Best setup/wiring for Subwoofer (1 Viewer)

[Bo-Cephus]

Hi Everyone,
I have a Kenwood VR6070 receiver and am adding a subwoofer (Yamaha YST SW-100) to my system. From what I understand the VR6070 allows me the option to use either it's "last" channel as either a third surround rear channel or as a subwoofer channel, but apparently not both. Assuming this is correct (let me know if it's not) and I want rear center, can I hook up my subwoofer through the front l/r speaker outputs? And, if I don't want a rear center, is it better to use the RCA subwoofer out or the front l/r speaker outputs? Thanks.

 

[Bob McElfresh]

Hi Bo.

Dont hook the subwoofer up as the rear-center speaker. Your reciever will try to send all kinds of different sounds to it, which the sub will ignore.

Dont hook the subwoofer up with speaker wire. While this is the traditional way to hook up a sub/sat music system, it means:

• you must run speaker wire to the sub, then more speaker wire to the speakers. This allows the sub to strip off the frequencies it wants and pass the rest along. Lots of extra wire.
• your reciever will then be attempting to POWER the subwoofer with the speaker wire. A sub woofer is the largest power-drain speaker in your system. (This is why external subs are often self-powered).

The best way to use a self-powered sub is to use a RCA cable connected to the "LFE" or "SUBWOOFER" output of your reciever. Make sure you tell your receiver that all your other speakers are "SMALL". This will cause the reciever to send low-frequency sounds from the ".1" channel, and the low-frequency sounds from all the other channels to the sub.

Use a SPL meter to level-adjust everything. I tend to do my adjustment at 75 db for the 5 speakers, but I adjust the sub to produce 85 db with the volume control at the same setting. This way when I volume up/down, the sub will be a bit louder which is great for movies.

Hope this helps.

 

[MandyHan]

maybe its because i bought a cheaper sub, but i thought saying yes to the sub kind of took away from my tower speakers. When this is done, does some bass still go to the L and R speaker and only LFE go to the sub? Let me know.

I've never really known what db levels to put my speakers on, so I'll take your advice. On my receiver, I think it says everything can go up to 200...is that too high (I think I have almost everything maxed out). Also, on my sub, there is a separate adjustment for the db level. Should I make sure that is in sync with whatever the receiver has it set at?

Thanks