Jan 042014
 

My receiver broke down. Well, not all of it. Everything worked, except sound. Pretty basic for a receiver if you ask me. I inquired what a repair would cost, but all I was quoted were the costs of taking the device in for investigation. I decided to give it some rest, and asked my friends for advice. Their most sane conclusion was just to do the repair, since replacing the receiver would be way more costly.

This evening I started watching a tv series, and switched from sound via the receiver to stereo sound via the tv. It’s an flatpanel tv, so I guess you know what difference that made. Yuck. But…better than no sound at all.

During watching, I started to notice an echo. Because I was too busy watching, too pulled in to what I was watching, I didn’t pay much attention to it. After I watched my series, I switched to digital radio, and -as a creature of habit- I turned up the volume by using the Logitech remote, not the remote from the tv. The volume did increase. It took a second for me to realize that…..I just turned up the volume of the receiver. The echo I had been hearing was coming from …. my receiver.

As by magic, it now works again. All channels have sound, all inputs work, all I now have to do is put the right “label” into each source again since I did a factory reset to make sure the receiver wasn’t stuck in some software loop or something.

So……until some scientific rational reason comes up, I am going to believe that it was magic that made my receiver work again. Isn’t that something?

Nov 212008
 

My surround receiver has some issues, so I brought it in for repair. That leaves me with my stereo amplifier (Denon PMA-1500, one could do worse…) and a lot of speakers. Of course I can only hook up the two front speakers. They are full range satellites, so basically I don’t need more. But I’m at home, with too much time on my hand, so I wanted to connect the subwoofer as well. It’s an active subwoofer, so it should be connected un-amplified. My analog Denon only has a pre-out (no digital out), which are two RCA connectors, one red, one white, you know the drill. It’s not difficult to connect those to the subwoofers line-in counterparts, albeit that the subwoofer is not in close proximity of the amplifier.

So….I googled around to see whether I could use my coaxial digital cables on a regular RCA. Turns out a lot of people are doing it the other way around, just to hook up their set el-cheapo-style. I figured: why not the other way around? I took two coaxial digital cables, connected them correctly (left to left and right to right) and switched on the subwoofer. To hear…..perfectly good sound. YES!

On the left the back of the amplifier, on the right the back of the subwoofer
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In case you were wondering, the yellow cables are a pair of Vandenhul D-102 MkIII. They are great when using Denon equipment.