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Installing the Electronics

Find out how to hook up the electronics for your new home theater.

From "Home Theater"
episode DHTW-104

(Continued from page 1)

Figure C

Figure D

Connecting the Wiring

Now it's time to turn the rack around (figure C) and connect all of the cables.

First you want to organize all the wiring for the speakers and video components. Connect the speaker wires to the power amplifier and immediately start to dress them back "out of the equipment rack" so you can store any excess cable behind the rack so they won't get in the way in order for you to have a much neater looking equipment rack.
Next, tie back the excess wiring--again trying to keep everything organized.
Tip: You may want to consider cutting the speaker wires to the same length. There are different sizes or gauges or speaker wires, but Mark recommends using 12- or at the very least 16-gauge multiple-strand copper wiring. The high-end speakers in this particular system can be bi-wired, which some audiophiles feel improves the over sound quality.
Bi-wiring means you're running one set of conductors to the high frequency units and a separate set to the low frequency units--or the woofers. This helps to increase speaker performance and maximizes the value of your system.
The next step is to connect the speaker wiring to banana plugs (figure D). The banana plugs will ultimately connect to the terminal--or binding post--on the back of the amplifier.

Tip: When buying speaker connections it's a good idea to use banana or spade-lug connections, and getting them in "gold" will help to prevent corrosion. Banana plugs have a screw-down that fastens the wire and the plug.

Figure E

With the banana plugs in place, you can plug the speaker wire into the amplifier.
Next, connect the DVD, CD, game station, VCR and front-projection cables into the surround-sound processor.
Attach the surround processor outputs to the inputs of the power amplifier (figure E).
Connect all the speaker wires from the power amplifier to the speakers.
Finally, attach all the components in the equipment rack to the power conditioner.

The equipment connections are complete and the only thing left to do is to straighten up the components, turn them around and slide the equipment rack back into place.

In the next segment Corey and Mark will show you how to install your speakers for the best possible sound.

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