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poneal
11-13-2003, 09:04 AM
I've been reading up on subwoofers and need some guidance on the best hookup method. My receiver has one preout for a subwoofer (im guessing its LFE) and I've read this is the easiest way to hook it up. But does this send bass to the woofer if im listening to stereo sources or does it only work for digitally encoded 5.1 surround sources? I've also read that you can connect your speaker outs to the subwoofer and have the sub decide what to send to the mains. Is one method better than the other? Any help would be appreciated. Thanks, Paul.

Bryan
11-13-2003, 09:22 AM
Typically the LFE is for movies. Depending upon your receiver you may have a set crossover point of between 80 - 100Hz, provided you set your mains (along with all other speakers) to small. I tend to let my receiver take care of the crossover.

markw
11-15-2003, 06:09 AM
Most don't really handle analog stereo as well as they do digital multichannel sources.

Check your owners manual. You will probably want different level settings for music and movie listening anyway. My Denon 2802 allows different channel/level settings for each "surround" mode. I'm sure others do this as well. I have the speakers set to "large" to channel all lows to all speakers and the sub set to "on" to channel them to the sub as well. The sub is set to 0db for digital sources and -12 db for stereo. It remembers these settings and if I need a little more oomph in stereo, I can always trim it up, but that's a rare occurance.

What I do on the other stereo only system (see audioasylum members systems for details) was to run the powered sub in parallel with the main power amp with the sub coming in at about 45 hz. The Maggies run full range. Fortunately they had the ability to simply ignore any frequencies below that they cound not reproduce.