Wild West Electronics Blog

Can I Buy Just One Speaker?

While this question may seem odd to some well seasoned audio aficionados, it is actually a question we get quite often and we can see why. Every where you go to shop for speakers it seems each place you go does it just a little different than the next guy. There doesn't seem to be a clear standard within our industry that is widely followed. 

In answer to this seemingly simple question, our answer is it depends on the type of speaker you are shopping for. Below is what is typical for our company: 

Center Channel Speakers: These speakers are designed as the dialog channel for home theater speaker systems,  and are  always sold as (EACH), so you can just buy one. 

Bookshelf Stereo Speakers: These speakers are nearly always priced, boxed and sold in a (PAIR) and are generally used as the main Left & Right speaker in a home stereo or home theater system. Smaller ones are often used for rear or surround back channels in 5.1 or 7.1 home theater speaker systems. 

LCR Speakers: These speakers are similar to the bookshelf type except they are primarily designed for a home theater system application where they can be used as left, center or right speaker equally. Recently, we have seen many manufacturers incorporating all three into a single speaker cabinet, but the connection is independent as if each speaker were separate. LCR speakers also can be used equally well as a rear or surround back channel. These speakers, at least at our store are always sold, priced and boxed as (EACH). 

Surround Speakers: These speakers are ones that are generally designed exclusively for the use in a rear or surround back channel in a home theater speaker system. Mostly, these speakers are sold, priced and boxed as a (PAIR), there are exceptions with these on occasion. 

In-ceiling Speakers: These speakers are ones that are installed flush into your ceiling. In-ceiling speakers are used as stereo speakers, home theater speaker systems and even in outside patios. The are also very commonly used in whole house audio systems where background music is desired. There is no general rule with how in-ceiling speakers are sold. Some manufacturers sell them as (EACH) while many others sell them as a (PAIR). You will find both ways on our site depending on the manufacturer. 

In-wall speakers: These speakers are ones that are installed flush into your wall. In-wall speakers are used as stereo speakers, home theater speaker systems and even in outside patios. The are also very commonly used in whole house audio systems where background music is desired. There is no general rule with how in-wall speakers are sold. Some manufacturers sell them as (EACH) while many others sell them as a (PAIR). You will find both ways on our site depending on the manufacturer. 

Outdoor Speakers: These speakers are generally weather resistant or in some cases weather proof. When we say weather proof, we mean that they can actually withstand being underwater. The Pinnacle Atlantis series of outdoor speakers are a prime example. Most outdoor speakers are sold as a (PAIR), but there are many on the market we have seen that have also been sold, priced and boxed as (EACH). 

Plasma & LCD On-wall Speakers: These speakers are generally LCR speakers that are low profile designed to match up well with the look for today's most popular flat screen televisions. Generally, these speakers are priced, sold and boxed as (EACH). There are exceptions, look at the new Mordaunt Short Alumni 8 On-wall / On-Floor Speakers, these are actually sold as a (PAIR). Like other on-wall speakers, they can be mounted on the wall next to your favorite flat panel television, but with a set of optional stands also sold as a (PAIR) they can be used like a typical floor standing speaker. 

Powered Subwoofers: These speakers generally  provide reproduction for the lowest frequencies of a home theater or stereo speaker system. These speakers are almost always sold individually as (EACH). While many people are perfectly happy with just one powered subwoofer, our thought is two subwoofers in a system are ALWAYS better than one. 

You can see there are so many different types of speakers available today that it would be difficult to create a concrete standard. Hopefully our explanations will help you the next time your in the market for a new set of speakers. 

Should I Use Speaker Cable Terminations or Speaker Cable Connectors?

In our last post, we explained why it is not the best idea to simply use bare speaker cable when making connections between your amplifier and speakers. In a nutshell, you want to keep your oxygen free speaker cable oxygen free. To help win this fight, we want to properly terminate our speaker cable. 

Speaker Cable Terminations or Speaker Cable Connectors? 

Not to confuse or trick you, but many people refer to speaker terminations as speaker cable connectors. They are actually the same thing but the correct terminology is to call them speaker cable terminations. 

ter·mi-nate

 

1. To bring to an end or halt

2. To occur at or form the end of; conclude or finish

3. To discontinue the employment of; dismiss

This is what we are doing with our speaker cable, we are ending each respective cable run by adding a termination. 

Benefits of Terminating Speaker Cable

1. Protects bare wire from oxidation and corrosion that can impede your audio signal

2. Makes the best audio connection from amplifier to speaker.

3. Helps ensure positive and negative connections don't accidentally touch; this is particularly true when using a multi channel amplifier or home theater receiver.

