Hello all, I'm a new member here and in dire need of some help! First of all I shall start with listing my current equipement:
- Rotal RA-01 Amplifier
- NAD 521 BEE CD Player
- Tannoy T4 Speakers (Just upgraded from Monitor Audio Bronze M2's)
- QED Silver Special 25th Anniversary Edition Speaker Cable (Bi-wire)
- Cambridge Atlantic Interconnect Cable (Just upgraded from standard throwaway cable, had completely forgotten to replace it!)
- Samsung 40" LCD (Can't remember exact model name, if you want to know just ask and I'll go track it)
- Xbox 360 (Earlier model, doesn't have the new chip nor does it have the HDMI input)
- All standard cabling
First of all, I want to make see what you guys think of my system? It's my first ever seperates system and is around 3 years old, I only just changed the speakers as they were going for cheap and whilst I loved my Monitor Audio's, but I needed something larger to help fill the room). At the moment my system is setup terribly, but I'm soon going to purchase a stacker to sit all my seperates and my LCD on, then I plan to isolate all the cabling (it's currently all over itself on the floor. My speakers are also just sitting on the floor in a terrible position, but once I setup my stacker I will rectify this (with your help!).
Second question is that I can swear I read in one of my manuals (I think it was in my amplifier manual) that you should run your audio straight from the mains without any extension cords or multi-plug adaptors etc, is this correct? I live in sunny Scotland, so we use 3-pin plugs and our outlets have 2 plug slots per outlet, so from one plug I have a power strip (no surge protection on it thogh) that sometimes has to run all of the above equipment (including the LCD/360) at once, but I have stopped doing this at the moment for fear of damaging it, is it safe to continue? Do I need to buy a surge protector? Please help!
Second question, currently I can't connect my audio to my LCD/360 due to the cable not reaching, this will be fixed when I purchase my stacker, but is the standard cabling for that fine or should I look at buying some new cabling to do the job?
Thirdly the covers on the speakers, god I'm not even sure what their called, main purpose is just to stop dust I'm guessing, but does it matter much or should I run them un-covered?
And last but not least, if I get some pictures and rough dimensions of the room, could you guys help me some with speaker positioning? (I've read the sticky but I'm still not 100% sure).
Sorry for the long post, huge thanks in advance
Edit - Just rememebered another thing I was un-sure about, pre-amping, what are the benefits/drawbacks (if any), are they better suited for higher end systems since mines is low-budget, do you still use bi-wire cable when you use a pre-amp etc...