I need help with a set of speakers, please!

[ThermalRunaway]

Personally, I feel there should be a trading law against selling equipment with confusing specifications. It is unreasonable to expect Joe Public to understand that a 1000W system could infact be a lot less than that depending on the system used to measure the power by. It is also unreasonable to expect them to understand distortion figures. A lot of manufacturers choose their specifications carefully so that the performance of their product appears to be a lot better than it really is. In my opinion, that's just as bad as lying!

The same happens with computers. Manufacturer's manipulate the specifications of their products such that it sounds better than the competition, which often couldn't be further from the truth. That's lying, too.

I understand that it would be hard to standardise the way specifications are written for the customer, but there's no doubt that a LOT of improvements could be made on the current system. At the moment, manufacturer's pretty much have a free licence to lie about product performance as much as they want, by manipulating the information they give out to Joe Public. That's not fair.

Brian

 

[Nigel Goodwin]

Personally, I feel there should be a trading law against selling equipment with confusing specifications. It is unreasonable to expect Joe Public to understand that a 1000W system could infact be a lot less than that depending on the system used to measure the power by. It is also unreasonable to expect them to understand distortion figures. A lot of manufacturers choose their specifications carefully so that the performance of their product appears to be a lot better than it really is. In my opinion, that's just as bad as lying!

For many years amplifier ratings were all honest RMS values, and you could make sensible comparisons - then the American advertisers got involved, and exaggerated everything beyond belief. For a while European amplifiers stuck to honest ratings, then (presumably for the American market?) they gradually started using similar imaginary values.

Generally though, decent makes, and musical instrument and PA amplifiers, have kept to honest ratings.

 

[audioguru]

The cheap manufacturers don't make sound systems. They make profit by lying about power.

 

[Mormoran]

Thanks for all your help guys, and the replies. I managed to fix the problem from the speakers... bought a new sound card for a nice sound, and sent the woofer to a repair shop someone told me it was really good and they did something to thingamabob and now the speakers sound properly.

Unfortunately I have no idea what I did, but the radio waves are back, and it's driving me crazy... I can't seem to be able to fix it back, I don't know what happened, seems the shielded wires aren't enough or I broke them or they got contaminated with the crappy thin wires (I only had center, left and right with shielded wires because the shielded wire is so expensive, so I plugged the surround speakers because I thought maybe the shielded wires would be enough to clear the radio waves). Before, the center, left and right speakers didn't pick up radio waves, but now they do, even with shielded wire... what can I do to get rid of radio? give the wires, woofer and speakers a nice tinfoil hat? :O (The surround back speakers are not plugged in, and the regular wire is not plugged either).

I know there's a material that absorbs radio, but I don't know the name or where to get it. Is there something homemade I can do?

 

[ecerfoglio]

You may try putting small capacitors (something like 1nF = 0.001:mu:F or even less) at the amplifier's otput between each wire and ground (and / or between both "+" and "-" wires). Keep the capacitors close to the amplifier.

Also you must ground the shielded wire's shield (or tin foil) at the amplifier's end.