Advice For Installing Your Wireless Speakers

By Gunter Fellbaum

If you just bought a home theater system or a set of wireless speakers, you may need some tips on properly setting it up if you don't want to hire an installer. You may think you are technically savvy and that installing your new home theater system will be a snap. I will give some recommendations that will help you avoid some commonly made mistakes.

The following components are usually included in your home theater system: 5 to 7 satellite speakers, subwoofer and a central component. This central component is the central hub of your home theater system. You will typically be able to control it by remote control. It will process the sound and split into the sound component for each separate speaker.

Choose a location for the surround receiver. You might want to put it where you have the most amount of space. However, please also keep in mind that you will need to run speaker wire to each speaker, so don't pick a location that is too remote. If you have your TV up center then a good spot for your receiver might be somewhere near your TV. This will also simplify hooking up your receiver to the audio output of your TV. However, pick an alternate place if your TV already is fairly crowded with other equipment.

Connecting the receiver to power and to your TV or DVD is fairly straightforward. Most modern TVs have an optical output which connects directly to your receiver via a fiberoptical cable. This cable may not be included with your system but it is available at any electronics store. However, setting up your speakers may be a bit more tricky.

If you have wireless rear speakers you will not need as much speaker cable and the setup will be somewhat easier. First of all, measure how much speaker cable you will need. Make sure to add some extra cable to take into account those bends and corners. Pick the gauge of the speaker cable depending on how much power you intend to drive your speakers with. The higher the power the thicker the speaker cable. Your subwoofer will usually have a built-in amp and connect to your receiver via RCA cable.

The satellite speakers each connect via a speaker terminal which is usually color coded to help ensure proper polarity. Most speaker cable will show one strand in a different color. This is essential since it will help ensure the correct polarity of the speaker terminal connection. Simply attach the different-color strand to the speaker terminal which is colored. Similarly, each speaker output of your surround receiver is color coded. When attaching the cable to your receiver, observe the right polarity once again. This will keep all of your speakers in phase.

If you are using wireless speakers, there will be a short audio delay incurred during the audio transmission to the speakers, also known as latency. Ideally, all speakers have the same latency and thus are in perfect sync. If you have both wireless and wired speakers, the wireless speakers will be out of sync with the wired speakers. Therefore you will need to delay the audio going to the wired speakers by tweaking your receiver. The amount of delay should be equal to the latency of the wireless speakers.

Typically the front- and center-speaker audio will need to be delayed. The rear-speaker audio which is going to the wireless rears should have no delay. Contact your manufacturer if you cannot figure out how to set the audio delay. If your receiver does not support adding an audio latency, you may want to go with a wireless speaker kit that has minimal audio latency in order to keep your speakers in sync. Some available kits have audio latencies of less than 1 ms.

About the Author:

You can get further details about outdoor wireless speakers as well as wireless surround sound speakers from Amphony's web page.

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A Brief Comparison Of Power Amps

By Gunter Fellbaum

Audio amplifiers are at the very heart of every home theater system. As the quality and output power requirements of today's loudspeakers increase, so do the demands of audio amps. It is hard to pick an amplifier given the large number of models and designs. I will explain some of the most common amplifier designs such as "tube amps", "linear amps", "class-AB" and "class-D" as well as "class-t amps" to help you understand some of the terms commonly used by amplifier manufacturers. This guide should also help you figure out which topology is ideal for your particular application.

Simply put, the purpose of an audio amplifier is to convert a low-power audio signal into a high-power audio signal. The high-power signal is large enough to drive a speaker sufficiently loud. In order to do that, an amp uses one or more elements which are controlled by the low-power signal to generate a large-power signal. These elements range from tubes, bipolar transistors to FET transistors.

Tube amplifiers used to be common a few decades ago. A tube is able to control the current flow according to a control voltage which is connected to the tube. Unfortunately, tube amplifiers have a fairly high amount of distortion. Technically speaking, tube amplifiers will introduce higher harmonics into the signal. However, this characteristic of tube amps still makes these popular. Many people describe tube amps as having a warm sound versus the cold sound of solid state amps.

One drawback of tube amps is their low power efficiency. In other words, most of the energy consumed by the amp is wasted as heat rather than being converted into audio. Therefore tube amps will run hot and need sufficient cooling. Tube amps, however, a fairly expensive to make and therefore tube amps have mostly been replaced with amps using transistor elements which are less expensive to manufacture.

