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

@audio_guy_uofw

yes it helps thank you. I have about 5 millimeters between the speaker binders and my speaker wires are thick. I could look for thinner speaker wires. 

I sold my beloved Marantz amp for this reason, impossible speaker binders, swapping speakers was an afternoon long activity. 

I am giving it one last try, hopefully it will leave the fuse alone.

How many splitters would I need for two subs?

You need a splitter for each channel, so two in your case.  I linked AudioQuest splitters but if you check lower down the linked Amazon page, you will find no-name brands for about half the AQ version.

The splitter plugs into your rca output and then you run one rca cable per channel to the amplifier powering your main speakers and one rca cable to the low level input of each powered sub.  This approach would give you stereo imaging for your subs, i.e., one sub for each channel, which is a common approach when running two subs.  In that case I would position one sub somewhat near each main speaker. 

Summing the sub signal is a typical approach used when running only one sub, and sometimes when running a swarm of subs (more that two) throughout the room.  

@mitch2 ok so in dummy terms, red to red, white to white from the preamp?

A single line to each sub?

@deep_333

beautiful! thank you! smooth and buttery :) I owe you a beer.

And you can actually write with a pen nicely, I give up after three words, it just looks like I had a stroke.