When I posted last week about my poor broken turntable (np: Springsteen The Promise, via streaming mp3/AirPort Express) a couple of people asked for some thoughts on setting up a stereo.
I am in no way an expert on this sort of thing, but I did grow up in a time when knowing the basics of stereos was more common part of being a music fan. CDs pretty much changed everything as far as that goes—they played perfectly and everything they did happened out of sight. There was no way to see the moving parts or tune them. They either worked or you needed to bring an expert on board to fix them. But turntables and tape decks, you could actually make small adjustments yourself. Their reign created a different culture around sound reproduction, one that involved knowing more about how they worked.
When I first started getting into music, my older brother had hand-me-down components and he took great care in explaining to me how they operated. Cleaning records, demagnetizing and cleaning tape heads, getting the tonearm weight and tracking right—all were, I was told, important aspects of the music listening experience. My brother is meticulous guy with a tinkerer’s mind; he loves to figure out how things work and how they could work better. So when he explained things about stereos to me, I listened. Eventually, I developed an interest in the nuts and bolts of sound reproduction and I subscribed to magazines like Stereo Review and Audio. It’s been a long time since I followed hi-fi and my system isn’t anything special and I don’t know nearly enough to be considered an audiophile (though I don’t consider that to be a dirty word, either.) But for now, some very basic thoughts on setting up a stereo:
Turntables
1) The first thing to know about turntables is that they produce a lower-level signal than CDs, tape decks, and lines from headphone jacks. The latter are “line level” outputs and can be used with any “line level” input jack in the back of the stereo (i.e., you can plug your CD player into a Tape In jack and it’ll work fine). But phonographs start with a weaker signal—electricity generated from the needle moving in the groove and moving a magnet in the tonearm cartridge. Because the signal is lower level, it needs to be amplified to line level before going through the amplification stage of your receiver. All older receivers and integrated amplifiers have a “phono” input, because that’s how people listened to music then. But many made in the last 10 years or so do not.
The key thing to remember is that you can’t plug your turntable into a CD/Aux/Tape jack, and you can’t plug your CD player into a phono jack. They are meant for different signals. Plug the turntable into the phono jack and nothing else; if you don’t have a phono jack, you will need to buy a phono pre-amp (note that some newer turntables, including, I think, USB decks, have pre-amplification built into them. My understanding is that the quality of these turntables is generally pretty poor.)
2) Because the phono signal is a low-level signal, it’s prone to noise generated by the alternating current of home electricity. In the U.S., AC is an electric current that pulses 60 times per second. And that can create a bassy 60 Hz “hum” with a record player unless you connect a grounding wire. All older turntables have these— just a wire with a little thingy on the end that you screw into the “ground” screw on the back of your receiver. This will take away the hum. When setting up a turntable ask yourself, “Is it grounded?”
3) Turntables reproduce sound by vibrating an object—in this case a record needle—in space. It is a process involving physical movement rather than just electrical impulses. Which is why if you bump a turntable, you are likely to skip a record. Records play best when they are isolated from vibration. What this means in practical terms is that you should ideally have your turntable as far away from your speakers as is practical. If you put your turntable *on* a speaker you’re likely to get feedback and hum whenever you turn it up loud.
4) Does your turntable have adjustments for tracking weight and anti-skating? Tracking weight is how much downward force is exerted on the cartridge, and anti-skating is a mechanism that exerts force horizontally to keep the tonearm from “skating” toward the middle, which can cause skipping. Looking around online, I am amazed at how complicated setting up a cartridge appears to be, based on the lengthy descriptions and all the tools involved. But it doesn’t really have to be that complicated. This page gives you an overview, but it has far too much detail and calls specialized tools. Still, give it a read and you’ll have some understanding of how cartridges can work. And then see if you can glean what seems “good enough” based on that page. For me, I get the tracking weight and anti-skating right, and make sure the cartridge is aligned as square as I can get it, and then I leave it alone. I don’t know what “azimuth” is.
Speakers
When setting up speakers, there are a few simple things to keep in mind. Obviously there will always be a compromise based on your room, but these are the essentials:
1) The further the speakers are from reflecting surfaces, the more airy and spacious and “accurate” they will sound. True audiophiles put their speakers several few out from the wall and several feet off the floor (if it’s a smaller bookshelf speaker). Most of us will never have this option because of space (and that we’re not about to give a sizable portion of the living room over to speakers) but in general, you’ll get clearer sound when you keep the speakers out of the corners and move them out a bit fromt the wall.
2) On the other hand, the closer your speakers are to reflecting surfaces, the more bass you will get. So if you have small speakers that seem light on bass, putting them in the corners, while potentially “muddying” the sound a little, will give them some additional low end. So you have to make a choice there.
3) The ideal listening position for stereo sound is usually considered to be something like an equilateral triangle, with the listener sitting in one corner and the two speakers in the others. Also something that is not practical or possible for almost anyone, but if you are able to keep the speakers on the same wall oppositie where you typically listen, in something like an isosceles triangle, you’ll get better sound and a better sense of stereo imaging.
4) Stereos produce sound by having the amplifier send out bursts of electricity that are passed through magnets on the back of speaker cones. The magnets are repelled by the electric current and move away from it. If this happens at 100 times per second, you hear a 100 Hz mid-bass tone.
Speaker cables have two strands, and speaker connections have two connections, labeled red (positive) and black (negative). An important thing to keep in mind when attaching speaker wire is that the polarity of the connections should line up properly. What this means is that all positive/red connections are connected to other positive/red connections and all negative/black connections are connected to negative/black connections (speaker wire with a small “+” on one of the strands makes this easy; on each end, just make sure the + strand is connected to the red terminal).
Correct polarity ensures that the two speakers are working together. If the left speaker is red-to-red while the right is red-to-black, then one speaker will be sucking in air while the other is pushing it out. They will be moving air in opposite directions and all information that they share will be muddled as a result, because they are working against each other.
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