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  1. Mark Tranchant

    Expensive power cables...

    I do hope you realize the sarcasm / humour in my original post...?
  2. Mark Tranchant

    New House, Home Theater size 10' X 20'

    10 inches is a bit narrow for a theatre room... ;) Seriously, if you're having a new floor, why not ask the guy to put in one or more lengths of drainpipe under the floor, with bends accessible at each end. Make sure you put a few lengths of string through them before laying, and then you...
  3. Mark Tranchant

    Have any Digital8 owners been able to archive Hi8 tapes to DVD-R via Firewire?

    I'm a bit late on this, but the old Hitachi VMD-[89]65 D8 camcorders will output DV over Firewire from a Hi8 tape.
  4. Mark Tranchant

    Expensive power cables...

    I'm thinking of building a power cable for my receiver out of this stuff. Any advice? This will probably end up quite expensive, so I'd like to get it right first time. :D
  5. Mark Tranchant

    pre outs-line outs

    You can work it out easily enough. Voltage is the square root of the power times the impedance. If you also know the input voltage you need to drive your amp to maximum power, you're sorted. For example, if you put up to 50W into 8 ohms, you're looking at 20V. If your other amp wants 1V...
  6. Mark Tranchant

    pre outs-line outs

    You could build a potential divider (two for stereo) and connect it to you speaker outputs. You'll want to divide the speaker voltage by a factor of very roughly 100, so something like 100 ohms and 10k ohms would do the job. You may need to experiment a bit here, or use a potentiometer with...
  7. Mark Tranchant

    Newbie says hi, has questions

    The only people persuading you to upgrade your cables are cable retailers. Sure, you *may* get a slightly better performance from somewhat better engineered cables than the supplied ones, but you have no need to rush out and match the price of your TV in Monster Cable. Get everything set...
  8. Mark Tranchant

    watts or ohms

    A receiver doesn't "have" ohms. The "ohms" figure is a measure of the impedance (think AC resistance) into which the amp can provide the stated power figure. It's more a measure of the amps' current-providing capability. Both receivers will probably drive 4-ohm loads with no problem, although...
  9. Mark Tranchant

    Question: Wiring Amp to Receiver

    Oh, it's a 100W stereo amp you're using, is it? Yes, you could just use one channel and leave the other one idle; or you could split the singal from the receiver to both channels, and run one shaker off one channel, and the other two in series off the other. The series pair will each end up with...
  10. Mark Tranchant

    Best Program for making web pages?

    Another vote for a simple text editor like Notepad. More control, and you understand what's going on. Use HTML for structure and CSS for presentation. Browse the comp.infosystems.www.authoring.* newsgroups for more. Try my HTML tutorial.
  11. Mark Tranchant

    is it ok to route power cords with other a/v cables at back of av racks(wire mgmt)

    It's best to keep all three separate. If you can't do this, keep the interconnects separate from the speaker and power cables. Speaker cables are a low impedance line - this means the load being driven (the speaker) has a low impedance (resistance) and requires a lot of current from the amp...
  12. Mark Tranchant

    help with strange ONLINE-DIALER..???

    If you run Mozilla or its stripped-down counterpart Phoenix, you can set the browser up to reject pop-ups automatically.
  13. Mark Tranchant

    Cheapest digital solution - recommendations?

    OK, here's what I want from a PCI soundcard: * Optical or coaxial S/PDIF output * True 44.1kHz without sample rate conversion * DTS and DD passthrough I've read lots of other threads here, but nothing seems to answer this directly. I've seen the Abit UA-11 USB device which looks...
  14. Mark Tranchant

    New Type of Listening Test for Cable Differences

    Mark D: agreed, that "test" works for you, but it does not leave you in a position to advise others that your new cables are better than your old. I believe that is what Lee is trying (eventually ;) ) to achieve: to be able to say that he ran a fair test and listeners were or were not able to...
  15. Mark Tranchant

    New Type of Listening Test for Cable Differences

    The metric you really need is the total conductor cross-sectional area. Any "gauge equivalent" numbers could be misleading.
  16. Mark Tranchant

    New Type of Listening Test for Cable Differences

    Aarrrghhh!!! Lee, please just go and do the test. I'm fed up with the bickering, and just want to know if there's an audible difference between this crazy high-end stuff and the 49-strand I use. The only thing I want is a fair, statistically significant test without bias. I don't care if...
  17. Mark Tranchant

    New Type of Listening Test for Cable Differences

    I'd suggest placing the two speakers right next to each other, rather than left and right. Otherwise you are also sensitive to hearing differences between listeners' left and right ears. I know when I play the test tones on my system that I hear a very slight, but distinct difference in...
  18. Mark Tranchant

    Banana's or Spades?

    Now why should "banana's" get an apostrophe but not "spades"? Is it because of the vowel? See Bob's Quick Guide to the Apostrophe, You Idiots. ;) I'd say spades, so long as you tighten them properly. Bananas rely on the spring clip to maintain the connection, which won't be as airtight and...
  19. Mark Tranchant

    3 amplifiers inputs connected in parallel

    Yes, 26Kohm - assuming the input impedance is constant with frequency on all three amplifiers. The combined input impedance with amps powered off depends on the circuitry used. Simple op-amp input stages would not change significantly when powered off, and I wouldn't expect any circuitry to...
  20. Mark Tranchant

    Newbie sub question

    The sub has speaker connectors on the back as inputs. This is for use in systems that do not have a subwoofer output: you connect the main speaker cables through the subwoofer, and it uses those signals with its own amp to drive its own speaker. They are not intended to drive extra channels...
  21. Mark Tranchant

    Bitstream displays

    Philips DVD-762 does.
  22. Mark Tranchant

    amp/speaker configuration, NEED ADVICE!!

    In my opinion, you won't get close to using all that power in a small room unless you listen at insane levels. Try out various configurations until you're happy, although with decent kit like this, I expect any configuration will work just fine.
  23. Mark Tranchant

    Can I consolidate my partitioned hard drive?

    Do you still have both hard drives installed? That may have changed the drive letter of the burner. Also make sure it's not another connection problem, and each IDE channel has no more than one device set up as master and one as slave.
  24. Mark Tranchant

    Will I damage my speakers by running w/o a HPF

    I'd suggest you don't do that. By enabling the crossover but not running a sub, you are missing out on the entire LFE channel as well as the low bass. Unless you drive your speakers to distortion (you will hear this, we're not talking 0.1% here!) you are unlikely to damage them. Watch the...
  25. Mark Tranchant

    Finally separate...But some question for the professionnals...

    1) See if your insurance covers it. However, assuming you live in the US, your wall outlets are probably 120V 15A, which allows for 1800W. You should be able to comfortably plug all into one outlet and run at full volume. Note that the Rotel will only draw 800W at full volume, most of the time...
  26. Mark Tranchant

    Another stupid question........hey it's my 2nd post........

    Gary: no reason at all why not. You'll want to connect the Denon's centre pre-out to the TV's audio input using a Y-connector to reach both channels. Does the TV have easy connections to let you do this? With my setup, I'd have to cobble up a SCART to SCART and phono to pull the component video...
  27. Mark Tranchant

    Y Interconnect - Distortion?

    The only issue would be that the loading on the source component would increase, as the impedance it sees it the input impedance of the two "receivers" in parallel. Shouldn't be a problem in most cases.
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