The first generation models of solid state amps are known as "Class-A" amps. Solid-state amps use a semiconductor rather than a tube to amplify the signal. Usually bipolar transistors or FETs are being used. In a class-A amp, the signal is being amplified by a transistor which is controlled by the low-level audio signal. In terms of harmonic distortion, class-A amps rank highest amongst all types of audio amps. These amps also usually exhibit very low noise. As such class-A amps are ideal for very demanding applications in which low distortion and low noise a crucial. Class-A amps, however, waste most of the energy as heat. Therefore they usually have large heat sinks and are fairly heavy.

By using a series of transistors, class-AB amps improve on the low power efficiency of class-A amps. The operating working area is divided in two separate areas. These two areas are handled by separate transistors. Each of these transistors works more efficiently than the single transistor in a class-A amp. The higher efficiency of class-AB amps also has two other advantages. Firstly, the required amount of heat sinking is reduced. Therefore class-AB amps can be made lighter and smaller. For that reason, class-AB amps can be made cheaper than class-A amps. Class-AB amps have a drawback though. Every time the amplified signals transitions from one region to the other, there will be some distortion generated. In other words the transition between these two areas is non-linear in nature. Therefore class-AB amps lack audio fidelity compared with class-A amps.

Class-D amps are able to achieve power efficiencies above 90% by using a switching transistor which is constantly being switched on and off and thus the transistor itself does not dissipate any heat. The switching transistor, which is being controlled by a pulse-width modulator generates a high-frequency switching component which has to be removed from the amplified signal by using a lowpass filter. Both the pulse-width modulator and the transistor have non-linearities which result in class-D amps having larger audio distortion than other types of amplifiers.

More recent audio amps incorporate some sort of mechanism to minimize distortion. One approach is to feed back the amplified audio signal to the input of the amp to compare with the amplified signal. The difference signal is then used to correct the switching stage and compensate for the nonlinearity. "Class-T" amps (also called "t-amp") use this type of feedback mechanism and therefore can be made extremely small while achieving low audio distortion.

About the Author:

You can find additional information about t amp models and stereo amplifier from Amphony's website.

READ MORE - A Brief Comparison Of Power Amps

Radio - Still A Vital Mode Of Communication In The 21st. Century

By Owen Jones

Radio is one of the most extraordinary inventions of the Nineteenth Century. Although it was invented in 1879 by Marconi, the regular, large scale broadcasting of radio started later in the 1920?s. Radio is indubitably one of the mothers of innovation because it paved ways for further inventions in the domain of communication.

It transmits its signals in free space through electromagnetic waves. The word ?Radio? stands for wireless. Though new technological innovations have left it far behind, its importance as a method of communication cannot be denied. Radio is thought to be the mother of all the other inventions in the province of communication.

TV and the Internet have left radio a long way behind in the race for communicational improvement. In spite of the fact that modern means of communication are used much more nowadays, none of the contemporary means of communication has replaced it.

In the starting of the Twentieth century, radio was basically used to pass orders and important knowledge during war or emergencies. Later on, it was used to transmit all sorts of programs too.

Radio has successfully served as an important way of transmitting programs ranging from news to drama, music, comedy and arts etc.

Radio offers access to limitless information from around the globe. Listening to a radio is far easier and less time consuming than watching television or using any other form of communication. We do not have to place other things on hold when listening to a radio.

Radio can be listened to whilst driving, walking or even lying on the bed with one?s eyes closed. It is one of the biggest advantages associated with listening to a radio. There is no problem in listening to a radio whilst driving because it does not divert your attention to a damaging extent.

Radio is a cheaper way of serving ads for companies trying to market and sell their products or services. Clive Anderson writes in favour of radio and claims that the pictures suggested by radio are better than any other mode of communication. These images are not real pictures. He is talking about the emotional touch.

Radio offers more emotional involvement. Radio transmissions on a home scale. Normally one or two hosts talk to their audience in such a manner that the program appears to be specially tailored to each listener.

Radio programs are categorized on grounds of the taste of the audience and so a huge variety of programs are transmitted to cater for a colossal populace. The audience feels an emotional connection with the program makers.

Radio not just saves time and money but also physical energy. Less attention is needed to grasp audio knowledge than visual. Television, mobile, Wi-Fi, satellite navigation systems and Radar etc. are all the product of radio technology one in way or another.

This old invention and its concepts are still in use and their importance can?t be denied even in the modern era of technological advancement and innovation. Although just sound is produced by radio, it has a colossal effect on the thinking of individuals because it has a huge reach and individuals listen to it.

About the Author:

Owen Jones, the writer of this piece, writes on a range of topics, but is now involved with Bose Radioss. If you would like to know more, please visit our website at Bose Digital Radio.

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