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

Wouldn't you just run the speaker wires from the amp to the inputs of subwoofer 1, then run speaker wires from the subwoofer 1 outputs to the inputs of subwoofer 2. Then run speaker wires from the outputs of subwoofer 2 to your speakers?

 

@carpathian , I am not a bright light when it comes to this stuff, but what the manual for my M&K sub indicates for one sub (using speaker wire mode) is L speaker wire from amp to L speaker wire IN in sub and then from L speaker wire OUT in sub to L speaker. And then repeat for the R speaker wire.

That’s with ONE sub.

But it makes me think that the way to go with two subs is: from amp/to L speaker wire to IN in L sub/R speaker wire out of amp to R speaker wire IN in R sub/and then from L speaker wire OUT in L sub/out to L main speaker/and from R speaker wire OUT in R sub/out to R main speaker.

And I believe that this is the way @grislybutter is presently up & running with.

I need an aspirin...

@thecarpathian,

It’s really not that complex, and I guess I just did a poor job of describing it. My fault.

Instead of the speaker wires going from the amp to the L & R speakers, instead the speaker wires goes to the L & R subs. Then from the L sub to the L speaker, and from the R sub to the R speaker.

(So each speaker is sort of an extension of each sub.)

I am pretty sure that’s the way @grisly is now wired.

I only have one sub, and since I am using the balanced circuit from my preamp in to the balanced circuit of my amp, I used the RCA OUTs in my preamp to go to the L and the R RCA INs in my sub. I've been thinking about it since this thread started, and I think I can see where speaker wire connections from amp/to sub/out to main speakers MIGHT be desirable for myself. But the thing is, I was also thinking, the quality of signal that might give me to my speakers (which is the termination of that signal) MIGHT be affected by the quality of parts in the sub which I am sure is affected by the quality of the sub . . . and my sub is pretty much obsolete.

@immathewj

I think this is a @thecarpathian suggestion:

 I don't think there is such a smart crossover inside this cheap sub that would split the signal. I think the full signal goes out, but that's just my assumption. I will post a question on the polk forum, it's always very active. 

One thing I have read was about the wiring was strong advice about parallel wiring. The Y splitters should arrive tonight, will be interesting how it sounds.

At this point I am embarrassed about a number of remaining questions, so I will just keep them to myself and play with it to try to confirm my assumptions...

 

@griz, going back a few posts--I don’t claim to be a bright light on this. But to me it just makes more sense to go from the L speaker post of amp into the L sub and from there in to the L speaker and then the same for the R side.

I don’t think there is such a smart crossover inside this cheap sub that would split the signal. I think the full signal goes out, but that’s just my assumption. I will post a question on the polk forum, it’s always very active.

Please post your findings; at this point I am quite curious and interested about this.

The Y splitters should arrive tonight, will be interesting how it sounds.

I am also curious about what you are going to hear when you experiment with that. Please post your feelings about what you hear. But I also think that your sonic perceptions may change as the new sub breaks in.

At this point I am embarrassed about a number of remaining questions, so I will just keep them to myself and play with it to try to confirm my assumptions...

I can relate to that myself (being embarrassed about some of my questions, that is), but a long time ago someone once told me that, "The only stupid question is the one you didn’t ask." But I am still frequently inhibited anyway, and people still make fun of questions that they perceive as being stupid. So I understand where you are coming from. However, I actually learn a lot from threads like these, so I personally benefit from these questions, so I personally hope you ask your questions here on A’gon.

Here is an example of a question I didn’t ask because I thought the answer was obvious and I was sure that some one would say it was a stupid question: whenever  there was a T’storm threatening, because when I put my system circuit in, the best place for me to put the outlets turned into a bit of a PITA, I used to just trip the circuit breaker for my system, but I was always wondering if a big enough surge could jump across a tripped breaker, but I thought, "Nahhhh, so I am not going to ask because I don’t need the derision." Then there was a "surge protector" thread on misc and that came up, and @JEA confirmed that a big enough surge certainly could jump across a tripped breaker. Now I unplug in bad weather, no matter how much of a PITA it is. But that’s just an example of a question that I should have asked but didn’t because I thought it was stupid.

As I often say: Ramble On. . . .