i hate to ask but I Really Need Help

Sean: That's why "You da man!"...

Audiogon and its owners owe " da man " serious respect in my opinion as I frequent this site three times as much as I probably would otherwise if Sean were not doing his thing.

thanks for all the help, especially the post from Sean, i'll probably have to look it up in the future. Thee problem truned out to be something wrong with the cd inputs, i did not detect this the first time i checked them as they do not repond to movement (it does not affect the problem when they are wiggled) and they occasionally work leading me to believe the problem was elsewhere, however upon trying another set of inputs for last night and this morining i have not had problems since, once again i appreciate the help for all and once again thank you Sean for your time.

Mkaes: Glad that you were able to solve your problem and that it was a LOT simpler than what i suggested. What i discussed is a LOT of time and labor and i'm glad that you didn't have to go through all of that without planning for it. Having said that, this is something that really should be done if striving for optimum results. Between doing this and cleaning all of the connections within the system, the difference in the noise floor, dynamic range and liquidity can be staggering.

Other than that, i appreciate the words of support posted here and received in e-mail. The main reason that i take the time to do things like this is that i think that it may help others. That and the fact that i think that you folks are worth it : )

Hopefully, having a step by step guide to walk one through such things like this will encourage those that are "hands off" type of people to give it a try. It is not nearly as tough as you think, but it does take time and a plan. Now that you've got a plan, try to make the time. Maybe it will take longer then expected, and you might be without a system for a day or two ( possibly longer depending on your schedule ), but in the long run, you'll come out WAY ahead. On top of that, this will not only benefit the entire system equally, you'll have learned a TON along the way AND done so without spending a small fortune.

Besides the benefits that can be achieved, you'll come to understand just how much "small" tweaks can add up into major improvements. Just bare in mind that the result of doing all of this isn't necessarily an "additive" tweak i.e. MORE of everything. This is more of a "subtactive" tweak. That is, it removes a lot of the grain, glare and noise that you never realized that was there. By reducing these effects, you do get "more" detail, resolution, clarity, liquidity, "ease of presentatin", etc.. but it is not an "in your face" change. Rather than sounding "BIG" and "DYNAMIC" and jumping out at you in a "hi-fi" sort of way, you find yourself being drawn into the music rather than the presentation. While listening to the music, you find yourself not only tapping your toe, but marveling at the small sonic details and subtle changes that were never to be found before. That's because a lot of the artifacts of the gear itself i.e. self-generated noise within the system is no longer interfering with the music and what we hear. Call it a removal of "inner-conflict". Not only does the system sound more confident due to casting out the inner demons, it is no longer afraid to reveal the inner beauty that it had all along.

Try it. I'm not joking about the results. And clean those contacts while you've got it all pulled apart. Sean
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Here's one more "tip" that i overlooked. Agon member "Brick" posted this tip over in another thread about "dedicated AC lines". Kudo's to Brick for pointing out the obvious. It was so obvious, i didn't even mention it in this thread at all. I'm good like that sometimes : )

Before starting on anything else, take your multi-meter and turn it to AC voltage ( 200 volts if manual ). Measure your AC voltage and see what you have. It should be somewhere between 115 volts and 123 or so. Getting up much above that can cause problems with some gear, so it's not a bad thing to check this once in a while. Going below this can also cause problems, but this would be more of a sonic problem than one of potential damage.

For those that don't know how to do this, you simply insert one probe tip into the outlet on the wall and the other probe tip goes into the other slot. It does not matter what slot the red or black goes into as AC works differently than DC. Bare in mind that i'm talking about the "slots" here and not the "hole" for ground.

After measuring the AC voltage, pull the probe tips out of the outlet and adjust the multimeter to measure DC voltage ( also 200 volt range ). Insert the tips into the outlet just like you did before and see what the multimeter reads. Hopefully, it should be phenomenally low i.e. "0" or "0.01" etc... The higher the reading that you get, the more DC that you have on your line. While most gear can tolerate a small amount of DC on the AC line, other gear can buzz, hum or run very hot. As such, this would be one more thing to check if your system starts making noise out of the blue. Keeping track of data like this in your "audio log" might come in handy. Should you need specific dates for reference when trying to resolve a problem like this with your AC provider, you'll have all the information you need at your fingertips. Sean
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