Helpful Hints ============= This is a new section in Total Solution that deals with many 'Helpful Hints', as if you didn't guess that! The subjects that will be covered will vary (according to what mood I am in!) but they will all be Amiga related. This first 'Helpful Hints' page will deal with audio systems for computers, so if you are thinking of buying a new stereo for your computer, reserve your thoughts until the end of this document. You will probably change your mind! 'Helpful Hints' is written from experiences of the genre covered, if you choose to ignore this page then fair enough! If you have any 'Helpful Hints' that you think we need to write about, please send a hand written or word-processed document about the subject and your knowlege to this address: Helpful Hints, Challenge Logic, PO Box 28, Mansfield, Notts, NG19 8LZ (On with the show!) Are you using your Amiga's sound potential, or do you just listen to music in boring mono? If you don't have a stereo system linked to your Amiga, then you will be missing out on quite a lot (sounds like an advert for Nicam!). If you are interested in writing music on your machine, a stereo system is a must, otherwise your music could sound crap on any other stereo machine. If you are using a television set for a monitor, you will not be able to hear any stereo effects unless your telly has a built in stereo amp and speakers. If you are fairly serious about writing music then I would personally recommend either connecting your Amiga to a Hifi system or getto-blaster, or you should find a second hand shop and look for a cheap stereo amplifier and a pair of speakers. This shouldn't cost you more than £50, if it does you are looking at the wrong items, or you are in the wrong shop! You shouldn't need anything fancy, speakers from an old stereo record player will suit this purpose as long as they work, and as far as amplifiers go, you can use virtually any type as long as it has the right connectors on the back. (I have only just realised this is a really stupid remark! You can buy a lead for about £3 to change an odd conector, such as a 5-pin DIN, into a Phono connector, like the Amiga's.) My own computer amp consists of a 1970's R.S.C. amp which is only 15 watts per channel, that cost £10, and a pair of R.S.C. speakers that cost £5. The sound is very good because the amp is built well and so are the speakers, back in 1970 these items were not exactly top-of-the-range but they were very well constructed. I was also very happy when I found this amp in a local second hand shop because I previously owned one until it was stolen, and I spent 3 years looking for a replacement as this particular amp is quite rare! Another amp that I bought from the same shop is a 1970's Leak 2200. This is the amp that I use for my stereo and it too is rare, it was last valued at around £600 and it cost me £15. You can probably imagine my shock! Whilst writing this document, I have changed my set slightly. The R.S.C, speakers were too heavy for the shelf that they were sitting on, so I bought some small 'Matsui' 3-way car speakers for £10. The speakers are designed to sit on a parcel shelf in a car so they are enclosed in their own boxes. I bought them for my car, but after hearing them, the car stereo can go stuff! This is an example of the equipment that you can buy cheaply. Try to avoid buying anything from a car boot sale unless you know a bit about electronics and repairing things. You cannot test anything to see if it works and if it is faulty the person who sold you the item will have disappeared by then! This is not a dig at any people that sell items at car-boot sales, but this has been my own personal experience. If you are determined to buy new stuff only, then you are in for a bit of an expensive time. If you are thinking of buying a pair of 'Monitor blasters', please think again! The sound from these units is probably the equivalent of dropping a carrier bag full of baked beans from a great height. This sound is most displeasing and also very cruel to baked beans! If you would really like some of these nasty little space-wasters then don't buy them from a computer shop. Go to Argos and buy some amplified personal stereo speakers. These are just the same as monitor blasters, but they are a different colour and they won't cost a fortune. Another problem with the speakers that stick to the side of your monitor is the fact that they contain magnets. My car speakers sit at about 6 inches away from the telly and the picture is slightly twisted, if you move them closer, the picture goes stupid. This is not only annoying, but it can also permanently and expensively damage your monitor. The best sort of hifi unit to buy new is a standard size seperates set. If you buy one that is not made by Technics, Kenwood or Aiwa, then you should be alright. The companys listed above only make poser stereos, that cost a fortune and sound crap. People that love these sort of stereos are also the people who love Ford Escort XR3i's covered in stickers! The best makes to look for are NAD, Denon, Goodmans, Sony, Arcam and Teac. You might not have heared of some of these makes, but if you look in the correct places ie. NOT Currys, then you can find them, and try them in a decent listening room. Although Goodmans seperates are very cheap, they provide excellent value for money. They are very well built and also look good, but again they can sometimes be hard to find. Most