help with necessary cables....

[JAJ88]

Hi I am new to this board...I need some amjor help with hooking up my stereo...My brother gave me his old stereo (lucky me), however, i do need to buy some new cables. If i give you a list of my equipment, could someone pleas post a list of all the cables i will need and what type is good? RIght now I have the stero hooked up and running.

I have an Adcom Amp and pre-amp, not surround, just 2 channel stereo, they are like 12 years old... I have a panasonic 5 disc changer and a new panasonic 27 inch tv. I want to be able to hook my stereo up to my dvd player and tv so i can listen through my klipsch speakers. I know nothing about this stuff. Keep in mind that my stereo is already hooked up and working fine, so i just need to knwo what additional cables i will need...if it helps, my dvd player has an optical output, but dont know what that means....any help is greatly appreciated. if you need me to clarify further, let me know

[T2K]

Welcome. What 'input' connections do you have on the rear of your preamp?

Keith

[WMcD]

Unless I'm missing something, there is no big problem. Don't get discouraged by the level of detail I go into below.

You are probably already feeding the DVD audio output to some input on the back of the receiver. Perhaps one marked DVD, VCR or Tape (in) or Aux. You're using RCA type phono cables, which are the industry standard. Every time you buy a DVD, VCR, tape player, you'll get a set of these. Or you can buy some at Radio Shack for less than $10.

Obviously the left output (on any player) goes to the left input (on the amp) and the right output goes to the right input. The connection (L or R) on the players and amps are labeled as such. Typically the right is red.

Looking at the amp inputs in the back and the selector knob on the front, you might think . . . well I can only use tape for tape, CD for CD, VCR for VCR, etc. That is not true at all. In fact, except for the labels, these are all the same type of circuit. They are all "line level".

The only exception is any input to the amp marked "phonograph". Don't use that for anything except a turntable.

Don't get worried that the connecting wires and plugs are called "phono". It is simply a matter that in the 1940s or so, the Radio Corporation of America created the design for use with phonographs.

All you have to do is check out the back of your TV. There is most likely going to be a set of RCA phono type jacks labeled "audio out." You use a normal pair of RCA cables to connect that to an unused input to your amp. One of the Aux, Tape, CD.

Now there may be an issue of you have a tape monitor switch on your amp. So maybe Tape should be avoided.

So. When you view a DVD, you switch to audio input of the amp to wherever it is connected. This is the audio feed. But when you watch a TV program off the air, you switch the amp to wherever the audio out of the TV is connected to the amp.

BTW, hooking up the audio outputs of the TV and the rest of the components to an ordinary stereo system is a very good step to cheapo home theater. The amps and speakers in most small TVs are very inferior to even the average two channel stereo.

The optical output of the DVD player allows hookup to an HT receiver which decode 5.1 sound in a digital mode. You don't have that on your receiver, so don't worry about it.

I'm sure many people here would be happy to help you with any further questions. Me too.

Gil

[JAJ88]

hey thank you for the responses...unfortunately, that was pretty much Greek to me, but I appreciate it. For further details, my DVD player is currently not hooked up. I have an adcom old cd player that I am going to replace with my panasonic DVD player (which will serve as my dvd and cd player). What kind of upgrades should I get as far as RCA cables go. I can tell that the cheap ones that came with the dvd player obviously suck. How much are replacement ones and what is a good brand that I should look for. DOes anyone here know anything about adcom amps and preamps??? I hear that they are quite good.

Anyways, could you (Gil or anyone else) tell me again what to do, but a little slower and it terms for an idiot like myself? I basically want my dvd player to be able to play cds through my stereo, but i also want to be able to watch dvds on my panasonic flat screem tv with stero sound going through my speakers....

Thanks a bundle...

[Ray Garrison]

your DVD player should have a couple of outputs that are supposed to be used to hook it up to a two channel system. Panasonic usually labels these "2 channel audio out." Connect the left and right outputs to an unused input (*NOT* "phono") on your preamp - doesn't matter whether it's labelled "tuner" or "aux" or "cd" or whatever.

To connect to your TeeVee - depends upon what kinds of inputs your TeeVee offers. In order of bad to good -

1. connect the "composit video" (RCA connector) output of your DVD player to the "video in" jack (single RCA connector) on your TeeVee.

2. connect the "S-VHS" connector (single little 5-pin DIN connector) output of your DVD player to the S-VHS input of your TeeVee.

3. connect each of the three "component video" outputs to the corresponding three inputs on the TeeVee.

You may need to access a control menu in your DVD player to tell it that you want it to send the sound out through the 2 channel audio out jacks.

Keep in mind that if you use option 3, above, to hook up the TeeVee to the DVD player, some DVD players (for some stupid reason that escapes me) don't display their menus when using the component video outputs. In that case, you need to hook up to connections from DVD player to TeeVee - one using the composit video feed, which you use when navigating menus, and one using the component view outputs when actually watching something.