Anybody else wanna pull their hair out ?


I just got done trying to "re-plumb" my HT system. How i pity professional installers of this stuff. It is PATHETIC what one has to do to get all of this stuff hooked up "right". I am an electronics tech by trade and even i get confused as to what goes where !!! The two worst things that i realized is that there is really no standardization of jacks ( audio RCA's, Balanced, S-Video, Component Level video, Composite Video, 75 ohm digital, toslink, spades, banana's, etc....). Between the 3 trillion different types of connectors, you also have to worry about what length of each type of cable you need where.... It's enough to drive you crazy. On top of that, you should pray to God that you never loose power once you get all of that crap programmed !!! Some of this stuff will "reset" at the drop of a hat. Take my advice people. Keep your HT system as simple as possible !!! You'll enjoy it more when you watch a good movie rather than remembering all of the hassle that you had to go through just to get the damn thing to work. I would do things VERY differently if i knew then what i know now. Sean
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sean
"Anybody else wanna pull---? Got none left;and I always thought it was from the kids. May have to rethink. One of my favorite gripes would be the s-vhs connector. I have pieces that require it go in up.down,and yes, even sideways. Then the "wall warts". I have had 5, all at the same time. One being Cam. powered s- cable. I had 3 AA pieces,and 2 Camalot pieces.I would disassemble & reassemble for various reasons, and have trouble "this wall wart with WHAT piece?" I have a ht stand alone processor set up that is two pieces /brands. The Citation 7.0 and the MSB 2x These two are connected via a 24 pin connector. Three separate amps on the floor.When I relocate/within the room/say one side to the other side,it's an all day job. I should apologize to the kids;it probably wasn't them after all. Thanks for helping me direct the cause of the hair loss correctly, Sean;but to late for the "keep it simple".
I'm not into HT (and I too have little hair left to pull out), but there is a big help re:wall warts. There is a product called Dr. Ferd's Wart Remover. You plug the wallwart into this, and there is a short AC cord/plug which inserts into your power strip/source. I got mine a Musician's friend, and I now have enough spcae in my power strips. FYI
I also just re plumbed ... I had to draw out diagrams and it still isn't right (I think). My beef is that you need to keep all of the equipment is a fairly local setup to avoid the cost of cables running over the cost of a pair of speakers. Even a modest set of cables for my rig in a compact arangement is over a thousand dollars!!!! After this I am seriously thinking that a receiver may be the answer for HT after all. No wonder Bose sells so much crappy sounding stuff ... the good stuff is too hard to wire!
Well, you should try and "plumb" 25 different components (not including the speakers) in the same system... and then try throwing balanced professional gear in the mix too... as well as seperate AC circuits for Analog, Digital, and Video. This installation could never have been done without lots of advanced planning and every time we change a piece of gear, you usually just can't throw it in the loop. The only real pain was that not all of the older professional gear was pinned the same way and had to go in to the cables with a soldering iron to fix the problems. Not for the faint of heart... dealers are even scared of the installation and rightfully so.