Upgrading to Stereo
Monday August 12, 2024
The right speaker on the player 2 side hasn’t worked since I got this cab. Back when I was still trying to figure out why the buttons didn’t work, I noticed a wire hanging from the non-functional speaker not hooked up to anything. Since I regularly have had more important things to worry about, I ignored it. Recently I have been inspired to clean this thing up again, so I figured I’d crawl inside and hook it back up. I was greeted by this web of speaker wires twisted together:
One blob of electrical tape contains all the red wires, and the other one has all the black wires. I simply wrapped the stray red wire with the rest of the reds and the speaker started working. Wow. Why did this take me so long?
That would have been the end of it, and since the fix was so simple I wouldn’t even make a post about it. However, I was reminded that my cab is capable of stereo audio, since at one point it was upgraded to be JVS compatible. Somehow seeing the RCA ports on my CPS3 didn’t remind me that I had RCA cables lying around inside the cab.
That picture shows a normal JAMMA set up, all I had to do was switch the little harness from “SPEAKER” to “LINE” and plug the RCA cables into the CPS3. However, even when using the RCA cables, the audio was still mono. If it wasn’t obvious, that electrical tape bullshit is not how the speakers are supposed to be wired up. I bought the TE connectors, pins, wires, and a crimper.
Under each control panel, there are two connectors that hook up to the left and right speakers on that side. Before doing all of this, there was one connector on the player 1 side with all the wires from all the speakers taped together.
Finally, after changing the CPS3 audio configuration from “JAMMA” to “EXTERNAL”, I officially have stereo audio working on the Versus. Maybe it’s just placebo, but I do think it sounds better. Anything beats the jank shit that was in there before. It feels good to finally check this off my list.