[LoPan455]

I am driving myself a little crazy trying to figure this one out.

The root problem I am trying to solve is to share one Carver Sunfire Junior 8" powered subwoofer between a Denon AVR-E400 in a second story closet and an AVR-X1000 in my first level living room. Both Receivers have Subwoofer Outputs, and both have successfully sent signal to the subwoofer in the past.

The E400 is part of a whole house distribution system. It sits in a closet in the second story of my townhouse.The E400's Speaker connections go to a Russound Speaker distribution system that connects to the in-ceiling speakers in my living room. The subwoofer out is connected to one of the the RCA inputs on an Niles Audio C5-A2 RCA Stereo to CAt5e Balun. A Cat5e cable then connects into the RJ45 connection at punchdown panel in the closet, through a wall one level below and eventually out the RJ45 jack in the living room below. Another Cat5e cable connects to the partner Balun at the other end. The second Balun connects to the Subwoofer's line level RCA input and everything works great.

The trouble happens when I introduce the SpeakerCraft LL-One Line Level Audio A/B switch. The B input on the Speakercraft is connected, via an RCA Subwoofer cable, to the Subwoofer out of my Home Theater receiever, a Denon AVR X1000. The autosense feature is not triggering a switch under any normal condition. The only time I can trigger a switch is when I have a signal playing on the X1000 (source B) and I touch the Subwoofer Output RCA cable to the input of Connector for Source B on the SpeakerCraft. The initial "jolt" triggers a switch to source B, which then plays the subwoofer signal for the configured amount of time, and then switches back to source A, which is not playing anything (it's actually turned off). If I flip the connections, things work in just the opposite manner.

To sum up, I can't get the SpearkerCraft switch to trigger a switch.

I have tested the setup without the Switch in the mix, thinking the Baluns were the issue. They are not. I can get signal to the sub with the Baluns in play and the SpeakerCraft Switch out of the mix.

If anyone has any advice on what to try next, I would really appreciate it. The setup, if it works, is a home run to solve a problem I've been chewing on for months.

Thanks!

 

[jautor]

I'm assuming that the subwoofer signal(s) are too infrequent or low-frequency for the signal sensing to work properly. Very likely those circuits are filtering low frequencies to reduce false switching due to AC hum or other interference...

But since you've got two line-level signals, just use a signal combiner at the subwoofer:

http://www.markertek.com/product/gxy-jibr/rca-combiner

But first, did you try just connecting both sources to the Left and Right line level inputs on the sub (one each)? You may not need any switching / combining at all...

Jeff

 

[LoPan455]

Hi Jeff,

I don't know why I didn't think of that first. That indeed does the trick.

 

[ShamrockLex]

If both left and right inputs are connected to two separate sources (AVR & Sonos Amp in my case), what will happen when both are on at once?

 

[Squirrel!]

If both left and right inputs are connected to two separate sources (AVR & Sonos Amp in my case), what will happen when both are on at once?

This is what will happen.

 

[scruff67]

Assuming the sub was competently designed, the two inputs will be isolated with series resistors.