There are a number of things you can do to improve your audio video system without investing great sums of money. In fact, there are quite a few improvements you can make with little to no money at all.

Nearly 20 years ago, Stan Warren and Paul McGowan, the founders of PS Audio, published a series called "Tech Tips" that described ways of making your own cables, tweaking your own equipment, and so on. These Tech Tips were created because both Paul and Stan believed then (as we both do today), that throwing money at a system isn't always necessary.

We trust you will take advantage of these free tips and we encourage you to spread the word!

Ultimate Outrack

This is a modular design that can hold as many Ultimate Outlets as you have. When you have multiple outlets scattered around it can be messy and costly when you take all the long power cords into consideration. Therefore, by setting them up this way I use mostly 3 and 4 foot power cords. This will allow me to purchase the sought after Lab Cables much easier because of the shorter lengths I now need.

You can use any type of wood and tubing to coordinate with your existing furniture (which will make the wife happy). I used birch and stained it a Medium Cherry color.

To Assemble:

  1. Cut your wood into 6 1/2" x 7" pieces
  2. Clamp the cut pieces together
  3. Mark the corners to be drilled (I used a 1/2" drill bit)
  4. After the pieces are drilled, take 4 pieces of all-thread and slide one washer and one nut onto the all-thread. Make sure there are only about three threads showing from the bottom of the all-thread to the nut.
  5. Take the four pieces of all thread and slide it through each of the four holes in the first piece of wood and set so the all-thread rods are facing upwards.
  6. Cut your tubing into pieces 3 1/2" long, four per shelf.
  7. Slide four pieces of the tubing onto the all-thread.
  8. Take your next piece of wood and slide it onto the all-thread. Repeat steps 7 & 8 for however many shelves you need.
  9. After the last piece of wood is on the all-thread cut the excess all-thread off so you only have about three threads showing. Be careful not to damage the threads when you cut them.
  10. Take a washer and a decorative nut (like an acorn nut) and semi-tighten.
  11. Align the pieces of tubing so they are straight and then tighten a bit more. When you are happy with the alignment completely tighten all the nuts.
If you choose to label the Ultimate Outlets a P-Touch type labler works very weel.

And there you have the Ultimate Outrack.

What you will need:

  • Enough of your chosen wood to make as many 6 1/2 x 7 inch shelves as needed. Four 24" x 1/8" pieces of all-thread Eight washers (4 for the top, 4 for the bottom)
  • Four 24" pieces of 3/8" tubing of your choice
  • Four nuts to fit the all-thread (for the bottom)
  • Four Acorn nuts (for the top)
  • Wood stain
  • 2 1/2" wood screws for each Ultimate Outlet
Submitted by:

Jeff Whitlock

$15 Noise Sniffer

This tip comes from PS customer Bill Erdman. We thought so much of the simplicity and effectiveness of this tip that we have added the little noise sniffer to our permanent arsenal of test equipment we use when going into the field. Bill Mentions you can go to the hardware store and purchase one. We had a little trouble finding it, but succeeded in the end. This tip is so cool that we're thinking of having some of these made for us. Perhaps in the future we can even offer them to our customers. Ours is a different brand than Bill's but they are essentially the same.

The unit can be purchased at Home Depot and many other retailers. You can click here for the datasheet.

Here's Bill's tip (for which he won an Ultimate Outlet for:)

I love my PS300 and I love the Multiwave upgrade but this fifteen dollar tweak has improved the sound of my system as much as both upgrades. It is based on science and it is extremely easy to verify the significant beneficial sonic effects. In fact I was able to accomplish this wonder in about 90 seconds.

You will need an AC line voltage sniffer. I got mine from the hardware store for around ten bucks. It is made by AW Sperry and it looks like a fat pencil. It has a sensitivity control, a red LED and an audible squeal which increases as the device is brought in proximity to any source of alternating voltage.

Set the sensitivity so that it squeals and glows when it gets within 4 to 6 inches of an electrical outlet. Then run the tester along the length of your speaker cables while the amplifier is muted. I was amazed to find there were several feet of cable that were picking up AC voltage even though the nearest source of power was a lamp cord 3 feet away. Even more amazing was the tester squealed like a stuck pig when placed near the speaker cones themselves (All my efforts at keeping grunge out of the system were defeated by a lamp cord!!!)

