Subwoofer Wiring Question

[Tommylongy]

Hi all, I apologize if this has already been answered else where but I wasn't able to find it. I recently purchased an Insignia NS-R5101 receiver to use with a 5.1 speaker set my father gave me. The receiver has a pre-out, subwoofer connection, but me subwoofer as an L/R input connection. The subwoofer is an old RCA WF-200AR which I believe was intended to be a 2.1 system as the subwoofer also has speaker out connections. That aside, I have a Y-splitter coming out of the pre-out on the receiver, than a standard Red/White cable connection to the inputs on the subwoofer. I am not getting any sound out of my subwoofer at this time though. Is this the proper way to hook this up? I apologize in advance, I don't know all the proper technical terms.

 

[Adam]

Welcome to the forum!

Hooking up a subwoofer output on a receiver to a subwoofer using a y-cable is pretty standard. It's possible that either the cable or one of the connections is bad. It's also possible that no signal is going to the sub. Have you set up the receiver to output a subwoofer signal? If not (or if you don't know), that would be a good thing to check.

I'll see if I can find the owner's manual for that receiver, just in case you have any questions about how to do that.

Adam

 

[jamie2112]

Adam sits at his computer furiously typing Insignia on his search engine ,all the while the pooch has to pee.

 

[Adam]

Adam sits at his computer furiously typing Insignia on his search engine ,all the while the pooch has to pee.

Already have the manual downloaded and ready to roll. Adobe at the ready...hands twitching.

Pooch had her chance. Twice. She kept coming back home. We'll go out again later on. Generally I'm the one sitting here having to pee. Oops. Too much information.

 

[Tommylongy]

Thanks for the welcome, yes I have verified that the subwoofer output on the receiver is enabled. I've also gone through the Channel Testing with the receiver and all the speakers work except for the subwoofer. I'll try switching some cables around to see if we have a bad connection.

 

[Adam]

This is not intended to sound patronizing at all: Is the subwoofer on? I haven't found info on that sub, yet, so I don't know the specifics - but some subs have an auto-on feature, and maybe it wasn't triggered? You might be able to set it to "on" and check that way, if you haven't already.

 

[Tommylongy]

Patronizing you are not. I work in a field that when a customer has a problem nine times our of 10 it is something that simple. I've looked over the sub and I don't see any on/off switch. What I can see on the back of the sub is as follows:
Power LED with a note: Stand by Red
When my system is off, this LED is green. When I put in a DVD, after roughly 60 seconds this LED will turn RED and stay RED until I turn off my system.
Volume Control
Phase Switch with Rev/Norm Positions
Frequency Knob
I also found another model number on the sub: PRO-SW220P.
Another thing on how I have this hooked up. Due to the subs position, I needed roughly 30 feet of cable to reach it. To achieve that I have a 10f Y-splitter coming out of the receive. On the ends of the Y-splitter I have an RCA Extender Adapter, then another 25f cable to get to the sub. Could all this cable be a problem?

 

[Adam]

Yeah, the length of cable might be attenuating the signal.

If you don't have the owner's manual for the sub, you can get it here. Thanks for the other part number, btw. That was the ticket to finding the manual.

The manual states that if your receiver only has one subwoofer output, then you should connect to the "L" line-level input on the sub. In other words, you don't need the y-splitter cable. That will help with the signal strength.

Let me look some more into the manual, and I'd say remove the y-splitter to check it out in the meantime. I'll also look into increasing the subwoofer output level on the receiver if you have questions about that. You can do that to compensate for at least some of the loss in the cables.

 

[Adam]

Power LED with a note: Stand by Red
When my system is off, this LED is green. When I put in a DVD, after roughly 60 seconds this LED will turn RED and stay RED until I turn off my system.

Is that typed correctly? I'm asking because, at least the way that I read it, it is contrary to what should be happening. When the amp within the sub is on, the light will be GREEN. When the amp is off (so no sound), the light will be RED. Maybe it's just wired wrong?

One other thing - odds are that you are doing your bass management with your receiver. So, set your speakers to "small", set the crossover to some value (80Hz is a good starting point if you are unfamiliar with this), and set the "Frequency" dial on the sub itself to the highest value of 200Hz. I don't think that would affect you getting sound from it when playing test tones, though, so I guess that's just a recommendation for later.

 

[Tommylongy]

Well, I got the sub to work. I'm loath to let you know what I was doing wrong but you were trying your best to help me out. I believe that I had the cable in the Video 1 output instead of the Pre-Out connection. It's always a simple solution. I want to thank you for all your help Adam and apologize for wasting your time.

 

[Adam]

No waste at all! I'm happy that you got it all working. Have a good one.