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Audio hook-up
If you’re an installation veteran, this may seem repetitive, but some things
can never be repeated too many times.
1) Turn off ALL components before making any connections.
2) When making connections, designate RED RCA plugs as RIGHT and
WHITE, BLACK, or GREY plugs as LEFT. In fact, this is a good idea for
ALL signal connections made in your audio system. The key is consistency.
Stick with the same color-coding and you’ll reduce possible problems.
3) Always keep power cords away from signal cables to prevent induced
hum. This is especially important if you bundle the cables to keep the in-
stallation neat looking.
4) Use quality interconnect cables. We’re not going to get into the debate
about whether $100/meter cables improve the sound, but we know from
experience that really, REALLY cheap cables can
cause a multitude of problems. They tend to break in-
side or corrode, causing a loss of signal or hum. They
also have poor shielding.
5) If you are connecting to a high end
theater processor, like the Maestro M3,
you use the balanced XLR inputs. This will
provide better noise rejection against nasty
things like hum, spikes, local talk radio, etc.
Speaker Hook-up
The same rule applies to the speaker wires as the audio connections. Es-
tablish a standard connection color code and stick with it. One conductor
of the speaker wire is normally marked by a different color (silver versus
copper) or there is a ribbing on one side. Typically this marked conductor is
used for the positive (+) speaker leads. Of course the really good wire has
Positive and Negative printed right onto the wire jacket.
Your choice of speaker wire gauge and the length
of the runs also affects the speaker impedance
load presented to the amplifiers. You will see
on the table on the following page, even fairly
short speaker runs can have a very significant
resistance if you use a smaller wire gauge. The
downside of this resistance in the wire is that you
waste the total power available to the speakers.
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