Esw-v8 Hook up

Sancho - for future reference, here is the Energy owner's thread:
http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=630450

If your receiver does not have a mono (RCA) sub out option, your only option is to hook up the sub with speaker wire into the speaker wire (high level) inputs. There is no point in converting the speaker wire to RCA, that is expressly why the subwoofer has speaker wire inputs!

You really should be thinking about getting a new receiver though with a modern bass management setup, HTIB's generally don't work great once you start swapping out components.

hmmm... I don't really know how the back of your HTIB receiver looks, it's hard to say.

is the "sub out" a speaker wire output? and is it mono or stereo (one cable or two)? if it's not a stereo out you probably should just wire to front L/R.

speaker wire is speaker wire, no need to get fancy. just use the cheap stuff, 16-gauge is fine.

You should probably simply wire your new sub that exact same way. That you would only use one pair of the new subs inputs is not a problem. Just pick a pair.

You CAN wire the sub to the AVR's L/R speaker level outputs but this would require that you set the front speakers to LARGE in your AVR and configure it as having NO SUB. Whether you can configure it with either of those settings is anyone's guess as you haven't told us what it is. (SO, WHAT IS IT? ) If your AVR can be configured that way (a NO SUB setting should default the front speakers to LARGE) then, depending upon the sub's capabilities, it might be possible to high-pass your front speakers off of the sub's speaker-level outputs. But the sub, of course, would have to have high-passed speaker-level outputs in order to do this.

But, again, the best thing to do would probably be to connect your new sub exactly like the old one. There is not really a benefit to be had by wiring it to the front channels. Turn your sub's variable low-pass up as high as it will go.



If you connect the new sub to your front R/L outputs, you would need to configure your AVR as having NO SUB in order for the LFE channel to be rerouted to your front channels. If you did this, though, the old sub would not be sent a signal via the AVR's sub out. You could connect both subs in parallel to the AVR's speaker-level sub out if you are dead-set on using both. The old sub would still be powered by the AVR's sub channel amp and the new sub would be powered by its own amp. Frankly, using both isn't such a good idea.

his sub doesn't have speaker-level outputs, only inputs


but thankfully it has a bypass switch for the LPF



I have never used the speaker inputs so I was not aware that you didn't have to hook up to both (L/R) inputs... good to know

OK, so scratch that.




That is probably only applied to a line-level signal. I doubt it is applied to the speaker-level inputs. But, engage it AND turn the sub's low-pass up as high as possible.

Yeah, unfortunately it seems the SONY site doesn't have a manual available online for that model.

But there isn't "much of an issue". Connect your new sub identically to the way your old one was connected. Instead of drawing power from the AVR's subwoofer amp like your old passive sub, the new sub's amp is what will be used to power it. I would assume that your AVR's bass management settings are already optimized for the speakers. That you are adding a sub with greater capability shouldn't matter.

What bass management settings (if any) does your AVR allow?

In briefly perusing the manual, as far as I can tell, your AVR defaults to bass management settings that are appropriate for the speakers it was specifically made to be used with. You have no way to change the speaker sizes or adjust any crossover settings.

Well, when I said "engage it" I meant to turn the bypass ON (disengage it, I suppose, would have been more correct). That LPF bypass probably doesn't apply when you use the sub's speaker-level inputs (as opposed to the line-level inputs) but just in case, you might as well.



Did you run your AVR's auto-calibration?

Yes. AND turn the sub's low-pass up as high as possible. That way you'll be covered either way.



No, but it would probably bother me enough to try to get rid of it.

In "Active" mode the subs own low pass filter is engaged, as set by the LPF dial. In "Bypass" mode the signal from the amplifier/receiver is used "as is" with no filtering done by the subwoofer.

Right. So, he needs to set it to "Bypass". His AVR is already low-passing whatever it is sending to its speaker-level subwoofer outputs.

Ok, you're correct.
I was just meaning to point out that it was contradictory to have the mode set to "Bypass" and at the same time "turn the sub's low-pass up as high as possible." The sub's LPF dial has no affect when using "Bypass" mode.



It does not matter either way because you're in "Bypass" mode. If you set switch to "Active" mode you will have the use of the sub's LPF whether you connect to the sub's speaker level inputs or to it's line level input (but this is just a clarification--you're better off being in "Bypass" with your system as sivadselim states). Batpig cleared up the speaker level versus line level issue in the Energy Owners Thread and I verified with my ESW-V8 that the LPF dial on the sub affects the sound with either hookup.

Also, I believe the reason it's perfectly fine to hook up to either one or both speaker level inputs is because physically there are two concentric speaker coils that drive the subs speaker cone. Connecting to both L and R inputs superimposes both channels onto the speaker cone. Connecting to either L or R just passes one channel to the cone--in which case it's up to the receiver (HTIB here) to have done the summing of L and R channel base frequencies before sending the signal out on the "sub out" channel.

Right. It's not necessarily contradictory in the sense that doing that (using the bypass AND setting the LPF as high as possible) will provide an undesirable result. It can't hurt. Not knowing exactly how the sub operates, that was my recommendation in order to cover all the bases. Might as well.



Of course, when active, the LPF can be applied to both the line-level and speaker-level connection. The only question is whether or not the "bypass" setting is also applied to the speaker-level inputs. In lieu of MY not knowing the answer, I recommended setting the filter to "bypass" AND setting the LPF value at its highest setting. Although the "bypass" setting MAY be applied to the speaker-level inputs, there is really no reason to expect it to be. Except in this particular poster's unique situation, there is not really a reason to utilize a speaker-level connection to a sub AND bypass its internal LPF. The LPF bypass is, essentially, meant to be used with a line-level connection. It is an included feature because it is easiest to implement at that point in the signal chain.



I do not know exactly how the sub operates but the speaker-level signal that the sub's amp receives is obviously not passed directly to the driver. At some point it is converted to a line-level signal and both the L and R channels would be summed and then amplified by the sub's amp as a single, mono channel.

As it turns out, the Active/Bypass switch is functional on my ESW-V8 when using speaker inputs.

And yeah, I suppose once they went to the trouble of putting an amp inside the box it might as well do the summing too. I didn't think of that since my brain hasn't fully wrapped itself around powered subwoofers yet. As a matter of fact I was changing around connections of my sub and I was careful to turn my stereo amp off but was absentmindedly pulling off speaker wires from the back of the sub which was still on! I was reminded when I started to connect to the line input and was greeted with a loud hum. No harm done luckily. Lesson learned--the auto power feature takes a few minutes to shut off power after no signal is present and it's necessary to turn the sub fully off when messing with stuff.

I think we have it all covered now.
Bob out.