I currently have a JVC that is about 5 years old. Its one of those boom box/home system things that allows you to attack the speakers and carry it around or detach them for use as a home system. It has a 3 disk cd player, tape, and fm stereo and a jack for headphones. The speakers connect to the main part by 4 connects. Two +'s and two -'s one for each speaker.
My question is do I need to buy a whole new system to add new speakers and possibly a subwoofer? and if I decide to replace the speakers is the connection previously described pretty typical? also can any one point me in the direction of a good web page for home speaker systems.
Lastly can anyone recommend speakers or a system, I am looking for something that if cranked up can be heard clearly in another room but not loud enough to wake the neighbors type.
Any stereo I’ve ever seen only has one + and -
for each speaker. If you know anyone with a regular
stereo (one where its separate pieces not a boom box
type), try connecting one set (L and R) of the outputs
on your stereo to their speakers.
Also many boombox type stereos don’t put out very much
wattage…you probably want at least 50 watts per channel
to drive a decent speaker.
A subwoofer is really only needed if you listen to
music with alot of bass - or if you plan on connecting
a VCR to the stereo for watching movies.
If you do go with a new system I would recommend going with
something that does Dolby Pro-logic (or better) Surround…
it’s very much worth the extra cost!
JVC seems to make good equipment, I’ve had very few problems
with my system. Yamaha is another…but it’s expensive
Surround sound isn’t feasible for where I am listening (my bedroom) I have a door to the right, closet behind, and window to the left of where I am sitting. I probably wasn’t clear enough with my description, its not really a boombox its more of a stereo system that you could take other places and use.
How can I determine how much wattage my stereo has?
Yeah I do, where does a subwoofer hook up to the stereo?
Wattage: there will be a small panel on the back of the device that should state its wattage output, usually per channel (left-right).
Subwoofers: bookshelf stereos have a third (in your case, if it had one) hookup for a subwoofer. If yours didn’t come with a subwoofer it probably doesn’t have a hookup for one, and if you got no subwoofer hookup then you can’t use a subwoofer. Note that many bookshelf stereos now come with 3 or 5 speakers; the big one is the subwoofer, and there’s a special connection for it on the stereo.
Just wanted to mention that some stereo manufacturers use non-standard impedance speakers. Make sure they are 8 Ohm output since that’s the standard speaker impedance you’ll buy. I’ve never seen non-standard impedances for sale, and frankly I always get pissed at manufacturers who use them.
If you don’t know, the “ohm” is a capital Omega symbol, which I cannot seem to find in my escape codes. This info should be located somewhere near the speaker output lines themselves, or at the least on the old speakers themselves.
By the by, modern cheap cassette tape players suck, big time. They will not last a long time, they will pollute any played tape with line noise and will stretch and tangle tapes when the deck starts to wear out. A good tape deck (just a tape deck, mind you) now costs well into the hundreds of dollars. It’s okay to get a new cheap tape deck, but only use it to play your tapes one last time while transferring them to CD’s.
I have never used the tape deck to play a tape, I only use it for the cd player. Looking at the back I found that it is a JVC Model PC-XC7 60 Hz 17w and 3 ohms(which seems woeful but heck what do I know =/). Do I need to upgrade that too? Ive been looking at speakers online and what is the Frequency responce and Sensitivity?
Why not? I don’t know about this particular system, but it’s easy to add a powered sub to almost any system. All you’d have to do is connect the powered sub to the speaker level outputs of the bookshelf system, and connect the main speakers to the the sub.
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As for the two pairs of wire to each speaker, it sounds like bi-wiring to me. One wire is connecting the amp to the tweeter, and the other is connecting the amp to the woofer.
As 486 said, try connecting each pair of outputs to a regular speaker system (preferably a smallish one) Do you hear a difference? If one pair was only outputting bass while the other was only outputting trebel, you would hear a big difference.
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17w sounds awfully small though, you’d have the best luck buying a completely new system.
Your best bet would probaby be getting a bigger bookshelf system. (for example, this one) If you want a system much bigger than that, you’ll probably have to buy the speakers, amp, CD player, etc. seperately.
If your speakers are three ohms there isn’t much you can do to account for that. Any speakers you buy will be 8 ohms. If you hook them up you won’t get 17W out of the head unit. The only thing to do would be to get an impedance matching audio transformer, which isn’t worth it at all, even assuming you could find one.
Your system uses 3 ohm speakers to get more out of the puny amplifier built into the system. The higher the speaker impedance, the less power the amplifier will be able to put into them. And the 17 watts is probably the input power, not the output power, which means that you’re getting at most about 8 watts/channel (anyone with even a year of physics can tell you you can’t get more power out of a system than you put into it) and probably much less (since you’d never see 100% efficiency, plus you need to account for the other parts in the system besides the amplifier). The speakers are also probably designed more for high efficiency than good sound, so even if you bought 4 ohm speakers (easy enough to find) you probably wouldn’t have enough power to drive them properly.
I’d suggest replacing the entire system. If you let us know your budget I’m sure many of us could make more specific recommendations.
I guess its pretty obvious I was clueless about this, I figured the speakers determined the volume of the sound shrug who knew.
I probably will end up replacing the whole system, thanks Mikahw for the suggestion (hey look at that flashing lights, what else will they think of). My budget is about $200-$350, I will welcome any suggestions thanks!