Nonetheless, the solution was easy. Unplug the lamp and "bingo" the tester goes silent. Apparently the lamp cord acts like a radio transmitter antenna and my unshielded speaker cables act like a radio receiver antenna.

Although I could not hear any hum in the speaker with the lamp plugged in, there was a clear difference in listening to music with lamp plugged Vs unplugged. The bass was fuller and richer and the highs were more crisp and had more air about them (especially cymbals). I performed a blinded plugged Vs unplugged comparison and was easily able to get it right 6 out of 6 times. So until I can afford a long (39 ft) set of your shielded lab cables I will be listening (happily) to music in the dark.

Obviously you can use the tester to check shielding on interconnects and power cords. You can even "watch" the music in your speaker cables by laying the tester on top of the cable (lamp unplugged of course) and turning up the volume a bit. The led glows brightly with each drum beat or crescendo. At high volume the tester will glow to the music even if held 2 inches away. That will give you an idea of just how far apart cables need to be separated.

Avoid first reflections from your loudspeakers

When sound pressure comes out from your loudspeaker, it is typically aimed directly at your listening position. When it arrives at your listening position, it is referred to as "direct sound". Along the way towards that listening position, the sound pressure wave will hit the side walls, pieces of furniture, and so on, causing multiple reflections. The reflections are delayed slightly in their arrival to your listening position. These multiple delayed signals are referred to as reflections. Therefore, when the direct sound arrives at your listening position, it is quickly followed by the same sound, slightly delayed in time, causing a confusion to the music. If we were to play our speakers outside, this would not be a problem (unless it rained). Unfortunately, this is not the case, and we in fact listen inside. Therefore, we must deal with these reflections.

Since we cannot eliminate all reflections, we should concentrate our efforts on the biggest problems first. The biggest problems are known as "first reflections" because they are the first and most predominant reflections to arrive at our listening position. First reflections are almost always created when the sound coming from the loudspeaker hits the side wall (the walls closest to the left and right sides of the speakers). They are relatively easy to correct if you can identify where they occur. To minimize their effect on the sound of your system, you need to place either an object in their path to diffuse their energy (such as a piece of furniture), or an object in their path to absorb their energy (like a tapestry, curtain, or foam rubber).

Locating the point of first reflection is simple, but you will need the aid of a colleague and a small mirror. First, remove the grille cloth from your loudspeaker. Second, have your colleague hold the mirror against the approximate area of the first reflection on the side wall, holding the mirror at the same height as your tweeter is from the floor. Have the assistant move the mirror along the wall, while maintaining the correct height for the tweeter, until you can see the tweeter in the mirror. Mark that spot, and repeat the procedure on the opposite wall. The mirror has visually exposed the location of the first reflection.

If you are interested in learning more, check out our series on how to build a listening room by clicking on the link.

Getting more depth out of your loudspeakers

Getting more depth out of any loudspeaker system isn't all that difficult. It is a matter of positioning. In fact, changing the position of your loudspeaker pair by only a few inches can, sometimes, net you a great deal of depth increase.

You must first setup your loudspeaker pair with a solid center image. Once achieved, depth can be enhanced by the relative front to back distance of your loudspeaker pair.

Using a familiar piece of music, preferably a single vocalist, pull the loudspeaker pair away from the rear wall in small increments (perhaps 3 to 4 inches at a time). After you pull the speakers away from the rear wall, return to your listening position and start the musical selection over, noting the increase or decrease in front to back depth.

In some cases, it may be necessary to pull the speakers out from the rear wall by as much as several feet in order to achieve lifelike depth. When properly placed, the vocalist should appear to come from behind the loudspeakers (when proper microphone recording techniques are employed on the recording) and appear to be detached from the speakers themselves.

A note of caution: if you pull the speakers too far from the rear wall, you may start to lose bass coupling. You will have to find an appropriate compromise of position if your speakers do not have controls on them to increase or decrease the bass. Alternatively, you can add a subwoofer to augment the bass.

A second note of caution: before starting the procedure outlined above, it is a good idea to use some masking tape to mark the current placement of your loudspeakers so as to maintain a reference.

Getting better performance from your loudspeaker's tweeter

This tip from Craig Burns, a happy PS Audio customer and Power Plant owner, works on most every loudspeakers. We would add that there are certainly varying opinions of the subject by the manufacturers themselves. Most loudspeakers do seem, however, to benfit from this upgrade. A nice feature to this tip is the ease of which you can try it and remove it if it doesn't work for your system.

