setting up subwoofers

[canon007]

I've got some questions for setting up my subwoofer wiring for the two 5.1 setups I have.

With my old Energy XL-S12 subwoofer, i always used an RCA subwoofer cable and plugged one side of the RCA cable to the Subwoofer input plug and the other side to my receiver. I did not plug anything into the Xover input plug on the Subwoofer. I also have the option to to use the High level L/R input/output with regular speaker cables, but have never used those connections. Is there any advantage of using those?

With the energy my controls are the following with the settings I have it on:
-Bass EQ (-3 to +3) - set to 0
-Phase (0 to 180) - set to 90
-LP Filter (50 to 100) - set to 90
-Bass Volume (0 to 10) - set to 5

With my new KEF Q400 subwoofer, there is only a Left and right RCA input and the only control is volume. Right now, I just arbitrarily choose the right side plug on the subwoofer and plugged the other side on the receiver. Is this correct, or should I purchase a Mono to Stereo RCA Y cable, and plug the side of the cable that has 2 sides into the left and right plugs on the subwoofer and the end of the mono end of the cable into my receiver?

Would appreciate advice on how i should setup both subs and some recommended settings for my Energy subwoofer.

 

[shadyJ]

There is no advantage to using the speaker level connections. That is only for systems which do not have line level outputs.

Only using one of the inputs on the KEF sub is fine. Don't worry about the other input.

 

[KenM10759]

What receiver are you connecting to?

I don't understand what you mean by "only control is volume" because I know it also has a crossover frequency range knob, a phase switch for 0º or 180º, and a "bass boost" selector switch for 0dB, +6dB or +12dB @ 40hz.

The (included) instructions state to plug into the LFE port (the lower one for right in most common), set the volume to the 7th dot (about 2 o'clock), set the phase (intitially) to 0º, set the crossover pot to 140hz and let the receiver calibration take over from there. They don't say where to set the bass boost switch, but I'd put it a 0dB to start.

Now run Audyssey or whatever calibration tool your receiver has. Do a final tuning with your receiver too, other than you might try the boost switch depending upon how it sounds.

http://www.kef.com/uploads/files/en/series_pdf/Q400b_manual_preview.pdf