I have checked all the connections over and over, and they all look fine.
I have to admit a lot of this is over my head. I'm trying to understand it. Not only that, but I thought I knew a lot about sound and sound equipment. I was way off. I think I have learned more here than I have all the years prior. I have never been this deep into the settings in my AVR. Thanks for helping with my crash course.
The reason I purchased the Mic 2200 was because someone said it would give the clean db gain I needed for the amp. I'm hoping the new art box will do that, and I can get rid of the Mic2200. Unless it will help somehow.
I know I picked the wrong drivers. I'm hoping I can use the JBL driver for testing until I can build the correct box with the proper driver. As per TLS Guy
The art bow should be here today, then I can figure where to go from there.
The mic preamp is unnecessary- the CleanBox will give you he gain you need. Stacking gain on gain is a great way to add distortion to an electric guitar, bad for an AV system. Take that out- you don't need it.
As I posted before, return everything to its default settings and try it.
If possible, leave the volume control at a low setting and if possible, use a different speaker. If it works, check the subs to find out why they don't.
If you haven't read the manuals yet, I strongly recommend doing that. If you use the online manuals and find sections that are confusing, cop and paste them with a reference to the page number, so we can explain.
In fact, I would remove everything from the signal path and leave only the Yamaha and sub but in the first stage of troubleshooting amp/speaker problems, the speakers should ALWAYS be checked before connection to any amp. If you don't have a multimeter and don't know how to use one, buy one and learn- this will prevent killing an amplifier by connecting it to a speaker that has a shorted voice coil. Harbor Freight has a meter that sells for about $6 when it's not on sale and it's good enough for this.
If you hear sound and it's clean when only the Yamaha is connected (main speaker output), the speaker is probably OK, but if it still sounds bad and EP4000 gets hot, that amp needs to be checked out.