed. Here's you're listening for the point where the imaging starts to fall into place. Instruments and the singer should each occupy their own space. What you will do to achieve this is move the speakers closer together or further apart. Also try toe-in compared to the speakers pointing straight ahead.

The icing on the cake is speaker isolation from whatever they'll be sat on. If you're old enough to remember Meccano and the size of the little nuts they used (or go M3 nuts - 5.5mm spanner size) then use three under the speaker in a triangle layout. Place one each at the front corners and then the third about midway across the back. Isolating the speaker from whatever it is sat on helps define the bass note starts and ends. There are other benefits too.
 
An option is a streaming DAC - which means you can stream high resolution to your computer then over USB to the DAC. The option here is you could use a computer to backup your CDs and use that via a streaming DAC player. The issue with 'work with phone' is (a) Bluetooth is a low resolution audio quality and (b) the lighting connector to headphone jack DAC - there may be a straight digital connection you could use if the hifi DAC supports it.
You an use the iPhone into headphone jack into the input jack but you need to make sure the volume is turned down on the phone or it could damage the amp.

If the speaker cable is simply wire ended - just strip the ends off and inch off each end to clean any corrosion.
 
Thanks for the replies. For the DAC I was thinking a desktop/shelf top box that could take say a usb c (I'm get a new iphone when they come out) from the phone like a dragonfly but also had either a co-ax or optical in as well. Does such a thing exist?

I wouldn't use Bluetooth as yeah I know the bit-rate is terrible.

Interesting about turning the volume down on my phone, I would have presumed it would have been fine into an AUX channel on the amp. Should I also be careful with my car stereo? I have my phone plugged into that too!!
 
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Update. I had a good rummage in the loft and found 8 gold-plated banana plugs, a 3.5mm jack to phono leads so i plug my ancient iphone 6s in (apparently it has better DAC than the ones in the adapters people have to use with the new phones - so that's a bit of result). I also found metres of really thick gale speaker cable xl315-2 with separate wires for the bass and tweeter (the guy in richers sounds must have really upsold me back in the day). I've split it down the middle as i only need two cables per speaker, and it's sounding great. Quite bassy - I guess if I put some isolating feet under the speakers it'll help with that, but i can hear so much more in the music. The guitars really sound like there's a guitar next to me - the same with the other instruments - and i'm still listening on spotify. Now i need to give apple loseless a go. Exciting times!!
 
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BS Dave said:
I've split it down the middle as i only need two cables per speaker, and it's sounding great. Quite bassy - I guess if I put some isolating feet under the speakers it'll help with that, but i can hear so much more in the music. The guitars really sound like there's a guitar next to me - the same with the other instruments
Click to expand...

All cables in your system have resistance, some energy is being lost to heat. You will never measure that heat energy as it's so infinitesimally small however you will notice it in the sound output. So when you have upgraded your speaker cable you have reduced resistance, so there is more energy going into the speaker (that's why your hearing more bass). That Gale cable uses 315 strands, it's known that the higher frequencies travel on the outside of the strands, this will be why your picking up more details such as guitars.

Over your isolation feat, all speakers sound better when they are isolated. You need either isolation material or spikes depending on speaker design, in short you will get a tighter less distorted sound from the speaker.
 
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JasonM said:
Yes they will be fine for your situation.
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Thanks. I shoved 3 Lego breaks under each speaker to see if it made a difference... and it did!!

One more thing ( there will be more im sure). There's a connection to attach an earth. Do I need to do that as we already have an earth on the plug in the uk or this something completely different??

Also (there it is) the speaker cables have little triangles/arrows on them...the cables aren't directional are they? Is that even a thing??

Thanks

Dave
 
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BS Dave said:
Thanks. I shoved 3 Lego breaks under each speaker to see if it made a difference... and it did!!

One more thing ( there will be more im sure). There's a connection to attach an earth. Do I need to do that as we already have an earth on the plug in the uk or this something completely different??

Also (there it is) the speaker cables have little triangles/arrows on them...the cables aren't directional are they? Is that even a thing??

Thanks

Dave
Click to expand...

The earth will be a ground for a turntable, so don't worry about this.

Re the arrows on the speaker cables, there probably sold as directional, so the arrow points away from the amplifier and towards the speakers. I've never tested directional speaker cable, but according to Paul Mcgowan (PS Audio) it's to do with how a cable is manufactured.

I do have some interconnects and the direction make a difference to the sound. For interconnects connect them how the text reads on them. For example if the interconnects has the words 'Van Damme' the 'V' would be closest to the source, and the end of the text 'e' closes to the amplifier. Sounds crazy I know, but it costs nothing to try your cables in either direction.

For another tip.

If you take electrical contact cleaner and some kitchen towel, clean up all your interconnect plugs on your amp and cables.

Then clean up the electrical pins on your mains plugs.

