Hi there,

suggestions?

in a living room we will provide a pair of tower speakers connected to a 2 channel amp. there will also be a subwoofer with a built in amplifier.

clients source is sonos connect which will preamp into the 2 channel amp.

what about the subwoofer?

how would we wire this? "y" splitter?

connect amp doesnt have enough power to drive the tower speakers or else we could have used that with the dedicated sub out.

thanks!

N2OACCORD,

The Y-connection is a bad idea. Use a subwoofer that provides a line level output after passing through the subwoofer's built-in crossover.

Why not use a rca splitter? it's done all the time.

The subwoofer should exclusively handle the low end. With the Y-cable in the SONOS CONNECT's Line-Out connected to both amplifier and subwoofer there is no crossover for the main speakers and they'll push out bass too. This is an unwanted overlap. Some subwoofers have a built-in filter (crossover) that will provide this function for their line and/or speaker level pass through. In a pinch you could add an inexpensive car audio crossover to split the Line-Out into Low and High frequency bands.

Do they already have the Sonos? If not, look at the Denon Heos Link- it has a dedicated Sub out with HP crossover for the stereo Preamp out. In addition to the Pre out, it has Digital Coax AND Optical out, 12VDC trigger and if it's used with a Denon AVR, a remote out that allows setting up a macro. In addition, it has 3.5mm analog Aux in, USB in, Analog Line In and Optical In & plays High Res audio and Bluetooth connectivity.

Note that the Sonos SUB cannot be used with CONNECT.

Get a sub with speaker level inputs. It sounds better.

What is the budget for the amp? You can find good integrated amps with HT bypass and bass management for not too much $$. I would have to do some digging to get you make/model info, but they are out there.

Otherwise, Y adapters will work fine. If your tower speakers can handle a full range signal, there should be no worries, and they may blend with the sub better.

Speaker level input on subwoofer is also a great option as mentioned above.

A DSP would give you the most adjustment flexibility for not much $$. (https://www.minidsp.com)

That looks like an interested product. Have you used it a lot, and if so, any other observations in general regarding their product?

This^^^^

For a long time Sonos has been great but it's not the only game in town anymore. The HEOS set up is really slick, and not sold everywhere.

Craig

Won't this do the trick?

[Link: parasound.com]

Not for me because there is no high pass filter for the main speakers. There will be some overlap between the full range speakers and the subwoofer.

Many powered subwoofers offer a variable low pass filter. If the main speakers naturally start rolling off below 100Hz, for example, when using a generic amplifier one could set the subwoofer's low pass filter for 100Hz and minimize the overlap.

For reasons that I won't go into here, I think that it is important that there is a high pass filter for the amplifier driving the main speakers.

Just use this:

[Link: audiocontrol.com]

Digital out from Sonos directly to amp, amp splits out sub signal and has defeatable 80hz high and low pass filters.  This is a killer little amp.

A MiniDSP will do this. They have one with an analog input for $110 or one with toslink input for $210. I'd go with the digital one if budget allows. There are also many pro DSP processors that have crossovercapability.
[Link: minidsp.com]
[Link: minidsp.com]

Can't believe no one has posted this yet.

[Link: rane.com]