Audio People, stupid question

[superman22x]

I have a simple question. I got this Yamaha receiver unit for my parents Christmas present. It's much fancier than they need really, but their old stereo broke (speakers are fine), so I thought I'd get them this. And in the future, they can add more speakers. Anyway, I have two qustions, some of the speaker outputs are class two wiring, not sure how those work with regular speaker wire? Or is there a connector I need on the speaker wire?

Also, there is no output labeled "subwoofer," but there is one for "presence." Is that what the Sub would tie into?

Here's a picture to see what I am talking about if it helps:

[Cabbs]

Just wire them up like you would any receiver. There is also a subwoofer pre-out above the front speaker wire terminals.

[superman22x]

Ok, thanks. Yeah, I saw that, but my sub uses regular speaker wire. It's just a little sony one though, nothing fancy.

[foothead]

That means it relies on an amplifier built into the receiver. Any decent receiver won't have this. You'll have to either add an amplifier or get a halfway decent sub with a built-in amp. I highly recommend the Polk PSW-10 for a low-cost sub. I have two of them in a 7.2 setup, and they're wonderful.

If you don't want to spend any more money, you can always go the ghetto route and put an old stereo or something between the pre-out and the subwoofer. Just run a standard RCA cable from the receiver output to the left (or right) CD/tape deck/8 track/whatever input on the stereo, then plug the subwoofer into the left (or right, but keep it the same side as before) speaker output. If the output is RCA, you can cut up an old cable and use it as an adapter. The outer wire is the ground. This will definitely decrease audio quality, but if you're using a cheap non-powered sub, I doubt you'll really notice.

Here is an explanation of what the "presence" outputs are for. Don't plug the sub into them.


As far as wire ratings, you don't need to worry about them on any reasonable home setup. The only time it really matters is when it's an extremely high-powered system for like a movie theater or concert hall or something.

[root]

as above...

you'll need to take the sub out from the pre-out sub out.

presence speakers are just small satellites that go at the front.

class II wiring basically just means normal speaker wiring,
Class III and you'd have a problem as that's a higher voltage, (so would suck a lot of amps!) but class II is just standard.

[superman22x]

Ok, thanks. Yeah, I know mine isn't fancy, but it works well enough for me. I don't need much power for my sub as it's never loud. I figured they would need an externally powered sub with their setup though.

[berry120]

As far as wire ratings, you don't need to worry about them on any reasonable home setup.

Yes, but be careful - on longer runs you may well see noticeable drop off (running the standard "thin" stuff all the way to the back of relatively large room didn't give me the best results! Then again it was all I had to hand at the time...)

It's not going to blow anything up, but if you're running it a long way listen out to make sure it's ok. My sound experience is in the concert / PA / heavier duty type stuff and that's when you really need to watch it...!