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Please take a moment to review the How to use the Readers' Corner manual - send then your enquiries to editor (at) tnt-audio.com or to the appropriate reviewer.

NAD 3020
Thank you for your review of older Nad 3020 amp (in 1998). Good to read & helpful.
Adrian - E-mail reserved

LC
Dear Adrian,
thanks for the positive feedback! The NAD 3020 certainly deserves some extra "modern" exposure and that article aims exactly at this. Unfortunately, nowadays it is hard to find a decent NAD 3020 at a reasonable price. This means that it might still be a worthwhile investment at 150$/€ but for 200/300 bucks there might be far better alternatives (recent NADs and Rotels, for example).
If you already own a 3020 you might find this article interesting, if you wish to squeeze any bit of performance from this old champ.
Happy listening!
Lucio Cadeddu

Amplifier choice
Which amplifier do you suggest can match my Zoom H4n digital recorder?
David - E-mail: geodave_99 (at) yahoo.com

LC
Dear David, without further details on the rest of the system and your budget it is difficult to give reliable advice. Anyway, I assume you're on a budget, so please consider there are many inexpensive small integrated amps that can work fine with your Zoom recorder. For example, the Dayton DTA100 is one of these: good power, low price, very good sound. Other amps, still based on Class D chips, might be interesting alternatives.
If your speakers are not very efficient (say, < 89 dB/w/m) avoid low powered amplifiers unless your room is very small.
Hope this helped somehow,
Lucio Cadeddu

DIY Interconnect cables
Hi Nick!
I've read your article about doing an Interconnct cable fro an coaxial cable, Cat 5 cable and shoe laces, and found it very interesing!
I have soldered several Interconnect's and also made/ mod a lot of HiFi equipment for myself. As a big degrading of sound happens when the return sigal should pass through the RCA-plugs, becase there's so much material in the contact, I think your DIY-cable will have an advantage, because the return signal doesn't have to pass through a big outer shielding, just thin wires.
This is also the case why Eichmann 4 series 2 with Bullet plug is engineered in the way it is.
I'm now thinking of building an OFC Interconnect cable by taking four lenght of the cable (two per channel, signal and return signal/ shielding). And the simple metal shielding will not be connected to the RCA-plug (and not handle any music signal), instead connect this shielding from the four cables to the chassis earth (that is connected to wall outlet earth and separated to the signal earth at the equipment with an 100 Ohms resistor and maybe also a small capacitor). What do you think about this way of making an Interconnect cable?
Maybe it's also preferred if soldering the Interconnect cables one end directly to one of the equipment = better signal delivering without RCA-plugs.
Best regards,
Mikael - E-mail: mailbox (at) spray.se

NW
Hi Michael,
Your theory as to why the TNT Shoestrings sound good could be correct, I really can't say. I am more of a 'try it and see' kind of DIYer, and arrived at the Shoestring design after some years of trying as many options for cable construction as I could.
Of course, the Shoestrings are not shielded, and you have the idea to add some shielding but connect that to the metal chassis. I strongly suspect that this will result in hum, and if I was trying it, I would certainly add some sort of 'lifter' consisting of say a 100 ohm resistor in parallel with a 0.1 mfd capacitor. Even then, I'm not sure that I would be happy connecting my signal path to the chassis but there is only one way to find out for sure.
I have also tried soldering interconnects to the input of equipment rather than using a plug/socket but if I am totally honest, I haven't heard enough of an improvement to make it worthwhile the inconvenience (we reviewers often need to swap cables/equipment). But it shouldn't make the sound worse so if you want to try it for yourself, go ahead.
Regards,
Nick Whetstone

Soundbars
Lucio,
I enjoyed your piece on soundbars for flat screen TVs. As a follow-up, can you recommend a soundbar (or two or three contenders) for my wife and me? Here's our situation:

• Very small TV room (about 8' x 8") with comfortable seating for just 2
• 50" Sony LCD TV, 5-6 years old
• Cable box
• DVD player (no Blueray or streaming yet)

LC
Dear Bob,
glad you enjoyed my article on small audio from big screens :-). Your choice depends heavily on your budget and the type of soundbar you prefer (with or without subwoofer). Since you don't seem interested in big bam booms (cit.) I'd choose a simple soundbar without additional subwoofer. Your possible choices might be: JBL Cinema SB100 or SB200 (digital and analog inputs, 200$ or 300$), Boston TVEE 10 (digital and analog inputs, 300$) and Yamaha YAS101 (two digital optical inputs, one digital coaxial input, 300$). Generally, more expensive soundbars include an active subwoofer. I've listed products that should be easy to find and, eventually, evaluate.
Hope this helped somehow,
Lucio Cadeddu