HDTV, Home Stereo, Subwoofer, cabling operating confusion, somebody help me, please?
Question by Tones: HDTV, Home Stereo, Subwoofer, cabling operating confusion, somebody help me, please?
I need advice. I am looking to purchase a 50″ Plasma TV, 90 Watt Tuner (Marantz 6001), and a Toshiba DVD Video Recorder.
Currently, I have a built in wall that can fit the TV with shelving below it to hold the tuner etc. I also have a subwoofer (with an outlet built in the wall), 7 ceiling speakers, and in the shelving also, prewired cables for these speakers. They are 7 large wires. One I’ve determined is for the subwoofer which plugs into a subwoofer outlet, and the 6 others are for the speakers.
I also have a cable box that uses “MyDVR which allows me to record programs similar to Tivo.
OK, my background: I’ve never had a real home stereo system. It’s always been: plug the cable input to the TV in, then, connect the TV out to the DVD player with the sound coming out of the puny 18″ tv I own.
Now I have this plasma TV, I am suffering from “excess cable confusion breakdown.” I don’t where anything goes. How can I be assured of having the best sound for what I got?
Best answer:
Answer by Thinkenstein
It is very common for people without a lot of experience hooking up audio / video gear to feel intimidated. Trust me though when I say you will find it is not rocket science. Pretty basic stuff — specific outputs to specific inputs. Since the speaker wires are already installed to the speakers they “should” be labeled. If they are not you can use an ordinary household battery to determine which wire goes to which speaker. Put the positive and negatives of a given wire to the the two poles of a battery. The speaker the wire goes to will make a sound. Be sure you do not have any bare copper negative and positive wires touching at your amplifier. This will shut down the amplifier. Other than that it is hard to hurt anything. CircuitCuity.Com has some helpful diagrams (see link below). The most overlooked resource for help is your owner’s manuals. People are often afraid to consult these but they are provided for your benefit. Run a test tone (from your receiver’s menu) after it is hooked up to be sure your interconnects and wire are properly hooked up. If one channel does not respond or if they respond out of sequence you need to recheck your connections. It’s easy to make a simple mistake in the excitement of hooking up a new system. You will possibly have more questions along the way (whether to do video switching through your receiver, what kind of interconnect cables to use etc.). If you run across a specific problem ask us again with that specific or you may email me. I have hooked up a large number of systems.
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Comments
It sound like you just need a quick familiarization with a hook up guide. Way back in the day when I dealt with consumers in electronics I would ask for all their manuals. Then I would use a label maker to tell them which end went where. most were very capable in doing so. I recommend using high quality interconnects, that said find a commissioned sales person to do what I described. If they want to sell you cables make em earn it, also get a demonstration of what they add to your system. Also check out the following hook up guides.
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