Here is Craig's tip:

There are a lot of speaker manufactures that put a fuzzy cloth material around the tweeters of their speakers. It's in a donut fashion around the tweeter to improve imaging. Why other manufactures do not utilize this I'm not sure? I think this helps with diffraction of the tweeter on the face of your speaker cabinet itself. I have found that if you go to any arts and craft store you can buy for about $5, sheets of felt with a sticky back in assorted colors. Just cut the felt into a donut size shape to fit perfectly around your tweeters. The imaging is greatly improved! It has a nice stock or OEM look to it, and the felt is easily removable. The sticky adhesive stays on the felt, not your speaker if you ever decide to remove them for whatever reason.

Paul's comment:

This works because reflections from the tweeter, bouncing off of the speaker's baffle have been dramatically reduced. You can even layer several thin sheets of felt to achieve the appropriate amount of damping, but one sheet is usually sufficient.

Having been involved with speaker manufaturing I can tell you that there are a variety of reasons why this is not universally applied to a speaker's design. Perhaps the single largest reason this is not used would be appearance; it does look a little cheap on the outside baffle of the speaker. Another reason would be that the designer did his best to compensate for the baffles reflection in the first place, but my experience (limited as it is) is that this addition helps most any design.

One note of caution: if the felt sheet gets too thick it can hamper the radiation pattern of the tweeter's side lobes so it is important to keep the damping material as thin as possible.

Subwoofer placement is critical: here are some do's and don'ts and a cool way to "get it right!"

Adding a subwoofer to your audio/video system can be a great improvement because the vast majority of loudspeakers cannot reproduce low frequencies properly. They need a bit of help, and a subwoofer can provide that help.

There are, however, a few rules to follow regarding subwoofer placement that can make a huge difference in the subwoofer's performance.

Never place a subwoofer in the middle of any wall or boundry. Certainly not in the middle of the room! This is a common mistake when you only have one subwoofer to add. Logically, if you only have one subwoofer to share between the left and right speakers, it might make sense to place it between the left and right speakers so as to properly share the low frequency output of the sub. Unfortunately, this is a big mistake because placed in the middle, room interactions will dramatically reduce the output level of the sub. It is far better to place the subwoofer to one side or the other. Typically, placement next to the right hand speaker is preferable if possible. This is because the bass section of an orchestra is traditionally on the right hand side as the audience faces the orchestra.

If the subwoofer's volume control is turned all the way up, and you still do not have enough output to satisfy your craving for bass, try placing it in a corner. This trick works because the corner of your room can act as a horn to acoustically amplify the output of the subwoofer. In fact, this is what we will be doing in the PS Audio listening room. You can find more information about the PS listening room and our subwoofer placement by going here.

Here's how to "get it right" on the fly!

Craig Burns has yet another suggestion for us, but this time it is on how to specifically find the best spot in the room for your subwoofer.

Center your subwoofer in the location that you usually sit to listen, on top of a piece of furniture at your normal listening ear height. Then get down on your hands and knees around the sides and behind your main speakers. Keep your ear vertically the same height as your subwoofer would be on the floor.

Crawl around while listening to some test tones or bass-heavy music. When you find the location were the bass sounds the smoothest, that's were you should put your sub. Hey! You just found the sweet spot for your sub!

You may need to play around with the direction that the sub is firing in the room to fine tune the sound after the subwoofer is placed in its sweet spot. And this will save your back from consistently moving the sub in 2inch increments.... you can just move your ear!

Subwoofers and video systems. It pays to be careful!

A common mistake made when adding a subwoofer to a video system is to duplicate the low pass filter, thus dramatically changing (for the worse) the sound and transient response of the sub.

Most surround processor have a separate subwoofer output that includes a crossover slope. That is, the sub output on a surround processor is already rolled off, containing no high frequency information. If you place this already rolled off subwoofer information into a subwoofer input that is not specifically designed for this type of output (most are not), you will then wind up with two roll-offs, giving you results that are less than optimal.

The easiest way to make sure this is not a problem, is to turn the subwoofer's low pass filter control up as high as it will go. By turning the control to its highest frequency setting, only the roll-off built into the surround processor's subwoofer output will be active and the two will not interfere with each other.

Some video processors allow you to turn off the internal roll-off of the processor allowing you to use the built in one on the subwoffer itself.

