Complete idiot here (but not hopeless)

[LouB]

Not sure where this should be posted or posted at all. Anyway I recently joined ASR looking for sound a upgrade & possible DIY speakers bulid ect. advise I have since shelved the idea of DIY speakers. Anyway my system a Yamaha AV amp & Paradigm signature series speakers 5.1 just didn't sound right to me for 2 chanel music any longer. The sound problem started after 2 moves and the system was in storage for a bit. I posted up in few different threads and about my lousy sound & recived a bunch of thoughtful & great responses on amps, speaker choice, room correction, DSP ect. something is wrong with my amp or speakers & time for new gear.
I guess no one here figured that I was a complete idiot ! In one of the moves the bridging terminals fell off & I didn't know that the poles needed to be bridged. I had my wife listen to the system yesterday & Her comment was "it doesn't sound right it sounds like the speakers are behind a door". For some reason this morning I googled Paradigm speaker connection and I bridged the poles & Holy Crap ! It sounds fantastic again ! I listened to it for over a year un-bridged, I guess the center channel was pulling the weight ? After much research & thought & frustration & wife's comment yesterday I ordered new speakers & a new 2 channel amp that was yesterday. This morning after fixing the problem I'm not so sure the new amp & speakers are going to sound much better. Oh well live & learn

 

[Berwhale]

In one of the moves the bridging terminals fell off & I didn't know that the poles needed to be bridged.

...and people around here will tell you there is no benefit to bi-wiring or bi-amping

 

[acbarn]

Not sure where this should be posted or posted at all. Anyway I recently joined ASR looking for sound a upgrade & possible DIY speakers bulid ect. advise I have since shelved the idea of DIY speakers. Anyway my system a Yamaha AV amp & Paradigm signature series speakers 5.1 just didn't sound right to me for 2 chanel music any longer. The sound problem started after 2 moves and the system was in storage for a bit. I posted up in few different threads and about my lousy sound & recived a bunch of thoughtful & great responses on amps, speaker choice, room correction, DSP ect. something is wrong with my amp or speakers & time for new gear.
I guess no one here figured that I was a complete idiot ! In one of the moves the bridging terminals fell off & I didn't know that the poles needed to be bridged. I had my wife listen to the system yesterday & Her comment was "it doesn't sound right it sounds like the speakers are behind a door". For some reason this morning I googled Paradigm speaker connection and I bridged the poles & Holy Crap ! It sounds fantastic again ! I listened to it for over a year un-bridged, I guess the center channel was pulling the weight ? After much research & thought & frustration & wife's comment yesterday I ordered new speakers & a new 2 channel amp that was yesterday. This morning after fixing the problem I'm not so sure the new amp & speakers are going to sound much better. Oh well live & learn

I appreciate your honesty. I suspect quite a few of us have made various hifi faux pas’ over the years (I’ve had my share). Enjoy your new gear!

 

[LouB]

...and people around here will tell you there is no benefit to bi-wiring or bi-amping

On the amp at the zone 2 output terminals it says bi-amp presence ? I need to get the manual & see if bi-amping using the zone 2 terminals will improve the sound any. I used to have out door speakers hooked up to zone 2 I never heard of bi-amping until I joined ASR. Amazing what you can learn with a little effort !

 

[raindance]

Sounds like the woofer and tweeter section wasn't bridged if it sounded so dull and bad.... Nothing to do with biwiring really, but if the links were removed at the speakers then biwiring would restore the connection.

 

[Joe Smith]

Yeah, what he said. It's not bridged power, it's that one of the speaker's drivers was not getting power without the crosstie.

 

[Berwhale]

On the amp at the zone 2 output terminals it says bi-amp presence ? I need to get the manual & see if bi-amping using the zone 2 terminals will improve the sound any. I used to have out door speakers hooked up to zone 2 I never heard of bi-amping until I joined ASR. Amazing what you can learn with a little effort !

I bi-amped my front speakers (Rega Jura) using a spare pair of channels on my Denon AVR-X1700H (and an Onkyo AVR before it). I built the cable myself using this stuff. Total cost was around £25 including some nice banana plugs/spades and it was a fun little diversion during lockdown (plus the white cable had higher WAF than the blue stuff I was using before!).

However, there is absolutely no sonic benefit to doing this in my setup. All of the amplifiers in my AVR share the same power supply and the power supply is what limits the total amount of power available at the speaker terminals. i.e. switching on more of the internal amps is just going to slice the power supply 'pie' more thinly, it doesn't give you any extra 'pie'

 

[Huang Jerry]

I was being a complete idiot just yesterday, one of my studio monitor "ain't making no treble" and after hours of trouble-shooting the amplifier board, it turns out that I had a cutoff filter on from my mixing desk...

 

[LouB]

I was being a complete idiot just yesterday, one of my studio monitor "ain't making no treble" and after hours of trouble-shooting the amplifier board, it turns out that I had a cutoff filter on from my mixing desk...

Yeah, "Ooops wrong button" has had me chasing my tail more than a few times when I was using a mixer for recording & live sound. At least it didn't take over year to figure it out

 

[DWPress]

Don't feel too bad - after an electrical surge where I lost quite a few items around the property I was most upset that it fried my relatively new and expensive Okto DAC. After a couple weeks of agony I realized that I replaced the fuse in the IEC chord input but put it in the spare fuse position. Major joy and embarrassment when I admitted my screw up here.

 

[Berwhale]

In addition to switching to pre-amp mode, the pre-amp button on my Topping EX5 remote cycles through 1. RCA only, 2. RCA + XLR and 3. XLR only output. Sometimes I press the button too many times, end up on 1. RCA Only and sit here wondering why there is no sound coming out of my XLR connected monitors...