Best way to rig a subwoofer?

Question

right now i have a stereo receiever with 4 speaker outputs and no sub output, and no amp but the sounds pretty decent, minus the lack of bass. the subwoofer i have however does have an rca style output jack. would stripping an rca cable and plugging it in work? hows the response going to be, anyone tried anything like this before, or guesses, whatever you got i need some help.

Answer 1

If I understand you ... no. If the sub has a single (or double) RCA input it must be fed from a receiver or amp with a sub-output (sometimes also called LFE). This type of sub has a built in amplifier.

Some subs have two types of input .. the RCA low level input ... and conventional speaker terminals. Either input can be used. The speaker terminal type inputs are connected to the amp/receiver front main speaker ouputs, and a second set of wires from the sub are then connected to the actual speakers. The sub contains a crossover that "takes" the low frequencies and feeds them to the sub, and sends the mid and high frequencies on to the speakers.

If you simply connect the RCA input on the sub to the amp it might give you sound but you will be feeding the full frequency range of one channel to the sub and it won't sound right.

You can buy stand alone sub amps with built in crossovers of the type I described above ... that's the right way to go (or get a more appropriate sub or amp/receiver).

Answer 2

it depends if your subwoofer has a bass filter, IE, it removes all the sounds except for the bass.

also you need both the left and right channel, if the sub has red and white plugs then thats not a problem, if it just has one plug, that is actually for digital coax, not analog audio.

Answer 3

If the sub is active (has an amp built in- you have to plug it in the wall) the RCA input on your sub is most likely for a pre-amp signal, not a speaker level signal. I would not recommend hooking up at a speaker level. For one you could easily fry you input components, two the sub woofer could be blown by having too much input signal, and, like mentioned before, your sub may not have a cross over to cut the high frequencies and those would damage your sub woofer as well.