newbie question about adding a Sub

khanhhuynh4u

hey guys im just getting into hifi audio and im wanting to add a sub to my current setup

first i have NAD C320BEE and Epos ELS, adding a NAD CD player soon and along with speakers cable and interconnect....

ok so how do i add a sub to my reciever? do i need another seperate piece of gear or do i connect to one you the input on my reciever?

also what what you recommend for speakers cable and interconnect along with the CD player for my setup thanks

nellis8166

Keep it simple, run a single sub cable from the pre-amp out from your receiver. I use Monster Cables, but I'm sure there are better choices out there. Set your recv crossover to 80 hrz and calibrate the sub with an spl meter. Shouldn't take more than half an hour. You might have to mess around with sub placement depending on your room.

Airplay355

Don't run a single cable. Using 2 cables, or 1 cable with a y splitter will give you a +6db increase or something. Anyway, it's significant, and you wouldn't want to waste it by just using one cable. If your receiver doesn't have bass management then use the low pass option on the sub to cross it over. Start out with the volume at 1/4th and adjust from there. You can place your sub in a corner to make it sound louder, but sometimes this gives a boomy sound to the bass. Placement is very important with a sub so try more then one position.

khanhhuynh4u

thanks for the help guys but still a little confused. do i hook the wire on my NAD reciever? and where exactly bc all the speaker wire post is used for the speakers...some picture would help guys or a link would be good too..

nellis8166

Airplay is right, I should have mentioned if you run a single cable use a y splitter into the sub.
Does your recvr. have a pre amp out jack for a sub?

Airplay355

Look on the back of the receiver, you can either use a sub out RCA connection, LFE out RCA connection, or the L&R preouts for main speakers.

dkg999

I have close to the same set-up as you for my bedroom system. The one exception is that I have the NAD C720BEE receiver. The C720BEE has a sub-woofer output, although it is fixed at 100 hz cross-over point. I also have the EPOS ELS-3 speakers and I have found that for all but hard rock they have enough bass that I haven't wanted to use a sub-woofer. I tried a couple of subs and they just didn't seem to complement the nice tight fast bass of the ELS-3's. If your 3020 receiver doesn't have a sub-woofer output, and your sub has left/right inputs and a cross-over setting control, you can run interconnects from the tape out or the pre-out to the sub-woofer. I was using the tape-outs from an older Marantz receiver to run a sub-woofer, although you have to change the tape-out to match the input you are using.

I am using Signal Cable interconnects and speaker cables with my NAD/ELS-3 and find they really complement the sound of these components well. You can find them at www.signalcable.com. I am using the NAD C521BEE CD player, and I have really been impressed with it.

I have had a number of NAD components over the years, and I have always thought they were under-rated by the audio press and so-called experts. I would have to give the NAD C720BEE receiver and the C521BEE CD player high marks, not exactly high-end stuff, but definetely upper mid-fi for us normal people!

khanhhuynh4u

thanks for all the help again guys i found it and should try it....

michael_w

Just so everyone else knows the C320BEE is a 2 ch integrated amplifier and a very simple clean design with no bass management, sub outs or anything fancy like that.

Since it has only one set of pre-outs you have two options. This is asuming you will be using a powered subwoofer. There are two options in your case.... You can detach the jumper from the preout to the main in and run from the preout into the low level input of the subwoofer and asuming it has low level outputs you can run it back to the main in on your NAD. The other option is to use the high level inputs so you would have to run speaker wire from the binding posts you would hook up your speakers with and run them into the subwoofer high level inputs. Then take the subwoofers high level outputs and send them to your front speakers.

Hope that helps.

If you are using a passive ( not powered with its own amplifier ) then you will have to get a seperate amplifier to power it.

michael_w

I have found that simple wire from home depot at around 30 cents / foot works just fine and at the low cost allows you to be more flexable to play around with things and distances. I myself use this green 12 awg in-wall wiring that costs about $1 / meter (canadian dollar too ).

It looks like this...