• Please note that there are a few updates and clarifications made in the Audiokarma Rules, mostly relating to advertising and the addition of the new "Paying it Forward" & "Giving back" forums in the AudioKarma Audio Marketplace section.

What's the worst sounding HiFi setup attempt you ever heard?

L

luddite

Super Member
I knew a guy long ago who had a real HiFi set up in his living room, and eventually the rest of us made an effort to duplicate it, but always on a tighter budget. My setup wound up sounding good enough except for an unrelenting low hum from the turntable. The receiver had a good tuner, though, and the FM in those days was great.

But one of the guys bought an old bottom-end Fender guitar amp and hooked his ceramic turntable up on one lead only to the mono input and used the built in fender amp to drive the single 12" speaker. It sounded really bad. Worse than any car radio. But, he could crank it up very loud (and hilariously harsh) and we listened to a lot of music on it.
His was the only setup I ever heard Thick As A Brick and Aqualung and Creedence Clearwater on until I got the CD's and a better stereo myself 40 years later.

But at least he tried, and it cost no more than hamburgers for six to set it up.
 
Register to hide this ad
Well, the ceramic cartridge is closer to an AUX (line level) than the microphone input of a guitar amplifier. Plus, there is no RIAA to support the MIC input so it would sound really bad.

A magnetic cartridge would be closer but still with no real RIAA compsensation using a guitar amplifier.

A guitar amp is really only useful for a guitar pick-up or microphone. Anything else like line level devices like CD players would need a resistor network to drop the voltage to a line level voltage.

Guitar amplifiers will work fine for line level equipment as long as you use a 1 MEG resistor in series with the input.

Now the frequency respnse of the output transformer is another thing entirely!
 
Last edited:
WOW! Cool. I am going to use my dads old Fender FE5 on my CD player to see what it sounds likes.........using the 1 MEG resistor adaptor of course! :yes:
 
I was at the Del Mar fair yesterday and this guy was selling something that he said could change anything into a speaker. He put this thing on a Styrofoam cooler and the sound was coming out of the cooler. He was dancing around aiming the cooler at the crowd. It sounded horrible, like the first speaker ever invented.
 
Mine.

Well, at least my stuff.
I loaned a bunch of yard sale components to a friend of a friend of a friend (I didn't realize who was going to be using it at the time) for some special occasion they had... when I got it all back everything was stacked up as they had used it, CD player into the phono channel,several speaker leads shoved into each of the 2 channels, cables bound up so tight it'd scare the Marquis de Sade.

They made a point to tell everyone for months that "all his s*** sounds like a**". And that night I am absolutely sure it did: humming like a beehive and crackling on every whiff of a bass note.
oh well, no good deed goes unpunished. :nono:

Here it is halfway through disassembly after it came back. My son had removed the cd player and yanked out the skinny group of speaker cables. (he tripped on them)

but it is nice and neat. :thmbsp:
neatandtidycoils.jpg
[/URL][/IMG]
 
And to top it off the top device is labeled 220 volts while the rest is 120 volt.





oneinchside said:
Mine.

Well, at least my stuff.
I loaned a bunch of yard sale components to a friend of a friend of a friend (I didn't realize who was going to be using it at the time) for some special occasion they had... when I got it all back everything was stacked up as they had used it, CD player into the phono channel,several speaker leads shoved into each of the 2 channels, cables bound up so tight it'd scare the Marquis de Sade.

They made a point to tell everyone for months that "all his s*** sounds like a**". And that night I am absolutely sure it did: humming like a beehive and crackling on every whiff of a bass note.
oh well, no good deed goes unpunished. :nono:

Here it is halfway through disassembly after it came back. My son had removed the cd player and yanked out the skinny group of speaker cables. (he tripped on them)

but it is nice and neat. :thmbsp:
neatandtidycoils.jpg
[/URL][/IMG]
Click to expand...
 
Ken Boyd said:
And to top it off the top device is labeled 220 volts while the rest is 120 volt.
Click to expand...

Yeah, that didn't work well either. (I was told that it did pass sound.) They didn't kill it, which is nice because they didn't have permission to use it. The speakers and amp didn't fare as well.
 
An acquaintance in college had a pair of about 4" raw drivers from a defunct boombox connected to a mono clock radio. One night I used multiple layers of thick, heavy cardboard and transparent laminating sheets to fashion small cabinets to which I bolted the drivers. I finished them with bright red vinyl and the grills from the busted boombox. I also had an old all-in-one AM/FM, eight-track receiver which I gave him. Sounded like crap, but was still a vast improvement, and he thought it sounded great; he was a strange fellow who had no friend but me and from then on he kept my car properly maintained at no charge, even when I tried to pay. We became buddies, and though others didn't want him around due to hygienic and other shortcomings, I found him to be a very loyal and true friend; whenever I might begin to feel embarassed by him, I'd remind myself that he had set the friendship bar pretty high so I tried to live up to that.
 
lordsparky said:
I was at the Del Mar fair yesterday and this guy was selling something that he said could change anything into a speaker. He put this thing on a Styrofoam cooler and the sound was coming out of the cooler. He was dancing around aiming the cooler at the crowd. It sounded horrible, like the first speaker ever invented.
Click to expand...

