Subwoofer connection... (1 Viewer)

[Jason Hicks]

I've searched this forum, but didn't find the answer to my specific question:

I ordered a 20-39 PC+ and I'm connecting it to the pre-outs on my 2-channel Denon integrated amp. (I know, I probably should have invested in the receiver first, oh well.)

My question is: is it safe for those pre-outs to Y them together and run a single cable to the sub, or will that cause problems in the long run? I don't want to fry those outputs if it will be some kind of short. I'm not in a position to replace it anytime soon.

This was a classic case of "Buy first, ask questions later." I was in a hurry to beat the Summer Sale deadline. In fact, my confirmation e-mail was stamped 22 minutes after the official deadline, but that's SVS for ya.

Thnks in advance for any advice.

Jason Hicks

Let me know if this question belongs in the receiver forum instead.

 

[Wayne A. Pflughaupt]

I won’t hurt anything electronically, if you’re worried about damage.
Sonically – I hate to say definitively “it won’t hurt a thing,” because as soon as I do someone will probably come in with a really technical explanation of why it will. However, I can’t imagine any wholesale sonic degradation.
But there is a chance that “y”ing the outputs would also sum the signal internally as well, in which case you would end up with mono sound from the main L/R speakers.
You might avoid all this uncertainty by just feeding a single channel to the sub (i.e., left or right only). With only rare exceptions, the bass signal on a recording is mono.
Regards,
Wayne A. Pflughaupt

 

[Jason Hicks]

Thanks for the response, I probably wouldn't even worried about it, but my inputs for "CD" died recently from being overdriven by my cd player for a long time. It's an old Sony ES with a bunch of DSP modes. My wife loves the "Jazz" setting, so she cranks up the EQ part of the DSP and turns down the reverb part. This bumps the signal up above what a straight CD would be, and after 7 or 8 years it finally killed the inputs on the Denon. The CD player has both fixed and variable outputs, but the right side of the variable outputs is intermittant and probably needs soldered.

This is obviously a different situation, but it makes me nervous.

Since you mentioned the mono thing, when a DVD player downconverts Dolby 5.1 to 2-channel for the analogue outputs, does it include the LFE channel? I'm sure I read somewhere that it doesn't, but there's nothing in the manual.

Thanks again.