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How Effective Are Speaker Foam Repair Kits?

Many well known loudspeaker manufacturers including JBL and Infinity made some very poor choices in the 70s and 80s when they used foam surrounds for their drivers. Unfortunately, almost all of the foam surrounds of these speakers started deteriorating just 10 years after purchase. Other parts of these speakers were also aging rather quickly.

Fortunately, there is hope if you still own one of the good old Infinity Kappa speakers or just love vintage stuff. Dozens of third-party manufacturers including PartsExpress.com and SimplySpeakers.com are now offering reasonably priced speaker foam repair kits that not only fix the speaker surrounds but also holes in your speaker grill. Depending on your personal budget, you can give your „babies“ a complete makeover. SimplySpeakers even offers a complete reconing service for tougher jobs that cannot be fixed via do-it-yourself kits. Reconing essentially means replacing the diaphragm, voice coil and any internal wiring. This doesn’t come cheap but can be worth the price. The results are often stunning. If done well, you won’t believe how fantastic your speakers still sound even by modern standards.

For very exotic home stereo loudspeakers, there is often not much hope. Your best bet would be to contact the manufacturer or look for replacement drivers in the secondhand market. Similar speaker models may be offered on eBay that you could simply cannibalize. On the other side, drop-in replacements are not easy to find as the dimensions of the woofers differ in almost all cases. In addition, you probably need to drill additional holes into the speaker enclosure. I personally wouldn’t feel very comfortable doing that. And the internal crossover of your loudspeaker would have to be adapted, too. All of this could result in too many sonic compromises. But it could be acceptable if you just need the speakers for background listening and plan on getting newer ones in the near future.

In summary, speaker foam repair kits only make sense if your loudspeaker is from a larger manufacturer and if damages are minor.

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VHS To DVD – An Easy Route For Those That Are Too Busy

Three different VHS-family video cassettes. Fr...
Image via Wikipedia

If you have a big collection of old home movies on VHS but you are just too busy to get really complicated, then let’s make this simple. Honestech has your back.

VHS officially only lasts about 10-12 years in terms of delivering the best performance. After that, age and environment can work together to tear away at the binder material that has held the magnetic particles on the tape all of those years.  As the chemical that binds the material to the tape breaks down, so will your VHS memories, too. The sooner you act, the safer you and your videos will be.

Now, there are quite a number of VHS to DVD video converters on the market out there that will rescue your memories quickly and easily – the two most important factors for the busy person like yourself. Some of these can also save you a tremendous amount of money as well – especially compared to the prices of the expensive high end video transfer service companies out in the market. The Honestech VHS to DVD 5.0 digital conversion kit meets all of these requirements and satisfies most consumers’ expectations for transferring video that is over a decade old. Honestech comes with hardware and software to convert the video. Most people already have all of the other equipment that is needed. Other required equipment is a VCR or camcorder to play the old videos and a DVD burner, which may already be installed in your computer from when you bought it. You will also need some video editing software but you can use the free editing software that came with your computer.

Here is how it works. The video capture hardware will connect to a VCR or camcorder on one end of the converter box with an “S-Video” cable or a “composite video” cable and a USB 2.0 cable that connects to a PC on the other end of the converter box. All of these cables come with your Honestech. It is that easy. You can even use the system with other media formats such as VHS-C or Beta as long as the device playing those tapes connect to the cables that are used for the VHS format. Usually, this is the case.

So if you need a VHS transfer DVD kit to get your videos converted and doing it yourself sounds doable to you, then the Honestech VHS to DVD 5.0 kit is ready for you. Get one today and you will be on your way in no time.