Subwoofer for classical music listener

God bless some of you who described the short-coming of subwoofers perfectly.  

I have my share of struggles with them for years.  My current preference is I would not consider to own a pair of speakers if they need subwoofers.   The cost of getting outstanding subwoofers far exceed the additional money to spend more on getting full-range main speakers.

My "outstanding" subs were bought used but in perfect working order, and both were inexpensive at around 200 bucks each. I built my own Neutrik Speakon festooned cables which were also inexpensive using Canare Star Quad cable. One of the the most significant benefits of a good, adjustable sub is that it frees up main speaker buying choices…a speaker that doesn't require a sub simply has a sub in it…one that can't be moved around to help tune the bass to the room, and one that requires the speaker it's part of to be larger and possibly a lot more expensive. Subs are things that encourage Freedom and the American way (!), although mine were made in England.

stfoth:  I finally got around to the idea of trying the high-pass filter option.
I called SVS to order the cables and the rep said I needed powered speakers to go that route.  I don't have powered speakers

RV, that sounds like either you spoke with a very confused rep, or there was a miscommunication. The high passed line-level outputs of the sub would have no way of knowing whether they are connected to a speaker having a built-in amplifier, or to an amplifier that in turn is connected to a passive speaker.

You would simply connect the preamp outputs to the sub’s line-level inputs, and connect the sub’s high passed line-level outputs (left and right) to the inputs of your left and right monoblock amplifiers, respectively. You would probably then want to set the sub’s internal low pass filter to the vicinity of 80 Hz (and then fine tune by ear), since the high pass function has a fixed setting of 80 Hz.

An uncertainty pertaining to how good the resulting sonics would be, though, is introduced by the fact that the output impedance of the sub’s line-level outputs does not appear to be specified. Although I wouldn’t be surprised if that proved not to be an issue with the 22K input impedance of your amps.

Best regards,
-- Al