Need Help Wiring Sub With Rear Surrounds

TWT1006

I AM SEEKING ADVICE ON HOW TO WIRE MY F/X500i SURROUNDS WITH A PSW250 IN THE REAR OF MY LIVING ROOM.I HAVE 55RTi'S WITH A PSW350 AND A CS400i IN THE FRONT OF THE ROOM.DO I WIRE IT THE SAME AS THE FRONTS????RECEIVER TO PSW350,PSW350 T0 RT55i.BASICALLY WHAT I AM ASKING.......WILL I GET THE BEST SOUND BY WIRING FROM THE RECEIVER TO PSW250,PSW250 TO F/X500i?????OR DO I RUN A SET OF CABLES SEPARATE TO THE PSW250 AND A SET OF CABLES SEPARATE TO THE F/X500i's FROM THE SURROUND SPEAKER OUTPUT?????ANY ADVICE WOULD BE GREATLY APPRECIATED.
THANKS,
TODD

sgtgto

Hi:

What kind of receiver do you have? How do you have your sub hooked up now? Need more info.


Gary

TWT1006

unfortunately i have a sony str845 receiver.in the front i took polks advice and wired direct into sub....then out of sub into fronts.i am satisfied with the result.can i hook my rear subwoofer up in the same manner with my surrounds???(maybe i should mention that i am not trying to run dual subs from the front channel.......i am trying to use the second sub to enhance the bass in my surround channel)thanks for your response.i hope you have some advice.
todd

trubluluc

Unless you are able to adjust the crossover of your surrounds, (unlikely)dropping the crossover low enough for a sub to kick in. Wiring from your receiver out (surround outputs) to your sub, then to your surrounds won't accomplish much as far as boosting your surround bass.
There is no, (as far as I know) LFE information going to the surrounds.
Yamaha has a split sub output, that allows you to split a LFE signal into front and rear subs. Which is supposed to give a subtle sense of movement.
You can split your sub signal, (if there is only one subout) and run it to your rear sub. But the information coming from the rear sub would be identical to that coming from the front sub.

-luc

RuSsMaN

Rears=large, and wire through the 250 ......

Cheers,
Russ

gidrah

I second Russman! Good call. Hook it up the same as the front and set the rears to LARGE in the set-up menu.

Nice system!

TWT1006

thanks for everybodys input.im going to try wiring it up tonight.ill let you know how it works and test it with episode one,atlantis and jurassic 3.
thanks again,
todd

johnnyamerika

I would personally not wire a sub through the surrounds. Even with the surrounds set to large, you are missing out on all the LFE from the front and center channels. The only way I would do this is if I already had a sub in front as well.

Why not hook it up through the sub pre-out. I've found this works really good, even though Polk recommends the other hook up.

If you really want to have the sub in the back and hook it up speaker wire style, run the wires back to the front of your room and into the front mains. It may cost more in a couple of feet of wire, but the sound will be much better.

john

TWT1006

John,
i do have a sub in the front.i am running the psw 350 with the front.i guess where i got the whole idea for a rear sub was in the home theater handbook on this website...........i just wish polk would have explained the setup a little better.
the receiver i have does have 2 sub outputs but since my rear sub is a psw250 there is no connection to accomplish this.
thanks,
Todd

johnnyamerika

>my rear sub is a psw250 there is no connection to accomplish this.


The 250 has a line in jack, couldn't you hook it through that?

TWT1006

I dont know if that would work.the connections for my front channel(the way it is wired)have my receiver set as front-large and subwoofer-off.if i set my rear sub with a line out i would have to use a sub out connection correct???????heres a question........should i just toss out the rear surround/sub combo and use the psw 250 as a second sub situated in the rear of the room for additional bass coming from the lfe and front channel????
thanks,
Todd

RuSsMaN

Wire it either with the LFE out from your rec, or through the speaker wire connections, out to your sats, set to large.

With your setup, I personally would have the front sub hooked up to LFE out, and run the 55's direct, set to large (they can take it), and run the rear with whatever is easiest, speaker wire (rears=large), or rca from the LFE.

Either way will work, but you have your rear speaker wire back 'there' already, why run another RCA.

Cheers,
Russ

johnnyamerika

hmmmm.....that's interesting.....I guess the question is do you feel the 350 gives you 'enough' bass for the main channels? If it is already really strong, how will the front channels benifit from another sub? Also do you think there are low frequency sounds out of the surrounds you are not getting? If so, maybe hooking the sub up through those and setting them to large wouldn't be a bad idea after all.