4. Adds convenience to any system; allows you to more easily connect and disconnect your speakers. 

5. Adds a nice finished looking touch to your system. Terminated speaker cables give your system a professional and finished look. 

Types of Speaker Cable Terminations

Banana Plugs - Banana plug terminations have become one of the most universal type of speaker terminations available and they are definitely the most convenient. When using banana plugs, you never need to screw down any connection; these guy's simply slide down the middle inside of a 3-way binding post. Nearly every new piece of audio equipment made today are compatible with bananas. Because of their ultra wide compatibility, ease of use and solid connection; bananas are our favorite speaker cable termination choice. 

Spade Connectors - Spade connectors (pictured above) look like mini horse shoe connectors and are available in a several different sizes. Unlike the banana style plugs, spades are not universal in size as the post can vary in size. Prior to the wide acceptance of banana plugs, spades were both the most popular and best way to terminate your speaker cables. 

Many audio purest feel spades yield the best connection to a speaker or amplifier because they feel there is more contact surface area. We're not sure if we agree simply because a banana plug is a cylindar and we feel if you rolled it out that you might find there to be even more connected surface area than the spade. 

You should also be aware, that generally speaking, spades are NOT compatible with most all stereo receivers, home theater receivers and even some multi-channel amplifiers. While most all devices today use 3-way binding post and appear to be compatible, most manufacturers utilize a plastic cover at the base of these binding post preventing the use of spades. You may ask why? Our best guess is that they do this to prevent users from shorting our their components. Spades, tightened down or not can loosen when the component is moved allowing for the potential of the spade to make an unwanted connection with a neighboring post. 

Angled Pin Connectors - Angled pin connectors are designed to slide in the side of a post or inserted in the opening of a spring-loaded connector. When inserted in the side of a post, the pin must be secured by being screwed down to be properly held down. 

While angled pins typically are the most economical of the termination types, we only recommend using angled pins if your equipment has a spring-loaded connector. Using these with a binding post, while it can be done, is not advised since they can come loose too easily. Other options such as bananas or spades are what we would recommend when using a binding post. 

Do You Have Your Stereo or Home Theater Speakers Connected with Bare Wire?

If you answered YES to this question, read on. If you answered NO, keep on keepin' on, your doing the RIGHT thing.

What's the Big Deal? I am Using Bare Speaker Wire.

Glad you asked. It is a BIG deal because if you are using bare speaker wire you are not doing right by your stereo or home theater system. Quality speaker cable is generally made of some form of high purity copper that when exposed to oxygen will most definitely corrode over time. How much time will depend on what part of the country you live. For those of you who might have an aging piece of clear jacket speaker cable , you can actually SEE the corrosion occurring as it will travel through your speaker cable from a point of entry that is bare exposed wire. 

Corrosion ultimately is a bad thing because it will impede your audio signal from reaching its destination. The bottom line is that is prevents your sound system from sounding as good as it could. You want the best sound possible RIGHT? That's why you bought the cool speakers and the better wire to begin with right? 

Use Terminations to Solve the Bare Wire Problem

Speaker Cable Terminations come in many forms, the most common are Banana Plugs, Spades and Angled Pins. As you will learn in my next post, terminations not only solve the bare wire problem because they help keep oxygen AWAY from your bare wire, they also have numerous other benefits as well. Which type of terminations you use will depend on both your system configuration and your personal preferences. My next post will also highlight which terminations we like and are easy to use. Stay tuned...

Guide to troubleshooting common issues.... Isolation is the Key!

Because we sell a ton of gear, there is always a percentage of customers who will encounter a problem within their system. The good news is we find that better than 95% of the time the problem encountered is most commonly user error. In any case, the key to narrowing down any issue your having is isolating the problem; this way if you truly have a faulty piece of equipment, you can ensure you are addressing the REAL cause of your problem. 

Recently, we received a call from a customer who had just purchased a Cambridge Audio CD player from our company. He was calling because he had thought his CD player was dead out-of-the-box. He made the proper connections, placed one of his favorite CD's in the player, but was getting no sound... nothing! Yet, the player appeared to be working perfectly, counting down et cetera... What could be wrong? The customer assumed since his old player worked with the SAME cables and receiver that the CD player was defective. Was this the case....? 

When the customer called, we went into troubleshooting mode; remember, most issues really are simple, rarely is the equipment at fault. In order to find out if his player really had a problem, we needed to get more information about the system so we asked several questions: 

1) What are you connecting the CD player to? 

2) How do you have your CD player connected? (digital optical or coaxial cable or stereo analog interconnects) 

3) What kind of stereo speakers are you using? 

