Speaker Connection? (1 Viewer)

[Hal Anderson]

A coworker of mine just had a new house built. The general contractor built the walls & ceiling to accommodate speakers and then subcontracted the wiring and speaker installation out to another guy. I have a couple of questions: 1) The home theater contractor installed all of the speakers in the walls, including the sub. When my coworker was setting up his receiver, he noticed there was no jack in the wall to run his pre-out to the sub. There are only plugs for the fronts, center, and rear channels. I told him to ask the guy why he wired it that way since it defeats the purpose of the pre-out on his receiver. The guy first said it was because if the sub is hooked up to the pre-out, it creates too much noise in the walls??????? I would think that has to do with the construction of the walls... Questioned further since that answer was pretty lame, he said the speakers came in a package and the sub came with the wiring pre-connected through the front channel. Does that make sense to anyone? It doesn't to me, but I have had the same setup in my place for about 6 years and have not kept up with technology as I used to. Has something changed? I'm pretty skeptical, but figured I would pose the question to a large, more experienced forum. 2) The speakers that were installed are from "Sounds of Music" I have never heard of this brand, nor can I find anything about it online. Is anyone familiar with them? Thanks for your responses.

Hal

 

[Ted Lee]

hi hal -

1. afaik, using the sub preout on the receiver does not cause any additional noise. that's a bunch of hooey.

2. it is possible that the sub is utilizing the speaker level outputs from the receiver. this is a pretty common alternative to using the pre-out for the sub.

i haven't heard of the speaker brand you're talking about.

i don't know the whole situation, but it sounds like your contractor is taking the easy road - he should definitely have wired for a pre-out...heck he was already there so it wouldn't have been a big deal.

of course, to do it now would involve major work so that's why he's answering the way he is.

 

[Bob McElfresh]

Hi Hal. Welcome to HTF!
A traditional sub-sat system sends the L/R speaker outputs to the sub. The sub strips off what sounds it wants, and sends the rest to the L/R speakers.
This in-wall speaker set sounds like it follows this setup.
But wait! What about the other 3 speakers?
Your receiver will handle this.
Go to the receiver setup menu. Tell it you DO NOT have a sub.
Tell the receiver that your L/R speakers are LARGE.
Tell the receiver that your center speaker is SMALL.
Tell the receiver that your rear speakers are SMALL.
Your receiver will now send the LFE/".1" sounds to your LARGE L/R speakers. It will also send all low frequency sounds from the center & rears to the LARGE L/R speakers.
Hope this helps.

 

[Mike Bledsoe]

Hal
The first thing I can think of is that your friend got took buy lazy contractors. I have never heard of the speakers that you mentioned, but I doubt that they can do what those people said they can do. And why would they bypass the sub out connections in the first place?
Mike

 

[Michael Lomker]

Bob gave the correct advice. I think your friend could have done a little more homework before he bought the speaker package. The line-level outs are used on subs that have their own amplifiers built in...this particular sub is passive and your receiver drives them. If they are good speakers then it'll sound just fine.