Well don't spare the details, man!

What was he playing? Was it Cold as Ice from Foreigner, or Eagle's Hell Freezes Over album?
 
That would be my Mcintosh mc2500's 1st audition at the seller's home. He had it hooked up to a pair of Cerwin Vegas (can't remember the model #) with metallic drivers. No doubt the seller was tone deaf and he even covered his poor german shepard's ears during that horrible but thankfully very brief audition. I was more than apprehensive during the 1 hour ride home that I'd made a huge mistake on the amp. Thankfully the amp was not the problem.
 
motorstereo said:
That would be my Mcintosh mc2500's 1st audition at the seller's home. He had it hooked up to a pair of Cerwin Vegas (can't remember the model #) with metallic drivers. No doubt the seller was tone deaf and he even covered his poor german shepard's ears during that horrible but thankfully very brief audition. I was more than apprehensive during the 1 hour ride home that I'd made a huge mistake on the amp. Thankfully the amp was not the problem.
Click to expand...

I actually laughed out loud-
I think I would have stopped at a Best Buy or something: "um... gee, I think I like those speakers... can I try them with my amp from home real quick? Just right here in the store...":smoke:
 
I had a friend back in high school that had one of those ultra cheap Realistic stereo amps with a single tone control connected to a set of drive in speakers and an 8 track player. It sounded soooo sad.
 
My favorite is the modern boombox...

I was in a house once using the bathroom. The basement neighbors were blasting country music (already one strike) loud enough that I could hear the clipping through the floor.

Some poor chip amp learned its limits that day.
 
Careless kids with factory car stereos. The bass turned up so much, it bottoms out the woofers, and treble turned up so high the crackling sound of tweeters indicates theyre in the throes of death.
 
The worst I've heard was actually one I had.

Rotel RCD 1070 CD player ->
Rotel RA 1060 integrated amp ->
B&W 683 floor standing speakers.

A very good CD player and the speakers I had and loved for almost 10 years, but putting that Rotel integrated between them was like adding a proverbial icepick to the mix. I just about needed to keep a box of tissues on hand to stop the blood for runnign out my ears.

I can feel the headache coming back just remembering it.
 
Brett a said:
The worst I've heard was actually one I had.

Rotel RCD 1070 CD player ->
Rotel RA 1060 integrated amp ->
B&W 683 floor standing speakers.

A very good CD player and the speakers I had and loved for almost 10 years, but putting that Rotel integrated between them was like adding a proverbial icepick to the mix. I just about needed to keep a box of tissues on hand to stop the blood for runnign out my ears.

I can feel the headache coming back just remembering it.
Click to expand...

Amazing isn't it - you would have thought that would be darn nice sounding set-up. A really good, or bad example, depending on your point of view, of that 'synergy' thing at work.
 
Does anyone remember the Movie "Risky Business" with Tom Cruise?

Dad is out of the house, and the Tom's character is home alone, he opens the cabinet to Dad's stereo and pushes all the Equalizer Sliders to the Top. A while later Dad comes home and says "Do I detect a preponderance of Bass? If we can't use thing properly, then perhaps we shouldn't use them at all."

The Dad then proceed to push all the EQ Siders to the Bottom.

This is the lead in to my story. I went to the house of a vague acquaintance. Someone who considered himself to really be into stereo equipment. Between the Pre-amp and Power amp sections of his amp he had installed a Graphic Equalizer. And much like Tom Cruise, he had all the Sliders to the top.

I tried briefly to explain that by doing that, he was just extending the volume control. He could accomplish the same thing by simply turning the volume up. He couldn't quite comprehend it so I let it drop, though the fact that he was a big burly guy and I was a scrawny little geek certainly influenced me to let the issue drop.

Sometimes just being able to afford nice equipment is not sufficient to guarantee good results.

I'm also stunned by the instance of some people that the speakers be pushed back against the wall ... against all logic. In my system, which is in a relatively small room (17' x 17'), I simply move my speakers even with the front of the equipment cabinet, and that gives me roughly 12" behind the speakers, which work nice in my case.

So, again, just because you can afford it, doesn't mean you are using it to best effect.

Another time I was at the house of an acquaintance, and he had a compact all in one system. Perhaps one step above a good boom-box. It actually sounded very impressive, especially for the modest $300 he paid for it.

The further point is, that even on a lean budget, you can still get a good system if you shop wisely.

Though do keep in mind this was the '70's and '80's.

Just a random thought.

Steve
 
An EQ actually boosts or cuts the db level of pre selected frequencies. Most (at least the three I own) boost or cut by 12 db.

When the sliders are all at the top, it is flat but with a 12db boost.

When the sliders are all centered, it is flat with zero db boost.

When the sliders are all the way down, it is flat with a -12db cut.

So if they are all the way up, it is like using a preamp with a 3 volt output or higher.

When they are all the way down, it is like using a preamp with only a 1/2 volt output.
 
When I was younger, I used to listen to my Metallica CDs on a Sony disc changing boombox. For a kid growing up in the 90s, this wasn't so out of place. Thing was, unless you leaned the entire boombox sideways, the CDs skipped uncontrollably. So, sideways boombox it was.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom