Lunatic Moments

[Beowulf57]

Just for fun...a thread for all our moments of foolishness. In medieval times the King always had a Fool in the court to remind him of his fallibility and that his power and authority depended on something greater than himself.

In this spirit, my lunatic moment :

After upgrading my DIY system with 2405's, 3106's, HL92's and an L-pad for the MF (LE85's), I was happy with the CD/SACD sound, but the high end didn't seem quite balanced with LP's. So one afternoon I sat down to listen and tweak. First up, a Brahms Serenade (#1)...hmm, doesn't sound quite right, highs perhaps a bit over-emphasized. Suddenly from the other room my wife called out, "That sounds terrible!" Golly, I thought, what could it be? Hey, maybe with the new tweeters I need to adjust the VTA on the tonearm.

So, I fooled around with this for a few days and found where it sounded worse, but I couldn't get it sounding better! Also found I was dialing in more bass boost with my Yamaha C-80 preamp when listening to satellite programming, movies, etc. What in the world is going on here?

One day, I got fed up and for the first time in a few days, played an SACD just to relax and enjoy myself and let the frustration settle: Diana Krall (The Girl in the Other Room)...one of my favourites: "Temptation". WTF ...it sounds terrible...where's that wonderful BASS?! Keep in mind that this is totally unequalized sound from my Linn Unidisk SC direct to my amplifiers.

So, I stuck my ear down by the left and right channel woofers: no sound whatsoever from the right channel! A spring loaded connector on the LX5 crossover had popped off and the wire was hanging out there in space.

Back on it went and back came that lovely music!

So there's my Foolish Lunatic moment...anyone else?

[hjames]

Just for fun...a thread for all our moments of foolishness. In medieval times the King always had a Fool in the court to remind him of his fallibility and that his power and authority depended on something greater than himself.

So there's my Foolish Lunatic moment...anyone else?

Sure - I'm game!!

Well, I had been running 2 subs in my TV room - fed LFE channel from the HK receiver to a Y adapter and then both channels of a Citation 22 - Left went to an M&K sub on the left wall by Emma, Right to an B-380 on the right wall by me. Worked nice for films.

Well, after putting an aquarium in my TV room recently, I had less room so - I put the Citation back into MONO mode, put the M&K sub in the basement for a while, and moved the B-380 sub into its place on the left. I connected it to the pair of wires there and didn't think much about it - I don't use the subs for music, just for TV and movies.

Well, I redid my equipment rack last weekend, and afterwards did some testing - no subwoofer!! I flipped the TIVO to replay an episode of Numbers - lots of BASS in that show. Got lights on the citation sub amp, but No SOUND afrom the Sub!
Yesterday I pulled the sofa and traced the speaker cable from the Citation to ... no connection!! Tracked the other end and figured I had somehow connected the sub to one of the side-surround cables from when I briefly tried 7.1 surround (just use 5.1 now) ... I hooked the B-380 to the actual SUB output line, powered everything back up and - good SUB!
I have NO IDEA how the non-connected speaker wire didn't get shorted and fry the Citation, but I'm so glad it didn't!

Sheer dumbo luck -

[Hoerninger]

... Foolish Lunatic moment...anyone else?

I played with the AV-Receicer, had realized different ways of routing with different sonic impressions. But one day it sounded d... s... bad. It was a CD with a male singer. Until then I had always thought that female voices are the most critical. So bad!
Recently i had plugged a second PC to the receiver. But I had mixed playback and record! So the record out of the receiver was terminated with a very low impedance.
____________
Peter

[Beowulf57]

Oh, oh! :shock: Your examples are reminding me of other lunatic moments: years ago, I had my tube amps in the basement on a board sitting on top of two old unused speakers. The power switch had been removed and attached to an air vent grating in the living room above. One day I was shifting the amps to a more central location on the board and it tilted, sliding one amp into the concrete wall: with a loud "pop" one of the output tubes was taken out and all hell broke loose upstairs, a.k.a. 60 cycle (still used that term in the good ol' days) hum.

I couldn't unplug the amps as I balanced precariously trying to prevent further damage to both amps on my lovely "slide," so I screamed for my wife to "TURN IT OFF!"

She did, and wonder of wonders, no other damage. Replaced the tube and all was well.

[stuck.wilson]

there's nothing worse than prototyping a crossover, and mistakenly rewiring out of phase, being totally excited to give a listen, sitting down, dropping the needle on the record or starting the cd and

oh.... where's my midrange?!

but i think crossover voicing is MOSTLY to begin with... particularly with horns... until you start using an RTA.. but even AFTER!

[toddalin]

My typical "Oh sh--" is when I do a bunch of testing/comparison, then realize that I had left the digital processing on that colors the results.

Then I go back and do it again after turning the digital stuff off.

[demon]

im using a digital-active-crossover and three amps for my current system. this week i was changing my horns from smallish to more hugeish, and the day before i did that i thought that i might get the wiring of my components really proper -because i had left/right swapped out of the pre-amp and lots a cablechaos on the floor.
i use a big sansui 9o9o for pre >and< as an amp for the midrange:
pre out --> xo -->main in
well, i changed the wrong wires, i changed the "main in", so my rightside horn was playing the left stereo and vice versa.
stupid, but not yet foolish.
the fool came into play the next day when i changed the horns and did not notice that i stereo-swapped the whole midrange -and thought:
HOLY SH!T IT SOUNDS SO GOOD!!!
the fool was actually dancing all around the room, clapping hands...



cheers,
mikey


ps: feels good to tell. thanks for the thread, thanks for posting, too.
pps: yes, i changed the midrange back again...

[Doctor_Electron]

Fooled around with signal cables while system was powered up, disconnected an input to the Dynaco 400. The adhesive joint in one Jubal woofer broke at the cone/spider point (cleanly), and the cone popped out as far as it could go on the surround. WAY out! Got lucky & fixed OK with super glue.
I had a living room closet dedicated to the stereo, and one day a friend & I were running the system way off the hook volume-wise. My ex & her friend started whining about it, so we barracaded ourselves in the "vault" and cranked it up some more.
Later on that week I percieved a lack of sonic detail from my 4310's, only to find that they had turned the mid & high pads all the way down.
Meddlers, drat!