4) How do you have your stereo speakers connected? 

All of these questions are critical, because any component or wire in the chain can cause a problem if it is either not connected properly, set properly or malfunctioning. 

Critical Tip Before You Change ANY Connections

Okay, now that we are ready to start troubleshooting, we are going to have to make some changes to our connections throughout the process. ALWAYS, ALWAYS, ALWAYS turn off your power to ALL of your components before connecting or disconnecting ANYTHING. We always advise that you take this a step further by unplugging your equipments power cord from the wall. Failure to do so can result in accidents that can cause damage to your components. Take your time and play it safe...! It's worth the extra effort in the end.

Always Start from the Source

When troubleshooting an issues, we recommend you always start from the source of your system and work your way towards the sources destination. So what is a source? A source is the origination of the content you are wanting to see, hear or enjoy. Common sources include but are not limited to CD players, DVD players, Cable Boxes, iPod's et cetera. 

In this case, our source is the new CD player. So how do we test the source itself? You guessed it... we have to isolate the source if possible from the rest of the system. 

Using our real life example, we have to ask the customer if he has any other stereo system in the home we can move the CD player in which we can test it. If no other stereo is available, we can also use any television that has an audio input. 

In this particular case, the customer did not have another stereo in the home, but he did have a television with an audio input that he had a DVD player connected. We simply had the customer disconnect the audio connection from his DVD player and moved them to the CD player in question. When you try this, it is critical that you always uses another set of audio interconnects. This way we can help eliminate the audio interconnects as a cause further into our troubleshooting. The next step is you have to ensure the television is set to the same input the CD player is connected. Now we can turn our equipment back on (Did you remember to keep your equipments power turned off while you change your connections??), then press play on the CD player? Did we hear sound? YES, we finally heard sound from our new CD player!! Phew... I guess the CD players work fine after all.  But remember, we heard no sound when connected to the main system.... how could this be... read on...

Always Check the Cables...

Now that our source is good, we need to eliminate the audio interconnects used from the equation. To test the interconnects, continuing with our example, all we have to do is replace the extra set of interconnects we used with the CD player and television with the interconnects we were using in the main system. Once connected, we just need to hit the play button on the player..... Did we hear sound? WOW! Our favorite CD is coming through fine on the television speakers. Okay, so now we have eliminated the source (CD player) and now we have also eliminated the audio interconnects as a cause to our NO SOUND problem. So what's left? The customer explained that he was connecting the CD player to a older home theater receiver. From there, he was connecting the home theater receiver to just a single pair of stereo bookshelf speakers using Monster Cables.

Process of Elimination

So not it is just a process of elimination, the problem is either being caused by the home theater receiver, the speaker cables or the speakers themselves. 

How do you Test a Receiver?

So now you might ask, how do you test a receiver? Well, after you double-check your speaker cable connections the easiest way to test a problem with a receiver is to see if you get sound with the built-in AM/FM stereo tuner. In a receiver, this is one source that is generated from within the component. If you're locked into an FM or AM station and you hear sound, then the problem points to a possible bad input on the receiver. So at that point you can try your CD player we now know works perfectly with a DIFFERENT input, if you then hear sound then your problem is solved. The receiver you are using simply has a bad input. 

But in our example, we still heard no sound... What could the problem be? 

It's Okay to Read the Owners Manual.... We won't tell, We Promise

When in doubt, get the owners manual out. If you lost the manual, many of them can be found doing a Google search online. In our real life example, we requested the Make and Model of the receiver and did find the manual online. 

Through our prior questioning, we knew it was an older receiver and in reviewing the manual we discovered that this particular receiver had a "Tape Monitor" button. 

Through lots of experience, we knew that if this function was engaged, there would be no sound. So we asked our customer what he was seeing in his receivers display window. Sure enough, the Tape Monitor function was engaged. So while crossing our fingers, we asked the customer to press the Tape Monitor button on his receiver. Sure enough, sound was blasting through his speakers and we had helped solve his issue. 

What Can Be Learned from Proper Troubleshooting? 

Probably that things aren't always what they might seem to be. Don't rush to judgement or jump to conclusions. Take your time to properly troubleshoot your problem. Doing so will not only help solve your issue the first time but taking extra time now to troubleshoot correctly will ultimately save you plenty of time and aggravation in the end. Our real life example proves this, if we rushed to a conclusion, the customer would have had to send us back his CD player and wait for a replacement only to find the same problem still occurring. 

Thankfully, we were able to help solve the problem so the customer was able to enjoy the purchase... and more importantly the music.