Not so much a beginner as behind the times...

DellRay

DellRay

Enthusiast
Greetings. I've been reading, and reading, and reading some more but I can't find my exact solution and I like to get direct input. It helps much more than trying to find answers through other people's troubleshooting. So here goes.
I'm more of an audioholic than an audiophile, I guess, from the vague descriptions of the 2 terms that I could come up with. I'm an avid music fan and listener but I'm somewhat selective with my choices and I am very anti mainstream, eg. top 40, anything overplayed on all radio stations, etc. However I am into common genres such as rock, some metal, alternative, progressive, "indie", I also get into reggae, funk, disco, edm, ebm, etc etc. Sorry, I'm just giving a bit of background for any advice given to have some basis as to what I'm looking for sound wise. Basically I like anything bass heavy with good bpm but it has to have good rhythm and melody, flow, I like flow with keyboards and horns and all sorts of instruments that you don't normally hear in 2,3,4,5,etc piece bands/groups and it's best with some high frequency vocals, female, or male, if at all because I also like a lot of instrumental music as well because I'm kind of picky about vocals. I prefer positive messages in lyrics but there's a lot of music that's great but doesn't always have that.
Anyway, on to my query; I recently purchased an Onkyo TX-SR393, basic run of the mill inexpensive AVR to replace a TX-SR353. I know, not much of an upgrade but that's a big part of why I'm here. To learn.
The last decent system I had was over 25 years ago, just old school stereo equipment, pioneer, fisher, sherwood, technics, realistic, with cerwin Vega, Bose, or fisher speakers, usually 2 big towers with 12 or 15" woofers, 5 or 6" mids and horn tweeters with a 2 or 4 channel receiver/Amp, graphic equalizer, a dual tape deck, and a turntable most of the time, if it wasn't broken from the previous party where van Halen or motley crue was blasting until the cops shut us down. Good times.
Anyway, again, the reason I "upgraded" was because I wanted to add a second subwoofer, which I was under the impression I was doing because the 393 has 2 sub outs. I was also curious about the Atmos features which my 353 didn't have and I was hearing was all the rage. As it turns out, I'm not that interested in Atmos because I'm not much of a TV person.
I did buy some pretty nice Jamos speakers for it to replace my aging 5.1 Onkyo system, an older version of the system they sell as a package, usually with a receiver similar to the one I have. I do like the Jamos, I got S-809 towers for the fronts, S-803 monitors for rear surround, S-83 center, and J-10 sub. The system sounds pretty good to me. I know it's not super high quality stuff but it's better than what I'm used to and I don't think I'd spend much over $5000 on a system no matter how much I had. I'm just not into showing off and I don't think there's that much of a sound quality benefit, for me this is, too spending tens of thousands or more on a home audio system. That's just madness, beyond audiophile. Sickening actually but that's just my opinion and it's not just because I don't have it. I've been to people's homes who do have things like that and it just made me sick because I've also been to people's homes who couldn't feed their kids. And not for not trying or anything else like addictions and such, just people down on their luck. They're out there and to see people spend enough to feed quite a few of those families for quite some time on creature comforts just plucks at strings that I don't need plucked.
Sorry, again, back to my issues.
1) I've figured out, I think, that the second subwoofer out on my 393 is for the zone 2 channel, please correct me if that's wrong. And that I am able to connect a second subwoofer to the main channel via a simple Y cable. Is that possible? And if so is it safe and/or recommended or not ss far ss the audio system goes? And if so, there's a single RCA output, so I'd connect the Y cable to that and then run a single subwoofer cable to each subwoofer? However each one has a left and right input. I've read in the manual for the subwoofers to attach the cable to the left input for single cable applications. But I can't find info on whether it's OK to also Y cable from the single RCA of each one into both inputs on the subwoofers. Does anyone have any input on these questions?
Please forgive my ramblings and because of them, I will save any further questions for another time. Right now I'd just like to get my 2 subwoofers set up and working the most efficient way possible. They are both self powered and the same, they are Elac SUB1010s.
Thanks in advance for any advice on the subwoofer setup.

