Can I fix/improve the sound on my mini hi-fi system?

[petar]

Hi there,

Not sure if this is the best place to post this message, but here goes...

We have a cheap DGTEC mini hi-fi system that we were given about a year ago. Just hooked it up the other day and all I can say is that it sounds absolutely aweful. The sound coming out of the speakers sounds extremely muffled, as if the speakers are totally covered by a blanket or something. There is no EQ on this thing, so I can’t even crank up the treble to hear any of the higher frequencies.

I’ve tried with 3 different sets of speakers, all of which work really well when connected to my other amps. BTW, I did find that the polarity of the speaker binding posts was reversed, but at least that problem was easy to work around.

Since this little hi-fi system does have some nice features (iPod/iPhone dock, TV screen, DVD player, etc.), it would be good if we could make use of it.

Any ideas on whether the sound can be improved? I’m not sure whether these things sound this bad “by design”, or whether there is something wrong with my unit. I’m just a newbie when it comes to electronics, but I have modded some T-amps so I guess I’d be able to replace any components inside this system if need be.

What can cause such muffled sound? It’s very frustrating when all you hear is lower mids and low frequencies... nothing whatsoever in the higher part of the scale.

Any advice gratefully appreciated.

Thanks,
Pete

[HayZee518]

it could be a power supply filtering problem. cheap power supplies are just diode pairs with a center tapped transformer. the best have PI filters which is two capacitors and an inductor. el cheapo uses just a capacitor.

[LarryHome]

You should get a refund or exchange it from the store you got it from, if that was part of the deal. It could be caused by a lot things such as poor/faulty electrical power supply, faulty parts/speaker connections in the hi-fi system or simply that the setup is wrong. I cannot really narrow the cause down without a picture or actually seeing it first hand. What I can say is that you could try purchasing external speakers that come with a subwoofer/boom-box that can connect to your existing hi-fi system using an auxilliary cable. This cable connects from the subwoofer/boom-box and slots into the headphones socket on your hi-fi, transferring the sound from the hi-fi to the sub/boom-box and out through the external speakers.