Surroundbar 3000 low sound

akindelt

So I have looked and looked and could not find any threads similar issues. So I just purchased the Polk Surroundbar 3000 center speaker, and sub. I am attempting to run it through a cheap-o receiver I bought years ago (Sherwood RX4109) I bought it to run 2 Boston Acoustic HS450's. I had 2 more much older Boston Acoustic floor speakers a friend was storing at my place for years. The receiver ran both sets of speakers off of speaker-wire hooked into the receiver just fine. I had never had a use for the RCA-In until I brought home the Surroundbar. Of course I lost the remote for the receiver in a move awhile ago so my ability to mess with the settings on the receiver is limited. The problem I have is when I run the Surroundbar out from the receiver (through the 3.5-3.5 into the 3.5-RCA adapter it comes with) the volume on the Surroundbar is almost nothing. It does have sound run through it, but just barely enough for me to confirm that it is in fact working (even at max volume). The volume on the receiver does not effect the Surroundbar, only the HS450's, not that I expected it to.

Ok to make things harder for you guys. I could just run the receiver input from my tv via RCA (or 3.5mm if it had one that worked) and hook-up the surroundbar from a different output on the T.V. right? Except my T.V. is back home in the United States. I am a soldier serving overseas in the South Korea. My wife and I rent a furnished place while we are here (did not want to risk the $2200 Smart LG we have being shipped by the Army) So the tv I am working with is not only an off-brand cheap flatscreen, its all in Korean. So short of going to one of the linguists on-post, or dragging one of my wife's Korean girlfriends over here to sort it all out for me, what if anything could I be doing wrong with the receiver? I am a novice when it comes to most of this stuff. My guess is it is either a problem with the receiver itself, or it is a problem with one of the settings on the receiver that I can not change because I lost the remote one too many moves ago. Any help or advice is appreciated. I have wanted to upgrade my receiver for awhile. Anyone have any advice on a a good mid level receiver?

[Deleted User]

Hello akindelt,
Welcome to Polk's forum. Thanks for your service, first of all! We appreciate it very much!
I would imagine the best place to make a connection to the Sherwood would be via the "record out" connections. This would be a right and left signal that leaves the receiver intended to provide a signal to a tape recorder. Secondly, make sure the SB3000 is set to the correct input, probably input 2. Start off with the SB3000's volume down low since the signal leaving the Sherwood will not be controlled by the receiver's remote.
Regards, Ken

akindelt

Hey Ken, thanks for the reply. Its an honor to serve, I have gotten so much from the Army, and our great nation. So I switched the RCA output for the Surroundbar to tape, and still have extremely low volume from the Surroundbar. Not sure if this matters, but I am using a 3.5mm-RCA for input on the same.... channel? i guess its called (Tape has 2 sets of Left/Right sound RCA female ends one for Input to the receiver, and one for output) So to sum it up RCA-3.5 on Tape output to the Surroundbar, and 3.5-RCA for input. (I run my wife's computer, or my laptop, through the TV via HDMI and we run the sound from the 3.5mm headphone jack on the computers, we are testing with an Ipod). This way we can stream shows from the states on Hulu, or Netflix, and music on Pandora instead of the being limited to the 2 English channels we get here in Korea. Thanks again for your help.


Aaron

[Deleted User]

Hi Aaron,
I believe you've got things connected correctly. Since at this point we don't know where the problem might be let's do a test. Instead of the iPod as the source try tuning in a Korean radio station via the Sherwood. There should be a built-in AM antenna so just try any local AM station to see what the volume does.
Regards, Ken