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speakers and cables

this is about me being a loser and problem creator.

I finally got a 2nd subwoofer and I was excited to hook it up. Well, not too excited. I knew it would be a pain to hook it up. I was excited to hear it. I spent over 90 minutes connecting the speaker wires to my power amp. When I turned it on, the left channel was gone. It blew the fuse. I disconnected everything, replaced the fuse, hooked it up again. It worked for 10 seconds, blew the fuse again.

The way I hooked them up was I went from the sub speaker out from both subwoofers, rolled the left and right side wires together so I had 4 wires that I connected to the left and right plus and minus channels - speaker binders on the power amp. What are my options? My preamp has no sub out. Nor my amp.

Stupid question: should I just go from left to left on one sub and right to right on the other sub?

grislybutter
grislybutter OP
2,994 posts
 

thanks @rhg3!

akg_ca's avatar
akg_ca
2,237 posts
 

https://audiocurious.com/high-level-input-vs-low-level-input/
https://theaterdiy.com/subwoofer-high-level-inputs-vs-rca/P

 

Have you considered using the hi level inputs in the subwoofer? Read the links. .

 

grislybutter OP
2,994 posts
 

@akg_ca

I am using the high level inputs.

noromance's avatar
noromance
9,769 posts
 

Use the speakon cable to connect the amplifier to the high level inputs on subs.

Wire the red and yellow wires to the positive speaker post and the black wire to the negative post. Repeat for the other channel. 

immatthewj
1,898 posts
 

An external high pass filter maybe?  I bought a M&K external high pass,around 30 years ago, give or take, and I don't recall it costing an arm an leg.

Anyway, in a nutshell (if I've got this right from memory) your RCA outs from preamp will go into highpass/from high pass L & R RCA out to amp and also L&R RCA out to subwoofer.  I do not remember at what frequency mine was preset to roll the bass off to the sub.  Mine has a treble level adjustment (speakers) and bass level adjustment (sub).

Besides allowing you to use RCA cables to hook up sub, other benefits are freeing the amp up from as much bass as it was  powering before, which also frees up the speakers from trying to reproduce as much bass as they were before. 

I remember at the time immediately hearing things sound much more dynamic with the smaller stereo tube amp (Cary SLA70) I was using at the time.

I also remember a dealer basically turning up his nose at the notion of using one.  "Another crappy box," he told me.  But he didn't use the term 'crappy.'

I quit using it when I became a 'purity of signal' snob and also because I bought bigger amps and they seemed dynamic enough without it, and also because I had acquired equipment with truly balanced circuits that I wanted to use and the M&K high pass only has RCA ins and outs.

Like everything, pros and cons.  But long story short--that would probably solve the blowing fuses issue you are having.

 

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