Cerwin Vega Sub Driver (1 Viewer)

[JasonMA]

I wasn't sure which forum to post this to, but I suppose this is the best one.

I am in the process of going from a music only system to home theater. I already purchased the NSP1 5 speaker package but now I need a sub.

I have an old set of Cerwin Vega full range speakers with 15" woofers in them (RE38 Series, you can view them here by clicking on the dropdown box and scrolling down til you see the Re Series: http://www.cerwinvega.com/products/h...deo/index.html)

I was wondering if it's possible to remove the woofer from this speaker and put it in one of the many pre-built enclosures I've seen on these boards and hooking it up to an extra receiver I have lying around for a pretty good sub. The website says the response on these speakers goes down to 27Hz. I don't know anything about speaker drivers or making my own sub, so I don't even know if this driver would make a good sub for home theater, which is why I am looking to the wisdom of the gods on this forum to show me the way. BTW the receiver I would use to power this is an old yamaha RX-V590 with 75 watts to each of the front channels.

I'm not even sure how I would hook it up, but what I thought was I could hook up the subwoofer out on my current receiver (Yamaha RX-V630) to one of the inputs on my old receiver (let's say the CD input) and then run speaker wires from the old receiver to the mickey mouse sub I put together. Would that work? Will it provide enough bass? And would I still get the full LFE signal to the sub doing it this way. Once again I remind you I have no idea how any of this works so feel free to let me know if this sounds like a ridiculous idea. I'm not really trying to save money by not buying a new sub, I just want to experiment.

 

[Greg Yeatts]

Why put the woofer in a different enclosure? Cerwin Vega designed the enclosure your driver is in to function well with this woofer. Why not run the sub-out from your Yamaha to the other receiver you have and then run one of the channels to the Cerwin Vega in its factory enclosure. The Yamaha should filter out the highs.

This is probably not an ideal solution, but it is cheap. Your Cerwin Vega is probably not designed to plumb the subterranean depths of movie bass, but it could be a usable stop-gap measure until you can build a dedicated subwoofer with a true sub woofer driver.

 

[Javier_Huerta]

Cerwin-Vega subs, in my experience, have a very bloated bass response in the 30-40 Hz region. I'd say their Q is absurdly high; part of the reason they have so much bass. I own a C-V ported sub, and it's tuned to 38 Hz, I think. I had to use an eq to tame its response.

I'd assume building a correctly ported sub from those speakers would actually disappoint you, since bass response would seem to be lessened.

 

[JasonMA]

Thanks for the info guys. I didn't even think to leave the sub in it's current enclosure. The speakers are kinda big, but I don't mind, like I said, it's just to experiment with the sound.

There's just one question that remains unanswered: Will hooking up the sub the way I stated above work? The receiver that I'd be using to power the sub does not have a dedicated subwoofer input, or any speaker inputs for that matter. Would routing it to one of the other inputs like CD or AUX work? Can it damage the receiver, or possibly the sub? I don't want to try it out unless I'm sure it won't blow something up the minute I hit the power button.

 

[Greg Yeatts]

Jason

I think you can hook up your C-V speakers like you want to.I don't think it matters that the C-V speakers are full range,as long as you use the subwoofer output on the Yamaha, the highs will be filtered from the bass. If you hide your C-Vs in a corner, you may even pick up some additional bass output. Two 15" speakers should pack quite a wallup. Even though your current C-V enclosures may not be aligned for sub-bass, they will probably add some good bottom-end to some smaller ht speakers. If you think it looks a little funny, you can always console yourself with the fact that you didn't have to spend any additional money.

That said, without the Thiele-Small parameters of a particular speaker, it is hard to design an optomized enclosure. That's why I suggested using the enclosures you currently have. Your C-V enclosures are probably optimized for 40 hertz material and greater (that is where the bass in most popular music occurs). You could always sell your C-V speakers on e-bay and then buy and Adire Shiva or Parts Express DVC 12 and then build an enclosure to work with these drivers (Thiele-Small parameters are well known and enclosure design are available on the web).

Give the equipment you have a listen, after all, its free. You may decide you need no further equipment. I always need more bass, so I'm not a good example (I have an Adire Tumult on pre-order).

 

[Greg Yeatts]

My above recommendations are predicated upon the fact that you have a home theater receiver with a dedicated low pass subwoofer output. Without the lowpass, high frequency energy may be passed on to the sub.

 

[Owen Bartley]

I would do as most people are suggesting and try things out the way you have them...

Pop one of the CV's in a corner in your listening room.
Run an RCA from the "sub out" on your current AV receiver into, lets say, the left CD input on the old receiver.
Hook up the left speaker level output to the CV, (set the receiver driving the sub to operate in mono if you can), and set it to the CD input.
Play some test tracks to see if you're getting anything.
Start with the volume low and adjust it up until you find a good level... I think that'll do it!
Oh - make sure the AV receiver is set to sub=yes (or whatever). Some equipment won't work if you are only driving one channel, so that might be a problem (at the sub amp), but then all you'd have to do is hook up the other CV to the right channel and get an RCA splitter so you could send the sub cable into both L and R channels of the CD input on the sub amp.

Hope tht makes sense!

 

[JasonMA]

Ok, I'm gonna try it out as soon as I get a sub cable and some more speaker wire. I'll let you guys know what the outcome is. Thanks for all the info, it's been great!

BTW, my receiver is the Yamaha RX-V630, which does have the subwoofer out for LFE.