Sent from my SM-N986U using Tapatalk
 
lovinthehd

lovinthehd

Audioholic Jedi
Yes, using a y-cable is just fine to split a sub pre-out to multiple subs (I've done 4 subs on one pre-out), so the 353 was sufficient in this respect. Generally you're only needing one of the inputs on a sub (the L/R inputs are in case you have older gear with no sub pre-out but rather stereo pre-outs only), generally you want the one marked LFE as that can automatically turn off the sub's internal low pass filter (or just crank that to max value). As to the 393, I see two sub pre-outs on the back panel as well as line-outs for zone 2. Most ".2" avrs merely have an internal y-splitter for the two sub pre-outs, some of the higher level ones have the ability to set level and delay separately for the two subs.
 
Kingnoob

Kingnoob

Audioholic Samurai
Greetings. I've been reading, and reading, and reading some more but I can't find my exact solution and I like to get direct input. It helps much more than trying to find answers through other people's troubleshooting. So here goes.
I'm more of an audioholic than an audiophile, I guess, from the vague descriptions of the 2 terms that I could come up with. I'm an avid music fan and listener but I'm somewhat selective with my choices and I am very anti mainstream, eg. top 40, anything overplayed on all radio stations, etc. However I am into common genres such as rock, some metal, alternative, progressive, "indie", I also get into reggae, funk, disco, edm, ebm, etc etc. Sorry, I'm just giving a bit of background for any advice given to have some basis as to what I'm looking for sound wise. Basically I like anything bass heavy with good bpm but it has to have good rhythm and melody, flow, I like flow with keyboards and horns and all sorts of instruments that you don't normally hear in 2,3,4,5,etc piece bands/groups and it's best with some high frequency vocals, female, or male, if at all because I also like a lot of instrumental music as well because I'm kind of picky about vocals. I prefer positive messages in lyrics but there's a lot of music that's great but doesn't always have that.
Anyway, on to my query; I recently purchased an Onkyo TX-SR393, basic run of the mill inexpensive AVR to replace a TX-SR353. I know, not much of an upgrade but that's a big part of why I'm here. To learn.
The last decent system I had was over 25 years ago, just old school stereo equipment, pioneer, fisher, sherwood, technics, realistic, with cerwin Vega, Bose, or fisher speakers, usually 2 big towers with 12 or 15" woofers, 5 or 6" mids and horn tweeters with a 2 or 4 channel receiver/Amp, graphic equalizer, a dual tape deck, and a turntable most of the time, if it wasn't broken from the previous party where van Halen or motley crue was blasting until the cops shut us down. Good times.
Anyway, again, the reason I "upgraded" was because I wanted to add a second subwoofer, which I was under the impression I was doing because the 393 has 2 sub outs. I was also curious about the Atmos features which my 353 didn't have and I was hearing was all the rage. As it turns out, I'm not that interested in Atmos because I'm not much of a TV person.
I did buy some pretty nice Jamos speakers for it to replace my aging 5.1 Onkyo system, an older version of the system they sell as a package, usually with a receiver similar to the one I have. I do like the Jamos, I got S-809 towers for the fronts, S-803 monitors for rear surround, S-83 center, and J-10 sub. The system sounds pretty good to me. I know it's not super high quality stuff but it's better than what I'm used to and I don't think I'd spend much over $5000 on a system no matter how much I had. I'm just not into showing off and I don't think there's that much of a sound quality benefit, for me this is, too spending tens of thousands or more on a home audio system. That's just madness, beyond audiophile. Sickening actually but that's just my opinion and it's not just because I don't have it. I've been to people's homes who do have things like that and it just made me sick because I've also been to people's homes who couldn't feed their kids. And not for not trying or anything else like addictions and such, just people down on their luck. They're out there and to see people spend enough to feed quite a few of those families for quite some time on creature comforts just plucks at strings that I don't need plucked.
Sorry, again, back to my issues.
1) I've figured out, I think, that the second subwoofer out on my 393 is for the zone 2 channel, please correct me if that's wrong. And that I am able to connect a second subwoofer to the main channel via a simple Y cable. Is that possible? And if so is it safe and/or recommended or not ss far ss the audio system goes? And if so, there's a single RCA output, so I'd connect the Y cable to that and then run a single subwoofer cable to each subwoofer? However each one has a left and right input. I've read in the manual for the subwoofers to attach the cable to the left input for single cable applications. But I can't find info on whether it's OK to also Y cable from the single RCA of each one into both inputs on the subwoofers. Does anyone have any input on these questions?
Please forgive my ramblings and because of them, I will save any further questions for another time. Right now I'd just like to get my 2 subwoofers set up and working the most efficient way possible. They are both self powered and the same, they are Elac SUB1010s.
Thanks in advance for any advice on the subwoofer setup.