of the others are quite expensive depending on which make and model you choose, but, if you buy a bottom-of-the-range NAD system, it will sound just as good as the top-of-the-range Technics, if not better. It will be built to a higher standard, it will most likely outlast any Technics and it will not cost you a mortgage either! Under any circumstances, never ever buy a 'Mini-midi' or an all-in-one unit. These are usually not worth the plastic they are made from. The Mini-midi's that I have seen were expensive and cheap models by Kenwood. I thought that this was fair enough, until I saw the inside. The expensive set, (£900), was virtually empty and it had some really useless features on it. The cheap one, (£400), also had hardly anything inside it apart from the audio boards, which were identical to the expensive one's! This is the reason why all these sorts of stereos sound completely crap. The extra money you pay, buys you a different box with more lights on it, but no change in the sound. Some of these stereos even have a graphic equalizer demo??? I have yet to see one of these sad and expensive features however Vega has briefly described one to me. Basically the demo involves moving a sinewave across the bands of the stereo, scrolling some words, flashing the L.E.D's in a pattern and some other crap like this. I wouldn't be at all suprised to see Pac-man on one of these money wasters! You could even play Tetris on your Technics! Well that is a really good way of deciding how to spend £1000 on a stereo system. The reason behind these pathetic gimmicks still baffle me, what is the point of paying £50 extra for a button that makes all the lights on your stereo flash? Stupid isn't it! Technics are the worst for this sort of thing. Everything they make contains cheap and nasty components, which greatly affects the sound quality. Technics systems also have crap written all over them to make them look better than they are. A low filter, is a filter that cuts the bass output of the amp. Technics amps have a switch which is called 'Dynamic Bass Boost'. This is a low filter with the switch reversed. Loudness is called 'Subsonic bass expander' and so on. It may sound that I am very anti-Technics. I am not really, some of the old Technics sets sound pretty good, but I am sick of people showing me their new Technics stereos that cost £1000. The worst bit is when they put on a CD and they sit there trying to tell me that it is the best sound I will ever here, I could find them a stereo that cost half as much, looked good and still sounds better than their's! Technics aren't the only company doing this, Sony had an amp which had 'Synchronious Twin Drive' printed in big letters on the front. A guy I knew bought one of these amps without listening to my advice. (I recommended a NAD) When I tried to tell him that the Sony was not worth looking at he turned round and said "It has Synchronious Twin Drive, it must be good!" He used this amp for 3 months, bought a NAD, and sold the Sony, after discovering that the Sony was crap*. He lost about £100 by his mistake and he never found out what Synchronious Twin Drive was, let alone what it did! (* Sony systems made over about 10 years ago are definitely worth buying second hand. Sony tape decks from that era are as good, if not better than most on the market today.) If you go into a stereo shop you will notice a distinct lack of turntables and if you are a record fan, as I am, you will find this quite annoying. This is because most stereo manufacturers don't bother making anything to a decent level of quality, so the first thing to suffer by this is the turntable. Plastic casing and a plastic platter do not help at all, they just make the unit sound crap. This is the main reason everybody has the idea that records are a waste of time, and compact disks are the best and most accurate sound mediums in the world. This is not true, CD's are a digital medium, vinyl is analogue, music is analogue. Vinyl can be hard to look after to sustain the sound quality but this sound quality is the original, not some digitally mastered crap. CD's do have their uses like playing frisbee in the park! No really they are good to sample from as you can re-start the CD with the press of a button and they are excellent in the computer world, CD-Rom, but they could never produce the same sound as Vinyl. The sound is very flat and 2-dimentional from CD's. To appreciate the difference you need a fairly decent turntable to start with, and of course a record in good condition, but if you listen closely you will notice the difference. One perfect example of this is Brothers in arms by Dire Straits. The Vinyl version is full of life and the sound jumps out of the speakers and surrounds you. The same album on a NAD CD player sounded dull, lifeless and boring at the best of times. I mentioned that the system used was a NAD, this is a very good system, but unfortunately the medium that the music was on just wasn't good enough to cope with the frequencies. The main reason for CD's being a favorite for many music loving people is the convenience. If you are going to buy a stereo and if you still want a shoebox full of crap then go ahead and buy it, I warned you! Just let your ears choose, and not your eyes, then you should be fairly happy. See you next time, FIN Please note that all the comments are the opinions of one individual, you may follow his advise or not, the choice is yours.