In most cases, however, it is easier and preferable to simply turn the roll-off of the subwoofer up as high as it will go, which is usually around 120 Hz.

Your system is very sensitive to vibrations

Believe it or not, your system is very sensitive to vibrations caused by your loudspeakers at moderate to high levels.

How can this be? Some of it is obvious: vibrations can be easily transmitted to our source mediums because they are mechanical devices, turntables, and CD players. But some elements of our audio/video systems are not so obvious, yet they are affected as well: tubes, capacitors, and even transistors.

The easiest way to isolate your equipment from these vibrations comes in two forms: adding weights so as to damp the vibrations, and isolation so as to remove the mechanical conductivity of the vibration itself.

In this section, we will suggest a few ways you can lower the vibrational levels affecting your equipment.

Adding weight to your units can be as simple as placing a brick on top of the unit. While this isn't very elegant, it sure works. Try it and see what difference you hear.

Isolation can be achieved for very little money by using a thick rubber mat beneath your equipment, or a little fancier version is available from a number of vendors and uses materials like Sorbathane. These are very effective. Tip Toes, or pointed machined feet can also help a great deal.

If you would like to purchase your vibration reducing solution, a good source is the Audio Advisor. http://www.audioadvisor.com

Do It Yourself: Here's a simple vibrational platform you can build

Here is a vibration platform you can build. It was designed by our customers, Bob mathews.

"I have found a very effective and fairly cheap solution that costs less than spending $100 on one of the fancy isolation platforms from some of the mail order catalogs. I buy racket balls from K-mart. Then I use a piece of marble that you can get at a hardware store in the baking section. Usually at Christmas Time, these marble bakery rolling slabs are on sale. You can also use an old wooden in-out office box. You put the 4 racket balls in each corner of the in-out box, then place the marble slab on top of the 4 racket balls (or you could use tennis balls). Then you place your amp on top of the marble slab.

You could also simply glue the tennis balls onto the slab and ignore the in/out box.

You get the air isolation effect from the racket balls, and other vibrational relief from the marble slab. The only purpose the wooden in-out box provides is to help stabilize the balls from moving around. You can actually tell a difference in the sound. In my system, the bass is much tighter and more dynamic, less mushy sounding, etc."

Do It Yourself: Ever heard of Mag Lev systems? Here's a magnetically suspended vibration base to build

Reader Darrell Tunning has submitted an ingenious scheme to magnetically levitate the CD player. Our thoughts on this are good ones and we don't think the magnetic fields from the permanent magnets should bother the CD player laser mechanism. Remember that a magnetic field decreases in strength exponentially with distance.

Here's Darrell's plan:

I enjoyed the tip on the vibration reduction, but if you want a REAL increase in isolation try this: get 24 bar magnets from Radio Shack 2"x3/4"x3/8", 4 baseball card plastic cases, 1/8" rubber sheet large enough to cut 8 rectangle pieces to cover the top & underside of the plastic cases, and contact cement. The magnets are 1-7/8"x7/8"x3/8" versions, Radio Shack catalog number 64-1877

Glue 3 magnets to the top of each of the baseball card cases (make sure that all magnets are facing the same way so that each of the three magnets are opposite in polarity from the 3 you will glue to the bottom case).

Install the rubber sheets on each outside end of the cases (Top & Bottom). Make sure you can slide each top cover into the bottom cover (Larger one) without scraping the magnets. The magnets will repel each other with about 4-6 lbs. of force per case.

Install each case under the 4 corners of the cd or dvd player, use three if 4 has too much lift. You should see 1/4 to 1/2" float distance between the top magnets and the bottom magnets. You are now totally isolating the outside low frequency & High frequency from your player!! You will notice: bass is unbelievable, there is much more "Air" around the music, and the soundstage is much more believable.

It is not perfect isolation since the cables and power cord are still attached but it still makes a huge difference!!!

DIY: Or, you can use a ballon! Build this isolation base that rides on air.

Here is another vibration do it yourself tip from one of our newsletter readers, Steve Fellows.

Here's a way to make both a sand AND air isolation platform for audio gear that costs less than $4.00.

Sand and air isolation platforms dampen vibrations in different ways. An air platform (Townsend Seismic Sink, Bright Star Air Mass, Vibraplane, etc.) dampens floor and airborne vibrations. A sand isolation platform neutralizes vibes that originate WITHIN the gear, such as from power transformers.

