When your are working on the tangled mess of a previously installed speaker system, Much time is wasted trying to determine which of the wires is connected to each particular speaker. This could be a house, boat, or even a bench test on an individual component speaker. So here is the number one, first piece of Secret Knowledge that only I Possess. All you have to do is take any 1.5 volt battery, and then start connecting wires to each end. Start by holding a black wire to the negative, and then going through each individual mystery wire and connecting one at a time to the positive end of the 1.5 volt cell. When the random wires are connected to a single speaker, it will make an audible static noise, and after locating the speakers orientation, now you can label the cluster of spaghetti you started with. This works infallibly, with many added benefits. Number one, all you need to test for a signal is a single battery, instead of a head unit. Secondly, this method can do no unintentional harm to your stereo components. A sinngle AAA battery does not have the amperage to blow up a pair of headphone speakers, yet it will still power a 15 inch subwoofer enough to hear the static, when the two wires that go to an individual speaker have a DC powere cell completeing the circuit, it releases energy in a chaotic manner that sounds distictively of static. So maybe some people already know this trick. And certainly there are much more professional ways to accomplish this task. But the universal availability of simple batteries is so prevalent, and the problem of distinguishing which wires go to which speakers, I believe that this is very usefull information to the Scavenger-Level Electronics Engineer. On my next post I hope to show pictures of a thing of beauty, the power supply and general architecture of my JBL 160 self- powered subwoofer. Have a creative day.
I remember way back some folks said there was a way to add a center channel to a stereo amp. Was this possible with some wiring configuration?
Edit - found this: http://www.termpro.com/asp/pubs.asp?ID=115
Edit - found this: http://www.termpro.com/asp/pubs.asp?ID=115
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That would give a mono of the two stereo channels.
The centre channel of a 5.1 etc, is normally and predominantly a voice channel to make intelligibility more clear and to avoid having one voice way off to the side.
This is quite different from creating a mono of the stereo information. which is taking all the "in-phase" audio information and rejecting all the "out of phase" information.
The centre channel of a 5.1 etc, is normally and predominantly a voice channel to make intelligibility more clear and to avoid having one voice way off to the side.
This is quite different from creating a mono of the stereo information. which is taking all the "in-phase" audio information and rejecting all the "out of phase" information.
Sometimes even more, I've seen a lot of movies lately where most of the sound from the movie is in the center channel, the only thing that's L/R predominantly is if music starts playing, or if a car drives by. I wish they mixed the center a little more with L and R. I miss the old center "wide" settings that are present for PLII-EX modes, but not DTS-HD/TrueHD. Sometimes I find myself wondering if two center speakers placed at 25-30% increments between L/R would be better, so the image collapse when the soundtrack falls to almost pure center wouldn't be as jarring.
But anyway, battery testing...yeah. I do sorta the same thing for installs, but I use the tone generator dongle that came as part of a wire toning set. I think I paid ~$20 for it, but it's the best thing I've found for the job, and even with just it's little watch battery, it has no problem driving speakers.
That's an old trick to improve the sound image from a system playing stereo if you couldn't get your front speakers positioned properly in your car. It was done as a last resort to bring the vocals to center. It worked best on it's own low power amplifier crossed over to just the vocal range and with just enough volume to center the image but not really be heard.
We have been using this for years - the Fox and Hound wire sniffer. It lets you trace the wire just by getting the probe near it so you don't even need a speaker on the other end to make a noise and you can tell which wire in a tangle is correct without going to the end.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B001ULPREW?pc_redir=1413605372&robot_redir=1
http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B001ULPREW?pc_redir=1413605372&robot_redir=1
I think that it was called the "Hafler" effect? You took an input from the '+' side of the left and right speakers and ran it through a "difference" speaker. I used it in cars years and years ago - was quite effective as I recall (in a car).
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