question about integrating a subwoofer into an older stereo receiver setup (1 Viewer)

[ThomasL]

I have an old Pioneer stereo receiver 100 watts a channel in my home office and I want to attach a Sony subwoofer that was part of the SA-VE315 package and which is currently going unused. Thisd sub has no crossover management at all as far as I can tell and I believe the specs list that it has an internal crossover of 200 Hz. My question is this.
If I daisychain the front speakers through the subwoofer does that mean:
(a) I have to have the sub on in order to get music out of the fronts?
(b) That when the sub is on it will only send signals ~200 Hz or higher to the front speakers.
My L/R speakers go down to 70-80 Hz (CSW Newton M50 bookshelf speakers) and I'd rather not have option (b) happening.
For now, what I've tried as an experiment is running both the mains and the sub from the receiver directly. I realize this will double? the load on the receiver but I only listen at low volumes (never get the volume higher than 1.5 out of 10). I also realize this will boost my bass in relation to the other frequencies since both the fronts and the sub will be handling a range of bass frequencies (say 80 - 200 perhaps).
One option that is not an option is to buy a new better sub with crossover mgt. since I'm only trying this since it seems like a waste for the Sony to go unused in the closet.
thanks for any help!
--tom

 

[Jerome Grate]

I think connecting the sub to your main speakers is one way to do it via sistering the postive together of you left and right speaker and the negative together and running it through the sub. This will give you a mono signal I believe. The other way you can do it is by hooking up the sub to the b portion of the receiver if it has one. Then selecting a & b to drive all speakers. It will require you to turn it up a notch or two when running a & b but It may be a bit safer than the previous remedy. I do find that sometimes the old receivers can take a pounding so if you do remedy one with the sub but in speaker b, I think it'll work.

 

[ThomasL]

Jerome, thanks for the response. And thanks for reminding me of some info I left out. My old Pioneer (SX-2800) does have A/B channels but for some odd design reason, the Pioneer does not allow playing from both A and B at the same time. If you press down both, neither play. This is how I first tried to wire it and when it didn't work, I figured my other two options were:

(a) running the receiver L/R outs to the L/R ins on the subwoofer and then running the fronts with the L/R outs on the subwoofer.

(b) Simply driving both from the L/R outs on the receiver.

(b) works and I think if I don't drive it that much will work. The only drawback is the boosted bass but because I do have an equalizer I can compensate for in some manner.

thanks,

--tom

 

[Jerome Grate]

b) sounds like the best case scenerio for you, Using the eq will definetly tame some of the boominess you maybe experiencing from the sub. Enjoy.