Stupid things you've done with your audio system

dragon1952

I recently got a new pair of stand mounts and have been spending some time trying to get them positioned optimally. I also have been swapping two pair of speaker cables back and forth for comparison.
Yesterday I decided to spend some serious time with the speakers and finally get them set up right. So I spent about 2 hours and during this time I thought I detected something was slightly amiss but since I wasn't really accustomed to the speakers yet I kind of blew it off.
So I thought I finally had them set up pretty good so I decided to swap the speaker cables and this is what I discovered :^ /
Anybody see something wrong? Ignore the gray wires, they're going to my subwoofer.

I don't know how far I had my head up my butt when I did that but it must have been all the way. And it definitely explains the 'something amiss' I thought I was hearing.

Clipdat

Left output going to both L and R speakers?

dragon1952

Yep....I didn't even know you could do that with those Furutech's. Boy did I feel stupid. Not to mention wasting 2 hours trying to set the speakers up.

muncybob

Well, nothing quite like that...but I was having some hissing sounds in the L channel. Swapped in some other tubes into the pre and turned it up gradually. Got the dial way past 1/2 way and I thought, man these tubes are the answer. Forgot to turn on the power amp

VR3

Lol! Love it

Mono rules!

verb

Crazy! And very cool of you to share!


I've done similar with IC's, hooking up the left to say Aux1, and the right to Aux2, and trying to figure it out. Swapping tubes to only find that I effed up the connections in the back!

audioluvr

I've never done anything stupid.

motorstereo

Summing a center speaker output on an older preamp (mcintosh c28) with a y adapter for a sub will result in the entire system being mono. I listened to one of my very early rigs for longer than I care to admit to before I discovered that mistake.

verb

Placed my 2B's smack in the corners of the basement. Lol boy was that stupid!

treitz3

Had 3 EQ's hooked up in one rig.

Keep in mind that this was when CD's first came out in the early 80's and I had grown accustomed to analog tapes (R2R and cassette) and vinyl. CD's back then were a shock to these ears. So, I had 2 EQ's for the CDP. One from the CDP to the receiver (don't knock it, I was only 12!) and another going through the tape loop within the receiver itself.

Made intolerable Heart CD's sound somewhat listenable through a pair of Klipsch Heresey's. Somewhat.

The other EQ was for the LP player for those albums that didn't, shall I say, sound very good and I wanted a little bit more here.....a little bit less there. When I was playing LP's, the other EQ on the tape loop was bypassed.

What I find hilarious about this is that millennials have no freakin' CLUE what I just said. It's akin to driving a stick shift to them.

Wait-what?

Tom

verb

You made me laugh on the last point!

mhardy6647

Tape Loops.
Not a breakfast cereal.


Not my dbx 200, but I do have one just like it someplace...

motorstereo

Messing around with bi-amping with both amps running is high on my list of things that should not be attempted with an audio rig.

jdjohn

Several weeks ago I left a turntable spinning all night with the needle in the dead wax section. We'd been entertaining some friends, and streaming digital all night, but then I decided to toss-it-up and spin a record. When the record was over, I kinda forgot about it , our friends left shortly thereafter, and my wife and I went to bed. The first thing I noticed while coming down the stairs the next morning was the turntable still spinning. Fortunately (I guess), the stylus never made it to the paper label, but it left a nice, deep groove in the vinyl. I gave the stylus a good inspection with a loupe, and my USB microscope. There was no obvious damage, but of course, I'm certain that I shortened its life by about 12 hours.

I swap turntables and phono pre-amps more than anything else, so I've also had several times where I've forgotten to reconnect ICs, and/or power-on the phono pre. Before realizing there's a problem, I often say to myself, 'wow, the noise floor is REALLY low with this setup'. Um, yeah...the noise floor is truly non-existent

pitdogg2

whoops

msg

mhardy6647 wrote: »

Tape Loops.
Not a breakfast cereal.

Not my dbx 200, but I do have one just like it someplace...

The amphib version

jbreezy5

Let a salesman “sell” me on an Audiolab 6000CDT, stating there was only one negative review expressing concern of scratched discs, but many (and there are many) positive reviews that don’t complain of this.

Fact is I have never had a scratched disc from a tray loader or top-loader.

The Audiolab did scratch discs, and I removed it from my system.

Worst $600 spent in all my audio journey.

Toolfan66

Lining the entire inside of my speakers with Blackhole 5 is on top of my list..

pitdogg2

Toolfan66 wrote: »

Lining the entire inside of my speakers with Blackhole 5 is on top of my list..

So what did it sound like ?

msg

pitdogg2 wrote: »

Toolfan66 wrote: »

Lining the entire inside of my speakers with Blackhole 5 is on top of my list..

So what did it sound like ?

And Larry's already responded. You just can't see or hear him.

mhardy6647

Dang, @msg's on fire here of late!
He's here 'til Thursday.
Try the veal.
... and don't forget to tip your server.

Toolfan66

pitdogg2 wrote: »

Toolfan66 wrote: »

Lining the entire inside of my speakers with Blackhole 5 is on top of my list..

So what did it sound like ?

It took the life right out of the speakers, it was like listening to the speakers with a sheet of drywall in front of you.