Sent from my SM-N986U using Tapatalk
Shame they don’t make cheap big speakers anymore pro speakers are about it or cv , psa, any pics of what your doing ?some subs have additional outputs others don’t , if neither has them go y splitter rca probably off Amazon.
 
-Jim-

-Jim-

Audioholic General
On Page 22 of the Onkyo TX-SR393 manual it says: "Connect a powered subwoofer with this unit using a subwoofer cable. Up to two powered subwoofers can be connected. The same signal is output from each SUBWOOFER PRE OUT jack" So a single RCA to each Elac SUB1010 will do the trick. But like lovinthehd said, your old receiver with a single splitter off the Sub output would do that.

I built an Atmos room primarily for concerts on Blu-Ray with a bit of TV Sports. (And also because I'm a bit of a nut for this stuff.) Normal episodic TV typically leaves me wanting too. Getting a good sounding "conventional" HT setup is far more rewarding and effective than going for an Atmos system without the conventional setup being optimized.

I hope this is helpful.
 
DellRay

DellRay

Enthusiast
Thank you all for the comments. I did read that bit in the manual but for some reason it didn't register correctly in my brain. There are times when I can look at a complex problem for a split second and have a solution almost instantly and other instances where I can be presented with something so simple that the answer is right there and be dumbfounded for days. I don't get it.
So now that I have the info I wanted, here's what I did. I have the Jamo J10 sub single RCA from the first sub out on the back of the AVR run 50' cable around the room and up over a door frame so it's behind the couch. I ran a Y cable from the single RCA into the L + R inputs on that sub. That Jamo J-10 is a powerful subwoofer btw, a lot more than I had expected out of a 10" self powered sub. It sounds just as good if not better than the Klipsch 12" I've had previously. But the Klipsch was their bottom tier line and this one is Jamos top of the line sub. Still and again, I love it.
Then I also Y cabled from the second sub out on the AVR to each of the Elac subs and Y cabled again from each of those single outputs to the L + R inputs on each of those and they are to the left and right of the stand that the TV, Blu Ray, EQ, S-83, and AVR rest on. Then I have the S-809s a bit further out from those. I have my living room set up kind of strangely because I have a lot of stuff in a tiny apartment and there aren't too many ways I can arrange things the way the room is situated. I swapped the S-803s out of the rear surround spot and put the S-801s back there and the S-803s are now in the bedroom with a pair of the old Onkyo mains hooked up to a Kenwood 4 channel stereo receiver that I got from a junk pile basically. My brother's friend had it first in the house way back when it was new, I'm guessing late 80's or early 90s, then it was out in his garage forever. He had just found a JVC that was in better condition and had swapped that into the garage and the Kenwood was sitting on top of a bin of stuff that was going to be headed to the recycling facility. Until I spotted it while I was there with my brother for something non audio related. I was going to buy either an inexpensive new one or look for a decent used one but that saved me from all that decision making. I took the top cover off and blew as much dust out as I could. It actually wasn't too bad for it's age. I popped a couple of small dents out, cleaned it up and shot it with some fresh paint and besides a malfunctioning balance control pot, it seems to work pretty good. Lots of power to the stereo channels. It supposedly has "surround" but it's a very primitive system so I don't even bother with it. The rears and center are separate from the 2 stereo channels and they have some level adjustments that can be made when the receiver is in either Dolby or THX mode but even with them all the way up and the stereo channel down to next to nothing, they are barely noticeable. The subwoofer from the old Onkyo system is also in there so I've got a pretty decent set-up in the bedroom now as well. The subwoofer channel works better than the surround or center but that's probably because it's also self powered.
I was able to sell the 353 for almost what I payed for it 5 years go so that worked out pretty well for funding all the cables and such to get it all set up. The Amazon basics line of RCA cables and adapters seems like pretty decent stuff for not a lot of cash. I discovered them while I was setting up a subwoofer in my car and needed a Y cable and RCAs from that to my amp. That was fun, has anyone tried to tap into a factory Bose sound system in a car yet? If not and you want the lowdown, let me know. It was a challenge but I got it done and didn't blow anything or start any fires! Anyway, I guess only time will tell if they are really any good but at least while they are new, they do the job.
I'm getting out the door to head for work right now but I will try to remember to snap a few photos later when I get home.
 
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