new onkyo SR606

[zimu]

hey guys,

i just got the onkyo tx-sr606 set up at home with my speakers. however it seems my subwoofer just won't work and i have no idea why...

the sr606 has a pre-amp subwoofer out port which i've enabled in the settings. cabling is a little tricky - the subwoofer has basically the two copper cables without terminals - just the raw cables. meanwhile, the receiver has what looks like just a standard RCA jack (single jack). i have a converter thingy that takes in the cables at one end and plug it into the rca jack.

no luck. subwoofer doesn't output anything.

any idea what hte issue could be?

 

[krotchy]

So you have a passive subwoofer and you are trying to hook up up to the LFE output (pre-out) of your receiver which does not deliver power it sounds like. My guess is you are going to need a powered subwoofer. Unless your sub has a AC power cable coming out of the back it wont work with an LFE output, since LFE doesnt provide power and your sub has no internal amp.

My assumption is your sub is coming from a home theater in a box originally and the HTIB probably supplied power for the sub?

Unless I am wrong you might need a new sub. General suggestions are Dayton 12" from partsexpress for ~125 dollars, or for a significant upgrade, Bic H-100 for ~250 dollars (I have a BIC and WHOA)

 

[zimu]

yep, the sub came as part of a package - the Pioneer-DCS-370. i've managed to plug in the 5 speakers (4+center) and that's all good and well, but the subwoofer as you say is a passive one.

is there no other way to do this without investing another shed load on a powered sub? are there any cheap amps i could get, or anything??

 

[Slick5150]

Well, you could set the front speakers to large and try to hook the cables from the sub up to one of the front speaker outputs. It'd be a very wonky setup though at best.

But your best bet is to bite the bullet and get a real subwoofer (passive subs just don't cut it I'm afraid). Like krotchy said, if you don't want to spend a lot, the Dayton sub from partsexpress.com is a decent option for pretty cheap.

 

[zimu]

<sigh>

another thing - i'm in london... whats $60 there will be £60 here!

 

[Slick5150]

Ahh..

Check out local pawn shops (or whatever you call them over there) and whatnot and you can often find pretty good deals on used equipment. Just make sure to test it out first.

 

[krotchy]

Originally posted by: zimu
<sigh>

another thing - i'm in london... whats $60 there will be £60 here!

Ahh, I don't know what subs are generally available in London sadly.

But yeah the other 5 speakers will work just fine with the new receiver, but sadly the one downside to most HTIB setups is the passive sub they use to reduce cost.

When I initially upgraded my setup I ran into the exact opposite issue actually, where I bought new speakers/sub to hook up to my Onkyo HTIB reciever, and the sub only had LFE in, the Onkyo had no LFE out, lol. I ended up biting the bullet and upgrading to the Onkyo 705 a bit sooner than I initially planned, but it all worked out nicely in the end.

 

[YOyoYOhowsDAjello]

Does your old Pioneer receiver still work? You could use that as the amp.

Plug the Onkyo subwoofer pre-out into an analog input on the Pioneer and attach the subwoofer like you used to. Select that analog input on the pioneer and then adjust the volume on the pioneer unit as you would the gain on a powered subwoofer.

I think that should work.

 

[krotchy]

Originally posted by: YOyoYOhowsDAjello
Does your old Pioneer receiver still work? You could use that as the amp.

Plug the Onkyo subwoofer pre-out into an analog input on the Pioneer and attach the subwoofer like you used to. Select that analog input on the pioneer and then adjust the volume on the pioneer unit as you would the gain on a powered subwoofer.

I think that should work.

Wow, I would have never though of that, but it would definitely work for the time being, and it would give you very tight control over the sub's volume

Nice thinkin YoYo:thumbsup:

 

[Pacfanweb]

Set the speakers to anything BUT large. The receiver won't feed anything to it if they're set on large, because the "large" setting assumes the main speakers have big woofers of their own.

edit: Ah, you have a non-matching passive sub. Just read the rest of the thread.

Yep, using the old Pioneer as a temporary amp is your best best.