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Subwoofers
A subwoofer is a dedicated speaker used to produce the lower frequencies (deep bass) that we can hear and in some cases, feel. They are essential in a home theatre because the other speakers in the setup seldom produce these low frequencies, which ultimately make the listening experience much closer to the real theatre's audio experience.
There are various ways to connect a subwoofer....
1- The most common way is to connect the receiver's "LFE out" to the subwoofer's "L and R" RCA terminals using a cable that is a single RCA on one end and splits to a dual RCA at the other end. A single RCA cable can also be used with a "Y splitter" that will provide the dual RCA ends for the sub hookup. One note on this: It is better to connect the receiver's LFE out to both of the subwoofers "L and R" inputs. Essentially, this will provide a volume level in the subwoofer twice as much as just connecting to the "L" alone, or the "R" alone. As an LFE sub, the subwoofer will only play "low frequency effects" as was intended by the audio material.
2- Another way to connect the sub is to use traditional speaker wire and to connect from the receiver's "Front Left" and "Front Right" to the subwoofer's "L" and "R" speaker inputs, then connect the front left and front right speakers directly to the subwoofer. Essentially, the subwoofer will always play the low bass information from the front channels as apposed to an LFE sub that plays only "low frequency effects" as intended by the audio material.
3- A third way to connect the sub is to use it as a dedicated surround sub. This is usually done only if used as a second subwoofer. When connected in the following manner, the sub will only play low frequency information from the surround left and surround right channels. The hookup is essentially the same as number 2 above, except the "surround left" and "surround right" are connected from the receiver to the sub's "L" and "R" inputs with traditional speaker wire and then the surround left and surround right speakers are connected to the subwoofer's "L" and "R" outputs.
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