Although released about a year ago, I was given a Creative ZEN Stone Plus to review last week. At first glance, I likened the device to a very large Shuffle, since I could not see a display on it.
This article is a great troubleshooting tip based on the “tool of a thousand usesâ€, the good old tone generator, tone detector. Everyone has (or should have) one of these in the tool bag. They’re typically used to locate cables you forgot to label, labeled incorrectly, or got cut somewhere during house construction.
Next time you have a dead audio path, you can use the toner to work from the audio source component to the final amp, or use the signal generator from the amp and work backwards to the source.
Since we need to make an adaptor for the alligator clips on the end of the tone generator leads to an RCA stye plug, it’s a easy step to add a simple filter/amplitude reducer to make the tone generator signal more amp/preamp friendly.
We all know the “right†way to run cables. Do it before the walls go up, and run every conceivable type of wire from each room to a central location. However, what if you have an older house, and can’t afford to have professionals fish wires through you home? Well, wireless can solve some of your problems, but for the rest, you’re on your own. Still, if you’re thoughtful and creative, you may be able to run more wires, with less effort than you think.Â
The Wires
First, what wires do you want to run? For audio, there are speaker wires, and line-level stereo audio cable for source distribution (this is cable with two “hot†leads and a common-shield). Room-to-room video may use coax. Use CAT-6 for Ethernet (unless you prefer wireless). Add in some phone and intercom cable, and you have quite a bundle, perhaps more than an inch thick. Hiding this without tearing up your walls could be quite a trick. Read more »
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