# Forum Home Renovation Home Theatres  Setting up some new [old] stuff

## Moondog55

A mate of a mate of somebody who works with The Boss [ husband actually] has come in and hung our TV on the wall for us. he does this for a living and has gifted us a decent enough Rotel processor
Cecile just bought a small Rotel 4-channel amp via ebay and we will use my old Rotel stereo amp too 
hanging the TV on the wall has made a difference visually
Taking the speakers outside to spray them with vinyl paint and do some work on the passive crossovers and stuff some scratchy fibreglass into the boxes at the same time
Have to downsize a tiny bit to keep Cecile sweet so only 4 sub-woofers, 2 * 12 inch and 2 * 10inch 2 in each corner

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## r3nov8or

Only 4 subs! Now, she's being a little unreasonable, isn't she?    :Smilie:

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## Moondog55

Please message her and tell her\Please
PPWACOT

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## Moondog55

I just sprayed them black with rattlecan vinyl paint from Supercheap Auto, stuff works well and the big speakers now suit the back wall much better than they did

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## PlatypusGardens

Drool

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## Moondog55

Only listening in stereo at the moment but geez Rotel gear is nice and clean.
Waiting on some music Caps from Speakerbug so I can redo the XO's in the big towers. Nothing special really 3.3uF at $4- each not $54 each  :Roll Eyes (Sarcastic):  Big 8.2mH coil for the bass shunt is a left-over from the big system before we went to Tri-Amp, that unit was $56- each Cecile almost died of shock at the high cost of copper

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## phild01

What's wrong with the x-overs, did you blow them up :Shock:

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## Moondog55

> What's wrong with the x-overs, did you blow them up

  Rebuilding to use the dual bass towers as the bass units and the 2-ways as the midrange tops, upgrading the cheap 2cent 50 volt electrolytic capacitor to something a zillion times cleaner and clearer.
Fibreglass is expensive at the makers end so very few makers use it these days

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## phild01

Their caps seem expensive,  how do you know they are better than the cheaper bipolar ones elsewhere? 
edit:  retraction, just noticed their standard electros at normal pricing,  But still interested in how we *know* the more expensive ones result in better sound.  X-overs like these are fairly rough in splitting up the sound source anyway.

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## Moondog55

Some things are measurable
Audio wise I can hear the difference between a 50V cap and a 400V cap and I do not have silver ears.
I can't hear the difference between the ones I buy at $4- Cross-Cap 3.3uF
And the top-of-the line at $75 // $42- Alumen Z-Cap 3.3uF Silver Z-Cap 3.3uF
And this is before we start talking BS about hand rolled silver in oiled paper etc
Shunting most of the bass to the bigger woofers does more for total sound quality than any amount of money spent of esoteric passive electronics at this price point

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## phild01

Are the $4 caps 400V or 100V?

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## Moondog55

400V
In that value the silvers are 800V 
I'm informed that the higher the rated voltage the more they act like a true capacitance but partly it's the accuracy you pay for
Electrolytics are + or - 10% usually
The higher cost ones are closer to the stated capacitance so no need to test each unit and select matched sets

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## Moondog55

That rattle-can vinyl die works quite well for a $15- fix, surprised me actually.
I also had what I consider  brilliant IKEA hack idea to use some kitchen rebuild left overs  to hang the wall speakers

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## Moondog55

Help???
I can't figure out which optical input is the one I plug the TV feed into. Once it is set-up I'm sure it will be fine but there sure are a lot of holes to fill in the back of this unit  http://www.rotel.com/sites/default/f...M-EN_FR_SP.pdf

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## phild01

Optical input, 1 or 2.  Is the input toslink?

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## Moondog55

Yes Toslink I think part of the problem is we don't yet have the remote
We have to route the audio signal back from the TV to the processor but I can't access the processors smartz without the remote it seems
Seems to be programmed differently to the way I imagined it to be, I've removed the DA cable for now but I was getting no sound

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## Moondog55

Remote has been found, looking forward to getting it all working now
Old set-up now for sale cheap

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