Surround Bar has arrived!

irishaz

The wife just called and said that the little brown truck just delivered my Surround Bar. The anticipation is killing me here at work! I have been jonesing for one since I started reading the threads and finally heard on at Circuit City a while ago. Maybe I pretend I have the Bird Flu to get out of here a few minutes early. Does anyone know the symptoms?

I'm going to be running the Bar with a Yamaha HTR-5790 using R-15's for the rears. I also have an older Cerwin Vega sub that I will be incorporating as well, but I think I remember seeing something about recommendations for hooking up the sub while using the Bar. I tried doing a search for it but came up empty. The sub is rated @ 200W/Ch but I was wondering how you all would suggest hooking it up. Should I just run the subwoofer cable (rca's to y-adapter) to the sub-in/out on the back of the receiver or does this setup call for speaker wire to the L/R jacks on the back of the sub? I checked out the Surround Bar manual on the web, but it was really hard to see what they were demonstrating with the small writing and B/W environment.

Any ideas?

Any other suggestions for proper setup of the Bar are more than appreciated.

Now it's time to get an amp and run the SDA 2's properly. Good thing I have a birthday coming up!

Thanks....

mantis

The surroundbar doesn't require any rear speakers.

Dan

irishaz

Mantis,

Thanks so much for the informative response. You must have pined over that for some time before you committed it to writing.

Anyway....I think that there might be someone else out there that would actually answer the question. The actual manual that comes with the bar is a little confusing as it shows the subwoofer wires attaching to the posts on the bar itself.

I realize that the number of posts I have don't even warrant an intelligent response, but I was just seeking some sage advice. Upon further examination, someone with over 1900 more posts than I have said that including rear speakers in the package would be "friggin cool".

Sorry for wasting your time.........


Is it unheard of to inquire about something like this? I sit on the sidelines and try to learn from people that are more knowledgeable than I am. Some day, I hope that I will actually be in a position to help other less experienced Polkies. God forbid I try to purchase something....or sell something. The more I see the comments around here (and the senseless profanity and cat-fighting) I wonder why Polk puts up with it.

One last fleeting question.......If a good hearted newbie comes on board and is a Polk lover (been a fan since my first purchase of 5B's in 1989and 6 other pairs of Polks), how can they ever ascend to the "acceptable level" of knowledge, acumen and experience to be regarded as an equal. I read the post in the Clubhouse about the Flea Market and wanted to throw up. Holy self-importantism Batman....

I have made other posts on this site and some folks have chosen to take more than 2 seconds and actually respond in a helpful way. If someone on this site needed help in an area where I considered myself to be an expert, I would absolutely do my best to help them. I certainly wouldn't respond with something as ground-breaking and insightful as "The surrondbar doesn't require any rear speakers."

Just my .02...................

Let the games begin....

Dennis Gardner

Why the attitude? Dan didn't have one............

danger boy

a big part of being part of Club Polk is having a thick skin.. every once in a while things get out of hand. That's going to happen ANY time you have a group of people together, for any reason. We're only human, we have likes, dislikes, agree sometimes and often times disagree.. that's what helps us better understand each other.

I've said this before.. we ALL began as newbies at one time... if you stick around AND participate in the forums, you get out of it what you put into it. Plain and simple.

I've made mistakes in here.. you just pick yourself up, dust off and get back on.. if you come in here with a bad attitude, people are just human.. and may turn on you right away. If someone is a know it all.. well, they'll have pretty big shoes to fill.. there are people in here who know a helluva lot more than I do, not only audio and components, but other topics as well. I'm here to learn.. and in my time here (nearly 5 yrs), i've learned alot. The folks set me straight on the right audio path more than once.. had I turned my nose up at them.. i'd still be listening to crappy gear.

Yeah some people in here are cocky SOB's, or grumpy SOB's, or silly childish SOB's. but that's what makes Club Polk such a great place to hang out. Fights and disagreements will ALWAYS break out now and then.. and it'll pass.. and this place will move on. Stick around and ask questions, share your knowledge and become a Polkie.

Dennis Gardner

Polk has always held their ground on hooking up subs through the front speaker wires as a best way to balance the sound. This does require you to run your front speakers on large setting without a sub to get the LFE .1 info to your sub. This allows you to control the crossover point with your powered sub.

Many on CP including myself hook their subs into the LFE RCA output and let the receiver handle the routing. The front speakers would then be set to small using a sub. To each their own, whatever sounds best to you!

irishaz

Sorry about the attitude all, guess I was just having a bad day, but I thought that the response was less than insightful and I had just finished reading the Flea Market posts about "newbies".

