Andrew S. Thomas

Last night I turned on my computer and the mini-stereo it’s attached to, only to find no sound coming out of the speakers. Volume? All the way up. Headphones? Not plugged in. Speakers? Connected. Audio source on the computer? Not muted. The CD and radio aren’t making any noise through the speakers either. Oddly enough, if I plug headphones into the central cd/tuner/tape deck unit the speakers are connected to, I get sound.

Wanting to isolate the source of the problem I decided to find another reciever to connect the speakers to, just to rule out blown speakers as a culprit. I’d forgotten what a labryinth of dead and dying audio equipment our basement was. Most of our stereo equipment has been hand-me-downs that we’ve nurtured through their last few useable years. I find what I’m pretty sure works, a GE radio/dual-cassette/aux-in unit that was my college dorm stereo. Bring it upstairs. The speaker connections are RCA connectors, not actual speaker wire, so I end up cannibalizing some RCA cables I have lying around to wire together with the tinned ends of the speakers’ existing wires, plug them in, and turn on the stereo to the glorious sound of….

…music in the right speaker.

I believe my exact quote at this point was: “YAAAARRGGGHHH!”

I still don’t know exactly what’s wrong, but at least I know it’s not one speaker. I’m just afraid that it means it’s time to invest in some actual audio equipment again…

Ordinarily stuff like this wouldn’t bother me so much, since we know enough people who have old audio equipment they’re more than willing to give away. However, in the process of all this, I realized that my office/study/home studio is entirely too small for all the crap it’s storing. CPU, monitor (not the low-profile LCD kind, either), scanner, printer, keyboards, mixer, two (!!) desks…man, I need an overhaul. I’m sure that reading about Dan Cederholm’s recent home office renovation can’t be helping here, either.

Is it possible to be a disorganized person and yet still hate clutter and messes?

Popularity: 4% [?]

This entry was posted Tuesday, March 30th, 2004 at 1:33 pm. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.