Home entertainment subwoofer connection question?

Question

I have a sub woofer that has the basic dual wire(pos,neg) but my new receiver has a single almost rca looking connection it is black but looks like an rca output. Is there anyway I can hook the normal speaker wire into this kind of an output?

Answer 1

Yes, you should be able to but be careful. The connections on your sub are called binding posts, and we never use them in professional environments anymore (I'm an Audio Technician) because you can actually be electrocuted by them and it's easy to make a dodgy connection.

Just get a standard RCA cable and cut one end off, strip the ends (there'll be two wires) and connect them to the binding post. But of course check the sub's specs as well as your reciever's to ensure the amp in the reciever isn't overdriving/underdriving the sub.

Answer 2

I'm afraid not.

Here are the rules:

- RCA jack - designed to carry "Line Level" signals.  These signals are weak and have no power. You must use a RCA cable to carry them to protect them.

- Speaker Posts - These carry "Speaker Level" signals which have WATTS of power.

You need an AMP to convert signals from line level to speaker level.

Do you have an old stereo/old receiver?  If so, feed the subwoofer out signals to the Left input on the stereo. Feed speaker wire from the Left speaker output to the sub.

But.. I suspect you need to toss that strange sub because it was part of a 'kit' system and it really is not designed to be used with any other equipment.

See if Best Buy still has the Sony SW150 subwoofers. These were budget a few years ago ($150), but did a decent job.

Answer 3

The black subwoofer output of your receiver is an rca jack and should be connected to a separate amplifier's input. From there you connect speaker wire to your subwoofer. If your subwoofer is powered, meaning it has its own amplifier, there should be an rca jack on it to which you connect your receiver's subwoofer output.

You will not get any sound out of an rca jack if you connect it directly to your speaker.