Then if you want to take it really far. Open up your mains plug, check the wires are tight. Then pull the fuse out, and clean the fuse ends. Then gently with your fingers squeeze the fuse spring holder, as over time they slacken off. Do all this with your mains unplugged, and only if your confident opening a plug.
 
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With the directional cable. It originally had 4 strands h+, h-, l+ and l-. I've chopped it in 2, so am now only using 2 strands. Do I want a + on red and - on black for each speaker?

Or if I have + on black swap the direction of the cable?

I'll post pictures to make it clear tomorrow

I've got 3 months Apple Music for free too so that's bumped the quality a little as well.
 
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BS Dave said:
With the directional cable. It originally had 4 strands h+, h-, l+ and l-. I've chopped it in 2, so am now only using 2 strands. Do I want a + on red and - on black for each speaker?
Click to expand...

Those letters are just to make it easy to identify what cable is used in what place. So make sure you use a '+' on the amplifier red, and also a '+' on the speaker red. The cable will be the same regardless if it's a + or - , it's just to help people not get the cable crossed over between the amp and speaker.

Not sure if your aware, but if a speaker is cross wired, then the crossover inside (the speaker) does not work correctly, results in dull sound output.
 
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BS Dave said:
Thanks. I shoved 3 Lego breaks under each speaker to see if it made a difference... and it did!!
Click to expand...

I said it would. Glad you heard the difference.

lucid said:
The icing on the cake is speaker isolation from whatever they'll be sat on. If you're old enough to remember Meccano and the size of the little nuts they used (or go M3 nuts - 5.5mm spanner size) then use three under the speaker in a triangle layout. Place one each at the front corners and then the third about midway across the back. Isolating the speaker from whatever it is sat on helps define the bass note starts and ends. There are other benefits too.
Click to expand...
 
JasonM said:
Not sure if your aware, but if a speaker is cross wired, then the crossover inside (the speaker) does not work correctly, results in dull sound output.
Click to expand...

Music signals are AC rather than DC. That means the signal travels in two directions - push / pull. This makes sense if you think about the way speakers work. The cone can't move in only one direction forever. It reaches an apex point and then has to travel backwards. The back phase of the speaker's movement is also a sound generating phase.

The crossover then has to cope with this forward/backwards signal directionality. The components in the crossover need to perform the same on both phases.

What complicates things is that the components in a crossover change the phase relationships between the drivers. A single driver can't be out of phase with itself. But when two or more drivers are used in the same cabinet, and the signal is filtered by a coil for low pass to the bass driver, and by a capacitor for high pass to the tweeter, then there's a change in the phase relationship between the two drivers caused by the coil and cap. Depending on the type of crossover (1st order, 2nd order, 3rd or 4th) affect how much of a phase change occurs, and so how well or poorly the speaker driver crossover points blend together. One tool used by designers is to reverse the polarity on a driver in order to achieve a better blend. The other is to stagger the position of the drivers to correct for the timing offset. It all starts to get horribly complicated once you start down the rabbit hole.

But wait, there's even more (Oh no!!)

Certain instruments produce asymmetrical sound waves. This means that in isolation, you'll hear a difference from them depending on whether both speakers are wired ++ or +-. It's less noticeable when these instruments are playing along with others.

There's still more (Argh.... My brain is going to explode!!)

The listening room and position of the listener has a major impact on our perception of sound. This is because of the way sound bounces around a room. The reflected sound waves will add or cancel with the new waves. This is very noticeable with bass. Stand by the rear wall and you'll probably notice certain bass notes boom. It's more difficult to pick up, but other notes will be very much diminished. The same is true of the corners of a room.

In conclusion here, it's unlikely that simply swapping +/- wiring on both speakers will result in a significant difference in upper frequency tone from a crossover simply because the signal is running 'in reverse'. If someone does hear a difference then it's likely a combination of a lot more factors. Move the system to a different room, or play some different music, or let someone else hear etc and the result could well change.

Having said all that, there are some people who are very sensitive to phase. How they cope with listening to music then is a mystery because the phases of the instrument notes aren't always coherent.

What is definitely easier to hear and far more repeatable is having one speaker out of phase with the other. That will result in very audible bass cancellation. The sound will be thin and lacking bass power. That's why maintaining + to + and - to - wiring is important.
 
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OK. Sounds like it's fine like it is then. I'm familiar with phase. My parent's wired their stereo speaker wrong back in the day resulting in no vocals for quite a few tracks...

I have a question about DACs now.

Do they interpolate a lower quality source to make it sound better? For example a CD. Will a 24bit 192khz DAC create 3 DLSS 3 samples for every real one? And with a bunch more more accuracy (24vs 16 bit) or will it sit there twiddling it's thumbs until it's fed a higher quality signal ie 24bit 192khz like apple hi-res lossless?

Thanks
 
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