Other Tech

Placement. First, don't locate the turntable on a surface or in a cabinet that also supports loudspeakers, or in the acoustic peak of a room mode, as nothing will screw up your sound more than feeding energy back into the turntable.

Still, spring is a relevant time for A/V gear re-birth.

From thin flat-panel TVs to champagne-finished receivers, there's more hot electronics gear today than ever before. But no matter how sleek components get, sometimes they just don't "go." Other factors like the shape or function of a room, the décor, or a significant (and significantly influential) other dictate what you can put in a room.

"Two hundred channels and nothing to watch!" How many times have you felt that way? Or maybe you've wanted to finish watching a DVD in another room but didn't have a second player. Or wished you could keep an eye on the kids outside without sitting in the sweltering heat. Or wanted to see the video display from your iPod docked in another room.

Step 1: Check file compatibility While computers can accept a variety of music file types, servers have more limited compatibility. If your server isn't "friendly" with your formats, you'll either have to re-rip, download, or buy them all over again, or convert them to a compatible format, which will cause additional compression artifacts.

Many people hide their A/V gear behind cabinet doors or put the system off in a closet somewhere. But how do you control everything when you can't point the remote at any of it? The oh-so-simple solution is to install an infrared (IR) repeating system, which carries signals from your remote to wherever your gear may live.