This is going to sound like a stupid thing to say, but do I take the speaker wire from the sub and thread it into the front posts as well as the wire for the fronts? I have never done that so I am little clueless.

After hooking up the Bar, I think I must have done something wrong. I take the Yamaha to about -19 db and it is not loud at all. Yes, it is very clear and detailed, but when I had my separates (SDA 2, R15's, Polk center )hooked up to the Yamaha, I would hit about -24 db and the wife would come barreling in the room and scream at me to turn it down. I also don't seem to get getting anything out of the sub....

Again, my apologies for any offense...I know I'm only a sub-rookie...

Dennis Gardner

Hooking "through" the sub means run wire from your receiver to the hi-level input clips on your sub then into the "front" posts on the surround bar. You must change the settings in your receivers setup to allow the bass to go to your sub. Digital formats assume the sub is hooked up with the RCA cable. You will bypass the RCA output using it this way.

I would hook both ways and try all types of settings to get the best sound possible.

irishaz

Now, at the risk of sounding even more un-educated, are we talking about two strands of wire here or four? If it is two, do I thread one into the inputs (posts) on the sub, then thread it through the posts on the receiver (stripping wire in the middle) and then into the front posts on the bar (one each for positive and negative)?

Thanks again....

Dennis Gardner

A +/- speaker wire from your left +/- receiver posts to the left hi-level input posts on your sub. Another will go from the output posts on your sub to the left front posts on the bar. The same is repeated for the right channel. I guess it is 4 +/- strands, with 8 conductors if that helps.

irishaz

Dennis,

Actually, that helped a bunch. I was trying to use the YPAO optimizer and I think either it or I got confused. I manually adjusted the levels and now the bar sounds incredible. The highs and mids are awesome and the "surround" performance was better than I had ever hoped for. Thanks for all of your help...Polk succeeds again!

Now I just need to find an Outlaw amp to run the SDA's and all will be good with the universe....

Dennis Gardner

I would think that most auto setup features might struggle understanding what is happening with a surround bar come to think about it.:D

Polk65

http://www.polkaudio.com/downloads/whitepapers/SDA_WhitePaper.pdf

page 13. step #4 "Connect the subwoofer using the high level (speaker level) inputs from the same Left and Right front amplifier channels that are connected to the Surround Bar." Set your bass management to large since the SurroundBar has a filter.

http://www.polkaudio.com/downloads/manuals/home/SurroundBar_QuickStartGuide.pdf

step #5 illustrates this, use the zoom feature in your .pdf reader to get a closer view. I thought I read or heard that surrounds are optional, not that they are absolutely to be avoided.

irishaz

Polk 65,

Thanks for the links. That helped even more.

Polk65

#8 http://www.polkaudio.com/SurroundBar/faq.php

Can I use my Surround Bar with rear channel speakers if I want to?
The Surround Bar is meant to be a solution for people who want surround sound but don’t want to install rear channel speakers. However, there are three options for using the Surround Bar with rear channel speakers if this is really what you want:

* Good - Hook up two rear channel speakers to the surround channels, in the usual way, and connect nothing to the rear channel inputs on the Surround Bar. In this case the Surround Bar is being used just like a conventional L,C,R sound bar. You will get all of the audio performance of the Surround Bar for the front Left, Center, Right channels and conventional rear channel performance from your hard-wired rear channel speakers instead. The surround drivers in the Surround Bar are simply not used in this option.
* Better - Hook up the rear channel speakers as in a.) above but also connect the surround channels of the receiver to the rear channel inputs of the Surround Bar. The hard-wired rear channel speakers must be 8 ohms for this option. This will give you conventional rear channel performance plus the wrap-around soundstage of the Surround Bar which will fill in the sides of the soundstage.
* Best - If you have a 6.1 or 7.1 receiver, hook up a single rear channel speaker in the center rear to either of the extra surround channels and hook up the rest of the channels, including the left and right rear, to the Surround Bar as normal. This is the best alternative. It combines the ability of the Surround Bar to deliver a very continuous wrap-around sound stage with solid center rear imaging from the single hard-wired center rear speaker.

mantis

mantis wrote:

The surroundbar doesn't require any rear speakers.

Dan

Dude do you know what you got? The surroundbar is designed to run a full 5 channel speaker system. It has built in rears, Center, Left and right. You run all your speaker wires( it comes with a premade amp/receiver to surroundbar ribbon speaker cable or if it's not long enough, you run your own wires.
The sub should be connected VIA lfe out of your receiver/preamp.This is exactly how it sould be connected. No need to run the sub in speaker level.All speakers set to small and crossover point at 80 or 100 ( I got better performance with it at 100)

I have Installed the surroundbar.

Dan