please help me with this sub question!! (1 Viewer)

[Bill Leahy]

Hello out there. Could someone shine some light on the question of how to hook up the sub to my new Energy 5.2's. The manual and alot of threads say to use the sub out on my Denon 2800. Material that I read from Polk says that for sat/sub systems you should not use that, and run them throuhg the sub itself. I have done both and think the Polk way sounds best. But I was wondering if maybe I did something wrong the first time with the sub out. I just used a cheap shielded radio shack audio cable. My Denon seems to have a few areas that I could plug the line into, so I chose one. The Energy sub has an " input " or " crossover " jack. Which one would be usewd? Thanks for any info. My 66 inch Tosh HD is too big to keep moving in and out every time I want to change something!

 

[Brian Fellmeth]

Material that I read from Polk says that for sat/sub systems you should not use that, and run them throuhg the sub itself.

That advice would only apply in the situation of very small sats and a receiver that did not have a high crossover (120-150 Hz) option. The best choice is usually to connect the sub via a single RCA cable. In your case, on the Denon end the sub out RCA jack is in the bank of "pre outs", just below the "center" preout jack I believe. At the sub end, you would plug into the "xover" jack, which in Energyspeak means the crossover is external to the sub. Then, the crossover knob AND the volume knob on the sub are inactive, which is normal and good. This is the cleanest. The energy sub's crossover circuitry is eliminated from your signal path which is what you want. You can now trim the sub up or down from your remote (which is impossible with the speaker level connection) That alone is reason enough to use the rca (line level) connection. But further, you don't want to introduce an unesessary component (the subwoofer's crossover) in the sginal path destined for your main speakers. You cannot conclude that the speaker level connection "sounds better" unless you compare the 2 after calibration with an SPL meter.