To make a sand isolation platform with "sand dampers" I purchased a quart-bag of white silica sand ($2.40) and a bag of eight, 12-inch balloons ($1.00). Black in color. Use a funnel to fill 4 balloons with sand until they are completely full, each being about half the volume of a tennis ball, then tie them shut. Slightly flatten each of the sand-filled balloons then place them under your component's feet. With the sand dampers under my preamp the music is cleaner & less blurred than when the preamp sits directly on the rack's shelf. Placing 4 sand dampers under my cd player made only a slight increase in sound quality. But I experienced a very noticeable benefit when air dampers were placed under my cd player. To make an "air damper," hold open a balloon so that it fills with air on its own, that is, without blowing any air into it. Just hold it open & tie it shut. It may at first seem there's not enough air in the balloon but the key is to not overfill it. Place 4 balloons, filled & tied, on an equipment shelf near the corners. Then place another shelf on top of the balloons, making sure the corners don't touch any part of the rack. You now have a shelf suspended by air. (I haven't yet done this using my 35-lb power amp as the 4 balloons probably wouldn't support it. Perhaps having several of the balloons scattered in between the shelves may work. I'll eventually try it.)

If you don't have a second shelf the cd player (or preamp) can be placed directly on the 4 balloons. However, damping a component this way will require the gear to be used with a remote, otherwise using push buttons on the faceplate will cause the component to "jiggle" annoyingly. Not a good way to impress your audiophile buddies. But using a second shelf with the balloons sandwiched in between looks great & adds stability. I have about .33 inch of space between my two shelves with the 4 balloons in the middle.

Interestingly, when my preamp (Melos SHA-1) rests on the air dampers the music sounded worse than when placed directly on an undamped shelf: dull & uninvolving. Using the sand dampers described above greatly benefited the Melos. But the cd player's performance improved significantly when placed on the air dampers than when sitting directly on the shelf or the sand dampers.

One final way to reduce vibrations on a component's top plate is to fill a small zip-lock plastic bag with 3 or 4 tablespoons of sand. Place the bag on the component's top plate (assuming there are no heat vents) and spread the sand evenly across within the flattened bag. Then cover the bag with a dark cloth to hide it.

So there you have it. Sand AND air isolation platforms for less than $4.00.

Help your CD's sound better.

From Newsletter reader Steven Braude comes this tip that really does work!

No need to purchase expensive demagnetizers for CDs. Spend $40 or $50 for a good old Zerostat. These devices don't just work on LPs.

Zerostats are available through your local dealer, or on-line through the Audio Advisor. Click on the picture of the Zerostat for the link.

Zap your CDs with the Zerostat before playing; it works. And don't stop there. Periodically zap your speaker cables and interconnects along their length, and AC cords as well. Also the cabinets of your equipment.

An occasional Zerostat sweep of the whole system can clean things up very nicely. It helps tame digital nasties, and also some of the harshness that simply develops over time (you may not realize it until it's gone).

Let your ears warm up!

From Newsletter reader William Erdman MD comes this tip that really is correct!

Did you ever notice how after listening to music for a while you find that increasing the volume improves the quality? On the other hand, starting out at that same high volume can be downright unpleasant."Too loud too fast" is a prescription for the auditory equivalent of pulling a muscle. After that it seems that the system is "just not right". However, give your ears 5 or 10 minutes of moderate volume and then crank 'er up a notch or two and "viola" you are having a great time! ( Wait a half hour and you can probably crank it more ....and it gets even better!)

We don't often think about it but our ears are the most critical piece of equipment between the glorious sounds emanating from that megabuck sound system and our brains. The ear is a loudspeaker in reverse, a transducer that converts sound waves into electrical impulses.(Incidentally it is actually possible for your ears to generate sounds audible to others- but that is a whole different story.)

There are probably a number of reasons for this "warm up" phenomenon. Your ears make mechanical and chemical adjustments to better optimize hearing based on the amount of input they are getting. This is similar to what your eyes do when you enter or leave a darkened room. Just as with your eyes, these adjustments take some minutes to become fully effective.( I suspect that there are some adjustments made in the auditory portion of your brain as well.)

What ever the mechanism, I can think of no tweak ( free or expensive) that can improve your systems performance more, than simply "letting your ears warm up"!