Hooking up subwoofer to receiver without a subwoofer out.

[John924Blake]

I have an old Panasonic SA-HT830V all in one Home Theater system. The main unit has died and I picked up a used Technics SA-GX530 at a garage sale. The new unit has connections for all the speakers except for the Subwoofer. The Panasonic has a 25 pin cable to the sub, and then all the front, rear, and center speakers hook to it. I can connect everything to the Technics except for the sub. Is there a way to hook it up? It is a 340 watt active sub with 2 5” or 6” drivers in a ported enclosure. If it will take an engineering degree to hook it up, I will just do without, but I was hoping there would be a reasonable way to connect it. I can take pictures if that would make any difference. Thanks in advance for any advice.

 

[TLS Guy]

I have an old Panasonic SA-HT830V all in one Home Theater system. The main unit has died and I picked up a used Technics SA-GX530 at a garage sale. The new unit has connections for all the speakers except for the Subwoofer. The Panasonic has a 25 pin cable to the sub, and then all the front, rear, and center speakers hook to it. I can connect everything to the Technics except for the sub. Is there a way to hook it up? It is a 340 watt active sub with 2 5” or 6” drivers in a ported enclosure. If it will take an engineering degree to hook it up, I will just do without, but I was hoping there would be a reasonable way to connect it. I can take pictures if that would make any difference. Thanks in advance for any advice.

If the sub does not have speaker level connections, you can not connect it.

 

[lovinthehd]

Connectivity options are often poor with those all-in-one type systems, especially when the amp is in the subwoofer using a proprietary connector. Might be possible to hack into the sub if your "new" receiver had a pre-out, but it doesn't....

 

[John924Blake]

Thanks for the replies. I took off the cover and looked in to the subwoofer cabinet. The power and 25 pin connectors both go right into good size circuit boards. I think you would have to be an electrical engineer to figure it out. I think the speaker will go in to the junk pile. I suppose the drivers might be salvageable, but I looked at the specs on the Panasonic amp. I don’t think I had ever looked at them. It is rated 800 watts into 4 channels @ 10% distortion at 1 khz. So I compared it to the Technics receiver. 110 watts RMS each to 2 Channels , 20hz-20khz, both channels driven with 0.05% thd. Not quite the same quality level.

 

[lovinthehd]

Thanks for the replies. I took off the cover and looked in to the subwoofer cabinet. The power and 25 pin connectors both go right into good size circuit boards. I think you would have to be an electrical engineer to figure it out. I think the speaker will go in to the junk pile. I suppose the drivers might be salvageable, but I looked at the specs on the Panasonic amp. I don’t think I had ever looked at them. It is rated 800 watts into 4 channels @ 10% distortion at 1 khz. So I compared it to the Technics receiver. 110 watts RMS each to 2 Channels , 20hz-20khz, both channels driven with 0.05% thd. Not quite the same quality level.

Yeah, not worth it even you had the technical chops (wasn't much of an "subwoofer" in the first place, the drivers aren't worth much in any case, and if you want a diy project better to just do it right with proper sized drivers) . If you do decide to get a new sub you'll need as TLS noted one with high level/speaker level inputs to use with your current receiver.

The old Panasonic amp was probably just trying to get a big number of "total watts" at that rating method (which is often referred to as PMPO--a marketing thing), at lower output levels it was likely much more reasonable in thd at full band (but adding up all the various channels into a single number makes it even harder to do any comparisons).