Nord User Forum

Hi all – I wonder if I could have your suggestions please. I have an old Optimus SA2002 amplifier – must be 25 yrs old that Ive not used for ages. I also have 4 speakers that Ive used with it before – 2 of them being surround sound. It hasn’t been used in ages so I took them out of retirement mainly to use them, rather than them just sat in the loft. So it set them all up with a thought of just hooking my phone up to them to play music through. There seems to be a problem. There is a buzz somewhere especially as the volume goes up and I hardly get any sound through the surround sound. I think it’s the amp rather than the speakers as I seem to remember it wasn’t great 25yrs ago which is why I stopped using it. So my thoughts are:
a) Throw amp away and buy another.
b) Throw speakers away in case its them.
c) Any suggestions for using either in a different way.
The only way I can use my phone is to connect a jack cable either straight into the back of the amp or into mic socket. Neither gets of buzz. Ive tried connecting phone, mp3 player, cd player etc but not great – audio quality is not great. So folks – open to suggestion pls.
Thanks Pete

I suggest you find a way to test the amp and the speakers independently. Either one might be bad, with the other being fine. All 4 speakers are probably not blown out. So it would be good if you could arrange to borrow someone else's home stereo amp for testing purposes (Or perhaps bring your gear to their house).

I don't know what the term "surround sound" means with equipment this old. There was a small amount of quadraphonic sound recordings that were made available during the 1970s, when some manufacturers were trying to get people to buy hi-fi audio gear that had 4 channels. But it never took off. So I would suggest you focus on trying to get a good 2-channel stereo sound out of this old gear.