I'd guess that most of the bass coming out of the surrounds would be intermitant. If you did hook up two subs to the front, you are right, they'd both have to be line out style. But it would be kind of neat to have the whole of the low frequency track booming in front of you and under your seat!

john

trubluluc

Todd-


Know how polk recommends wiring up your sub.
And it works well for one sub.
I'm currently running two psw450's, one front,
one in back of the room.
I also know what people say, as to low frequency sound being non-directional.
I can tell where the bass is coming from, hear it, but more importantly feel it.
Having a front and rear sub balances out the effect better, than a single front sub.

All I can say is: try hooking it up the other way.

Hear what you think,

-luc

TWT1006

Luc,
great......you have the setup im looking for.please tell me how you have your two subs wired into your receiver.that will clear everything up for me.
thanks,
Todd

TWT1006

Russ,
that makes sense but heres my problem.........i dont have an lfe out on my receiver.i have 2 sub outs.if i hook one up to sub out and one through the polk recommended speaker wire connection what do i use as a receiver setting.........subwoofer on or subwoofer off??????it seems sub off wouldnt properly operate the front sub(sub out connection)and sub on wouldnt properly operate the rear sub for surround channel(speaker wire connection)i am actually looking to upgrade my receiver at this time.......my sony isnt a year old but it doesnt support any 6:1.i have an old hk amp that works excellent but isnt surround capable but it blows this sony away as far as sound quality.im looking to spend $1000 or less.so far people are swinging me to the denon.whats your opinion on this ??????
thanks again for your help,
Todd

juice21

if you want a front and rear sub, hook fronts up through 350 and rears through 250, all speakers set to large, sub no; this will give you your front and rear 'channels' of bass

OR run speaker's seperate, set to large or small (your preference), and both subs from your sub out, set to on; this will give you more bass, but only respective to the sub out on your receive, both subs will have the same signal.

running one set of speaker's through a sub, and the other sub from a sub out is going to cause problems getting the bass you want...

crewchief68

hook your mains directly to the amp and use one of your sub-outs to the lfe in on the 350.
bi-wire the rear....run two sets of cables one to your speakers one to the sub that way the rears will recieve full freqs.
bass sound retains some directionality mainly because of room acoustics and their own enclosures for the best most natural sound all speakers should be allowed to produce whatever range they're capable of.
The cross-overs of both subs should be set as high as possible and all speakers should be set to large in the set-up menu on the amp. If bass is weak use the controls on the amp to boost it up, or switch speakers to small....starting with the center channel until you get the bass you want....this works well with broadcast tv and video tape. never use the 'bass boost' switch on the amp.
also run the subs hot... turn the sub and lfe levels of the amp about 1/4 the way up...if your range is -10 through +10, 1/4 of the way up would be....you got it -5, ,although -4or -3 will give you more room to tune downward if need be. turn the amps on the subs about 3/4 of the way up. this will give much better sound and allows the sub to really do its job. the true low freqs, which is what the sub is for really jump out .

trubluluc

Todd-

I chose to keep things simple, and to avoid adding any more cables around the room than absolutely necessary.
To accomplish this I bought a couple of "monster"
sub LFE cables. I hooked one to each of the LFE
(unfiltered) inputs on the subs.
On my Sony receiver it was easy, like you, I had two sub-outs, and I simply connected them there.
On the back of my Yamaha, I have only one(mono)
sub-out. So I used the Y-connecter that came with the monster cable, and split the signal, and connected both subs.

The reason Polk advises to hook it up the other way is to avoid double filtering of the LFE signal. Once from your receiver, second from the sub itself.
By connecting to the(unfiltered) LFE input on the back of the sub, you can avoid the second filtering as well.
You will also have less cableage running around, which looks cleaner, and costs less as well.

-luc

johnnyamerika

Here here! I prefer cables rather than routing through speakers. Just me though.

john

crewchief68

Yes this is a simple hook-up option, although expensive if you kept the 250 in the rear of the room. Really what you have is a "stereo" sub-woofer hook-up. I know, stereo subs don't exist, its a mono channel... For the sake of this arguement they do.
The rear channel out-put of a digital surround system is considered basically the same as the stereo out-put of old two channel amps.....remember the 70's and 80's? Since bass freqs are recorded on these tracks they can benifit from a sub in the same way old stereo amps did. This does introduce all kinds of tuning problems but always use your ear as the final judge.
I'm on my second 5.1 channel amp and every movie I watch I find myself making adjustments to settings along the way...I wish I lived in the Carmike.

Food for thought.........