Pre 1995 Bose Acoustimass Sub with 2013 Sony STR-DH740 system (1 Viewer)

[mobius006]

Greetings, This is my first post here. As more of a video guy I'm a tad lost here. Long story short I am looking for some help with hooking up two archaic Bose sub woofers, with a recently purchased 7.2 Sony STR-DH740 receiver. I know, bose's are over priced etc. My parents bought this back in the early 90's and I'm looking to just get their system up and working (my personal system is much better). The back of both Subs looks like this:

http://worldwide.bose.com/productsupport/assets/pdf/guides/acoustimass/am7/en/owg_en_am7.pdf Now, do I really need to run it like it says to get the sub (and the speakers) to work? I figure the speakers I can just run from the receiver, and could use these to hook up the sub http://www.amazon.com/IEC-Speaker-Wire-Pair-Males/dp/B003U46G8I/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1362079082&sr=8-2&keywords=rca+to+speaker+wire Any advice would be amazing

 

[Jason Charlton]

Do not connect the cube speakers directly to your receiver. Although Bose does not publish specs on their speakers, they are most definitely low impedance speakers and hooking them direct to the receiver may cause the receiver to switch to protect mode. The best and safest way to implement the bass module (it's NOT a subwoofer) and the cubes is to follow their instructions and connect the L/C/R outputs from the receiver to the bass module inputs and run the bass module outputs to the cubes. Within the Sony receiver's speaker setup menu, you will want to make sure you tell it there are no surround speakers, and no connected subwoofer (i.e. turn these speakers "off"). Set the front speakers to "Large" or "Full Range" (whatever Sony's nomenclature is). This will send the full range signal to the bass module so that it can pull out whatever it can for low-frequency effects (this is as close to a subwoofer as you can get with the bass module). The Bose system is set up and designed in such a way that the bass module is an integral part to the system. The tiny satellite speakers have a limited frequency range, so the bass module uses special eq/modulation/processing on the incoming signal to try and finesse the most that it can from the cubes (with the bass module picking up some of the slack). Take the bass module out of the equation and the results will be pretty bad. Best of luck.

 

[mobius006]

Awesome! Thanks for the input. While I have you then. With that setup then will I be getting a true 5.2 sound or just some approximation of it?

 

[Jason Charlton]

Originally Posted by mobius006
Awesome!
Thanks for the input. While I have you then. With that setup then will I be getting a true 5.2 sound or just some approximation of it?

No. You need to have 5 speakers to get the "5" in 5.2. This guide from Dolby outlines the general placement of speakers for 5.1 and 7.1 setups. Note that contrary to popular belief, the "surround" speakers in a 5.1 setup are usually placed to the sides of the listener, not behind. That location is reserved for the extra "back surround" speakers found in 7.1 setups.
With that Bose setup, you're running essentially a 3.0 (or loose 3.1) left/center/right. The ".1" refers to the presence of a dedicated Low Frequency Effects (LFE) channel - the subwoofer. Again, since the Bose bass module doesn't quite get as low as a true subwoofer, I don't really count it as a full ".1".
You can always add extra speakers (and a real subwoofer) to the system - except you'd connect them directly to the Sony receiver, not the Bose module. If you do this, then you will need to revisit the speaker setup to tell the receiver that you've added the extra speakers.
Finally, technically speaking, there's no such thing as ".2". The numbers are supposed to be an indication of the number of discrete audio channels in the system and ALL modern digital surround sound formats have a single, mono, LFE channel (hence the ".1"). All ".2" receivers (except for maybe a couple of very high end models) simply split the mono LFE channel to two outputs instead of one. Any $1.99 RCA splitter can accomplish the same thing for any other receiver with a single subwoofer output. The ".2" nomenclature is due to successful marketing...

 

[mobius006]

Thank you for all the help. As i should have been more indepth myself. I do have a second bass model for the back set up.

And with that 5 cube speakers as well. Like these:

So again my question is with the set up on the receiver you suggested, will I be getting true 5 different channels of audio? Thank you as well for the input on the '.2' stuff.

 

[Jason Charlton]

Ah, yes, then with the second module and the other speakers, you will be able to hear digital 5.1 audio.