the week

[low_delta]

We've got a real stereo, finally. I've been waiting for years. Picked up a Sony receiver and CD player today. Got my big speakers out of the basement. Connected them and the DVD player, VCR and TV. I'm a little disappointed in the sound. I'm not sure if it's because my speakers aren't that great, because I don't understand how to set up the receiver properly or because my hopes were too high. Also, I'm getting a buzz through the turntable. I was really looking forward to playing some LPs.

Had a nice long conversation with Lonita last night.

Got our new dining room set yesterday. Looks really nice.

Got all the books out of the boxes and onto the shelves. Now the whole main floor of the house is set up. Still a lot of details to work out, but the main stuff is set.

Got the computer working again. It was bogging down, and after several days I determined that it was because one of the peripherals connected through the ISB hub shouldn't have been. It wasn't getting enough power. I don't know why that would have affected the computer, but I've unplugged it, and everything works fine. Still don't have it networked, either.

Comments

[low-delta.livejournal.com]

Cyn asked me if there was anyone on my friends list who might be able to offer help with these problems, and I though of you. :-)

The speakers are only five or six years old, but they were stored in a damp basement. Or maybe they're worse quality than I thought. They weren't very expensive.

Ground hum sounds about right. The buzz feels like motor noise. I'll try your suggestions.

Thanks Stever! Btw, I got strong deja vu while reading your comment. Weird.

[marswalker.livejournal.com]

*lol*... he beat me to the suggestion!

Yah, that "motor sounding" buzz (a 60hz hummmm) is usually a ground problem, and he's hit exactly the solution I would have suggested. The turntable I have (bought in about 1981) has a gound wire built-in, and instructions for connecting to a dedicated ground on the reciever or amp.

And I second the advice on the speakers. If you want to look at a decent replacement set, Cambridge Soundworks have a relatively inexpensive 5.1 system that features a powered sub-woofer and 5 satellites for a relatively low price, or they used to. I picked mine up about 4 years ago, and the only change I've made was to add a second subwoofer.

USB hub problems... hmm... it is a bit odd that it caused the whole system to slow down, but if the USB port on the computer is a chip on the motherboard, it might have caused some electrical confusion on the PCI bus on the motherboard. That in turn could slow-down everything else on the PCI bus. Most newer computers (last 5 years) have everything in the world hanging off the PCI bus, except the CPU and RAM. Once a PCI device starts having problems, it will affect the other PCI componantes (like disk controllers), and that will be seen as a system slow-down.

Many USB hubs have a switch and a wall-wart (power converter) - the switch will allow the USB power to come from the wall-wart instead of from the USB on the motherboard. You might want to try changing the switch setting on the hub (if you have that type).

I have a custom USB camera for taking long exposure frames. It draws a little heavy on USB, enough that if it's plugged into my laptop without the laptop being plugged into the wall, it will cause the laptop to shut-down the USB entirely. A side-effect of that is the power switching isn't well implemented and it causes a CMOS switching chip in the camera to blow-up every time that happens.

Best of luck with the stereo!