bass shakers and a receiver (1 Viewer)

[ZachW]

I'm thinking about buying a pair of 25W bass shakers for my bedroom setup, and was wondering if I could use an Onkyo 8211 to power them. I read something about the shakers having to be the LFE channel, how would I do that. I have a Denon 1803 for the speakers, how do I get the bass shakers driven by the Onkyo receiver to be the LFE channel of the Denon setup? thanks

 

[Jason Brent]

Get a 'Y' adaptor if you have a single LFE out, and then run one half to your sub and the other half to the Onk. Now if you are planning to use more than one amp channel on the Onk, then you will need another 'Y' splitter to place more than the single RCA. Does that make sense?

This is what I do on my HK, but I run the RCA's back into an unused input and use the 6th and 7th channels to run the shakers instead of another receiver.

 

[ZachW]

Sorry, but I don't really understand what you're saying. Do you have a link for a Y-adapter?

 

[Jason Brent]

Hi Zach,

A 'Y' adapter is simply a splitter. So if you only have a single LFE output cable, the 'Y' adapter splits the signal in two, so you still can have the one RCA cable going to the sub, and the other as an input on your Onkyo receiver to power the shakers.

This way the signal is already filtered and you'll only send the low frequency information to the shakers.

Does that help?

 

[ZachW]

How do I connect the Onkyo to the Y-adapter? thanks for all your help

 

[Jason Brent]

You will have to get another RCA cable.

Now, this will only allow you to hook up either a right of left channel input on the Onk. I think those are 4 ohm shakers, so you could wire them in series for an 8 ohm load and will only need the one channel from your Onkyo.

Otherwise, if you want to hook up each shaker to its own amplifier channel, you will need to buy another 'Y' adapter to create a pair of RCA cables.

I know this seems a little confusing, but once you get the picture in your head it's not so bad.

 

[ZachW]

Ok, that makes sense now. Can I use a sub cable to connect the one channel to the y-adapter, or do I have to get the dual RCA cable? Thanks for all your help

 

[Jason Brent]

No you don't have to get a 2 channel cable.

 

[Chuck Bogie]

Here's what I used to do...

Splitter out of my Denon 1803's LFE.

One side went to the sub, one side got split again, and both resulting plugs got plugged into a Marantz 2230 receiver. Used it to run two 8 ohm "units" of bass shakers (each two in series), all securely bolted under a lightweight sofa.

I calibrated it by turning "loudness" on, the treble/mids all the way down, and the bass all the way up, and cranking on the volume know (little by little, okay?) while repeating the dino fight scene from Jurassic Park III and walking back and forth from the sofa. This was after the sub was already calibrated.

The Marantz will do 35x2 at 0.04 distortion...