How Do I Connect My Subwoofer To My Receiver or Stereo?

Receiver and home theater

If you have a surround system and would like to connect our subwoofer to your receiver, this is how you do it: On the back of your receiver, you have multiple inputs and outputs. Locate the one(s) that says "subwoofer". These are outputs where the signal is controlled by the AVR.

In the picture above, you'll see there are two outputs. Connect an RCA cable to the one labeled "1". Some receivers have the option to individually calibrate 2 or even 4 subwoofers, but that's a topic for another time. The other end of the RCA cable should be connected to "input 1" on the subwoofer.

Next, you'll need to activate the subwoofer in the receiver's settings. It will vary from brand to brand, but in general, you navigate to settings and speaker setup, then configuration. Next, locate "subwoofer" and enable subwoofer 1. When it's enabled, we also recommend setting all your other speakers to "small" instead of large. When small is selected, you're then prompted to choose a crossover frequency. This is the frequency where the subwoofer "takes over" and where the speakers will start to roll off. We usually recommend the THX standard of 80Hz for most of our 1723 and 1723 S speakers, but you can see our other recommendations by visiting this article.

Once that is done, we can change our focus to the settings on the subwoofer itself. You should first select the proper input/auto turn-on. The default is input 1, so you can just keep the default if this is how you connected it. For more in-depth settings recommendations, please look at this article for 1723 settings, and this article for 1961 settings.

Stereo

For stereo, the procedure is a little different. Your preamp most likely won't have a dedicated subwoofer output, but only pre-outputs. In this case, you will need to connect two RCA cables: On the preamp end: One to the left output, and one to the right. On the other end, you'll then connect them to inputs 1 and 2 on the subwoofer. There most likely won't be any settings to change in your preamp, but if you have the ability to select a crossover, that's highly recommended!

For the settings on the subwoofer, the first thing to do, is change the input/auto turn-on to input 1+2 (either XLR or RCA depending on your connection), so your sub receives the full signal. In most cases, the input gain should also be set to +6dB in the level menu. You will also need to set the crossover manually on the subwoofer. what frequency to choose will depend on your speakers and where they naturally start to roll off. You can find recommendations for our speakers in this article. For more in-depth recommendation, please look at this article for 1723 settings, and this article for 1961 settings.

Enjoy

All that remains now, is to sit back and enjoy the sound of your new subwoofer. If you're still having difficulties, you're always more than welcome to reach out to our support staff, who's more than happy to assist and get you up and running!