Cheap Tricks To Improve Sound!

[Shwamdoo]

I am a high school senior that is very short on cash. I love my stereo and I love upgrading but this hobby is becoming increasingly expensive. Please post anything that you can think of that would help someone like me to improve my stereo without spending to much cash.

[Geoffcin]

I am a high school senior that is very short on cash. I love my stereo and I love upgrading but this hobby is becoming increasingly expensive. Please post anything that you can think of that would help someone like me to improve my stereo without spending to much cash.

Audiogon.com. Upgrade used and save some $$$.

[Mike Anderson]

Speaker placement - costs nothing but the time you spend on it.

[kexodusc]

If you have bookshelf speakers, try placing them upside down. Sometimes this can help by changing the acoustic centers and phase properties relative to your listing position (ears).
Sometimes it'll do nothing at all. A lot of speakers are designed to be best with the tweeter at ear level, but some pick other arbitrary points. You should be able to tell quickly. I find it tames the slight edginess of my Axiom M3Ti's.
If your tweeters aren't flush mounted, you can place peel-n'-stick felt around the tweeter, a few inches or so...helps reduce some diffraction. You'd be amazed how many speakers benefit from this.

[Shwamdoo]

Awesome, this is the sort of advice that I am talking about.

I was wondering if anyone had any information on how to build power isolators or anything like that?

[Bernd]

Hi,
I have a large Bay Window and at the beginning of the year the three plants I had residing at the Window died.So I threw them out and noticed that the sound become cold (glassy if you want),so I replaced the plants and like magic the original sound returned. I removed and replaced them a few times just to make sure I don't imagine that. No it works. So if you have any window area try and place a plant with lots of leaves.

Good luck

Bernd

[csukasem]

Hi,

Fun and economical ways to improve AV components performances:
- Do not stack AV components on each other.
- Do not let cables touch each other.
- Do not let cables touch floor, wall.
- Ceramic coffee cups are friendly to all kinds of cables. Support cables with ceramic coffee cups, especially those which will touch the floor.
- Tip toes for your front speakers will most obviously improve the sound.
- …………..

Please let me know the results.

Good luck and have a good time.


Sukasem

[Woochifer]

I think the best thing to do, even if you don't have budget limits, is to properly set up what you already have. This involves simple stuff like repositioning and realigning the speakers, changing the location of your listening position, and little things to deal with problems with the room acoustics.

In general, your speakers should be aligned at a 50 to 60 degree angle from the listening position. You should also experiment with how close or how far away from the corners you place the speakers. The distance from the room boundaries plays a huge role in determining how your bass sounds. If you use a subwoofer, then you should definitely move it around the room to find a spot where the sounds more even. More advanced approaches with a subwoofer would involve working with room treatments and/or parametric equalization. The amount that you want to toe the speakers in towards the listening position will depend on the speaker's off-axis response and dispersion pattern.

With the room acoustics, if you have an echoey room, then you need to take some steps to tame and/or break up the echoes. A simple test involves standing in the middle of the room and clapping your hands together. If you hear a slap echo, then your room has hard reflective surfaces that need addressing. To treat your room, you can go with thick rugs on the floors, absorbing materials such as quilts/tapestries or acoustic panels (an inexpensive alternative is fiberglas or acoustic ceiling panels that you can find at building materials stores) along the sidewall at reflecting points, or bookcases filled with a lot different sized books along the sidewall and/or backwall can help break up the reflected sound.

Experimenting with all of those approaches can greatly improve your performance and won't cost much.

[RGA]

I am a high school senior that is very short on cash. I love my stereo and I love upgrading but this hobby is becoming increasingly expensive. Please post anything that you can think of that would help someone like me to improve my stereo without spending to much cash.

A set of Sennheiser HD 580 HD 600s, or if you really splurge the AKG 1000 and a decent Headphone amp. Then starting with this as an inexpensive baseline reference Wait and wait and save until you find speakers that at your listening position in your room or any room are even clearer, richer, cleaner than the headphone set-up. I found that to beat these headphones at what headphones do so well is not an inexpensive proposition - then of course the speakers will do many other things inherently better than a good set of cans.

The great thing about NOT having money is that it forces patience. And when one has no money it allows you to do a lot of window shopping - and in audio that;s a big part of the game. You can listen to all the stupid expensive stuff and everything in between. The good stuff isn't going anywhere - they don't change models as fast as underwear. So if you hear it today the same things should be there in 10 years. If it isn't then chances are it wasn't worth owning in the first place. See the Sugden A21a integrated.

The problem with your post is that I don't know what you mean by not spending much cash, I don't know if your room is good or bad. Many speakers don't like rooms that are overdamped and adding acoustic treatments may make the sound much worse than not having them treated - especially the back wall behind the listening position. Also, without knowing what you want improved or what is not pleasing you then it's impossible to fix.

[Shwamdoo]

RGA,
I understand what you mean. My initial post was very vague.

My room is actually probably a very poor listening room because I am forced to keep my stereo in my bedroom. My room is almost a triangular shape with a very small fourth side in one of the corners. The floors are carpeted and the walls are made of drywall. I have some furniture in the room but it is not overcrowded. There is an adjacent bathroom that has presented some acoustic problems in the past, but I made a doorsill out of some sound-absorbent material and that seems to have fixed the problem. My speakers have been meticulously placed and I believe that they are in the best position. They are currently placed in the middle on one of the sides of the triangle (Opposite the small fourth side). However, I am concerned that the window behind the speakers may be having an adverse effect on my sound. My electronics sit on a sound isolating component shelf and my speakers are firmly placed on their stands using Sticky Tack. I replaced the outlets in my room with hospital grade Hubbell outlets and I have taken every effort to lay my cables cautiously.

When I started this thread I was hoping to get suggestions about little DIY fixes and upgrades that could improve sound quality (For example the contact cleaner and the Sticky Tack fixes.) However, I am also interested in room treatment recommendations and advice on where to place my equipment. If anyone has any information on cheap components or suggestions as to which DIY kits are good I am also interested in those options. Really, just anything to keep my hobby and my love for music going without spending every dollar I earn.

Thanks.

[blairphillips7@yahoo.com]

I agree with everyone who mentioned speaker placement. I am new to the hobby myself, 1 year or so, and started when I was a senior in college. I was also broke (still am) and forced to try many cheap things to improve sound quality. Speaker placement and your sitting position is huge. A good rule of thumb is your speakers and yourself should form an equallateral triangle. I found that with my setup that by removing the speaker grilles and toeing the speakers in to where I can not see either side of the speaker, only the front, it really helps. This is what my audiophile friends helped me with at first. These suggestions will drastically improve your listening experience. Also, I have noticed a huge difference in my sound when I upgraded my cables recently. I started with cheap stock interconnects and Audioquest Type 2 cable. I recently switched to Audioquest type 8 cables and Audioquest G-snake interconnects and was absolutely blown away for a relatively inexpensive price. I don't know if I believe all this about not letting your cables touch each other or the floor or walls however. Good Luck and let me know if I can help anymore.