Surround Sound Setup Help

[Shitface]

Hey, Im pretty much a newb to this stuff. Any who, i got all my speakers hooked up properly, a center, two front, and two rear. Now i just need my Subwoofer. There is a subwoofer out jack on the reciever but on the subwoofer its self, there are a couple plugs. One that has like the little clamps with the posotive and negative things. There 8 clamps. Or there are left and right audio jacks. Now, the book says i need to provide my own cord for that. But i have none. I went to a couple stores but i actually didn't know what i was looking for. What kind of plug is this exactly? Could anyone help with what info i gave? Or do i need more info.

Here is what i think so far. It will be a "Y" shaped wire, one end for the sub out and the two on the other end for the left right audio jacks. Am i close?

 

[Pearl Jammzz]

well.....my guess is that on the reciever it has 1 plugin for the subwoofer correct? Then u should go to radioshack and pick up a cable that will fit into yer reciever and then at the other end has the red/white ends (male ends). This is my guess, I would personally just ask sumone at radioshack. I am sure they have a cable that is just for this.

 

[gameboy900]

Basically you want a single cable. On the subwoofer you will have two sets of connections. One is for a direct link to the receiver and the other lets the signal for the left and right speakers passthrough. This is used in case you have a receiver that doesn't output the subwoofer signal. You don't want to use this connection. I'm assuming the sub out on your receiver has a standard RCA plug (like AV cables have). You then need to find a corresponding in connection (either a single RCA plug or two of those clamp things). The clamp things basically each take one of the two wires for a speaker cable. So for the sub you need only two. Best bet (if you have the clamp type connections) is to get a single RCA cable (ie. one that has only RCA plug on each end) and cut one of the plugs off, strip the wire a bit (half an inch should be fine), twist up the wire and then insert it into the clamp things. Chances are though if you have a fairly recent sub that the dedicated input will be a regualr RCA connector.

BTW the people at radio shack hardly ever know what they're talking about.

If you can get us pics (even a simple drawing in paint) of what the connectors (and their labels) on the receiver and sub look like I can better tell you how to hook it up. If you hook things up wrong you could blow your amps in the receiver and that would be bad (talking from experience here).

 

[Shitface]

Ok, the sub out on the back of the reciever is a standard single RCA plug. Here is the back of the sub... well close enough.

 

[gameboy900]

Hmm... from the looks of it your sub only accepts a mixed signal. In other words you need to connect the output wires from your front left and right speakers to it, then take another set of cables from it to the actual speakers. This doesn't give the best sound unfortunately. Just remember to tell your receiver that you have no sub (so it feeds the low level sounds through the speakers. You COULD try to connect the sub out to those two RCA inputs on the sub (with a splitter). BUT it probably wouldn't sound too good there too. Without getting a better sub doesn't look like you'll be able to use that dedicate .1 channel output.

For the one you have. Those 8 inputs that say speaker level are for amplified output from your receiver. The low level input is for UNAMPLIFIED output from your receiver (which is only the sub out connector). Be careful not to might them up or you could blow something.

I would however recommend you buy a better sub though.

 

[Shitface]

Buy a new one! Wha! Maaaan... that sucks, i just bought this the day i posted it. I am easily pleased however. So great quality isn't that important. For a while i was using a $20 computer subwoofer for my games. I thought that was pretty awsome. So I don't think this will really bother me to much. I'll try the split cable first. The other way sounds to confusing.

 

[Shitface]

Alright, i got it working using an adapter for the audio plugs to use in the RCA jacks. Sounds good to me! Wahoo! Thanks for the help.

 

[gameboy900]

Make sure you use a DVD that has the THX setup wizard and get everything setup correctly. You'd be surprised what a difference an incorrectly setup sound system can make in some movies. Same goes for the TV.