It looked fantastic, and I spent a lot of money on the material, but by far the worst money I have spent on this hobby, at least if you try a piece of gear that you think is going to kill it, only to be disappointed once you try it, you can recoup some if not all of your money back depending on what you paid for it. The journey with BH5 was just throwing it in the trash. It was horrible taking that trash bag out to the curb..

maxward

You might have sold it here by the square inch.

verb

Took my VTL pre to the shop cause I was hearing hissing at very low levels. I did seek advice on a thread of mine, so there are collaborators! Turns out the tubes had to be replaced. Paid 75 bucks for service fee (did not buy their tubes) to tell me I should roll tubes. Tube Newbie I was!

SCompRacer

Since I retired from a stressful job, sometimes I just shut my brain down. What we have here is the hangover shelf. Few years ago, rather than get a new, wider rack to fit the Bottlehead Eros phono stage and SUT, I made a wider top shelf. The extra width overhangs the side of the rack with no support.

I decide to pull the turntable off the rack for a main bearing oil change, lube the idler. No issues with it at all, just thought it could use it and give me something to do. I disconnect and start lifting the turntable. The right eye notices the Bottlehead Eros listing to port side. Fortunately the brain kicked in and I put the turntable down before it slid off.

Hindsight says I should have centered the wider shelf on the rack. For the fix, bend some aluminum straps to secure shelf under cross brace and screw it to bottom of shelf.

My first job was at West Side Rentals. They rented silver sets to back hoes. Joe and Bruce, father and son owned and ran the place. Big fat guys, drank beer all day. If I did something out of ignorance or just dumb, Joe would start yelling "Stupid Richee! So stupid!" When he got winded, Bruce would start in. Those are the voices I heard...

machone

Forgot to turn off my amp before swapping some ICs........POW
Sounded like a rifle but no damage

motorstereo

machone wrote: »

Forgot to turn off my amp before swapping some ICs........POW
Sounded like a rifle but no damage

Here's something I bet we've all done at some point and some of us have done it more than once No doubt it's a great way to soil a new pair of undergarments.

treitz3

I had a friend (Richard) that had a pair of Carver 9t's. He forgot to power down the mono blocks and proceeded to swap the speakers trying to chase down a gremlin in his system. He got one speaker off successfully and then the beams crossed. Translation? The speaker cable leads touched.

These mono blocks are stable down to 1 ohm, so they arc welded themself together until the copper just disintegrated and created the open again. Richard lost a rather decent set of speaker cables that day.

To his surprise, it did not phase the mono block amp that killed the SC. When I went down to his house a little later that week, I held the arc welded SC in my hand and it was at that point that I was amazed the amp even ran at all.

Tom

pitdogg2

treitz3 wrote: »

I had a friend (Richard) that had a pair of Carver 9t's. He forgot to power down the mono blocks and proceeded to swap the speakers trying to chase down a gremlin in his system. He got one speaker off successfully and then the beams crossed. Translation? The speaker cable leads touched.

These mono blocks are stable down to 1 ohm, so they arc welded themself together until the copper just disintegrated and created the open again. Richard lost a rather decent set of speaker cables that day.

To his surprise, it did not phase the mono block amp that killed the SC. When I went down to his house a little later that week, I held the arc welded SC in my hand and it was at that point that I was amazed the amp even ran at all.

Tom

Along that same route, I was talking to Bill Flannery one night. In our discussion he told me about how "robust" the outputs are on the big Sunfire amps. While repairing one he inadvertently touched both speaker posts with his screw driver, his words were "a shotgun blast goes off and suddenly my screwdriver 🪛 was absolutely welded to the speaker posts". Amp shut down I gathered up my senses and went and got another set of binding posts to replace the two melted to the screwdriver .... We had a hard laugh, he said other than the binding posts the amp was fine.
Don't try this at home kiddie's!

I bet that was a britches soiling moment!

maxward

My aged Joule Electra LA-100 preamp was losing output in the left channel for months, many months. When this started, I checked everything else in the stereo first. I then learned that when this happened I could switch it from operate to standby and then back to operate, and 99% of the time it would be fine, for a few minutes or hours. This got frustrating given that there’s a 45-second wait for it to come back on. I cleaned the tube pins and sockets and then did a lot of tube wiggling when it happened. Then I swapped all the tubes at one time or another. Still happened. Then a tech friend suggested a problem with one of the power supply capacitors. Ordered the whole set of replacements and made sure that I could still solder after a 40+ year hiatus. Got them all replaced and did a little dance when it came back on afterwards. But it still cut out! So I shot some Deoxit into the back of the off-standby-operate-mute switch. The problem was solved!

verb

SCompRacer wrote: »

Since I retired from a stressful job, sometimes I just shut my brain down. What we have here is the hangover shelf. Few years ago, rather than get a new, wider rack to fit the Bottlehead Eros phono stage and SUT, I made a wider top shelf. The extra width overhangs the side of the rack with no support.

I decide to pull the turntable off the rack for a main bearing oil change, lube the idler. No issues with it at all, just thought it could use it and give me something to do. I disconnect and start lifting the turntable. The right eye notices the Bottlehead Eros listing to port side. Fortunately the brain kicked in and I put the turntable down before it slid off.

Hindsight says I should have centered the wider shelf on the rack. For the fix, bend some aluminum straps to secure shelf under cross brace and screw it to bottom of shelf.

My first job was at West Side Rentals. They rented silver sets to back hoes. Joe and Bruce, father and son owned and ran the place. Big fat guys, drank beer all day. If I did something out of ignorance or just dumb, Joe would start yelling "Stupid Richee! So stupid!" When he got winded, Bruce would start in. Those are the voices I heard...

Nice save though! The OCD in me would've like you said made it centered.