I'm hoping someone has tried this and can help me. I just bought a new cd player that has wonderful sound with it's internal processing. I want to use it's processor and not the 990's so I hook up it's analog outs to the CD in on the 990. I set the stereo type to bypass and the two channel music is glorious.

The only hitch is that my two front speakers are a tad limited in the bass department. As I have a subwoofer I want to utilize it's output in two channel stereo. According to the outlaw bass management guide: in analog bypass mode both the front two speakers and the subwoofer receive full range sound information. This is not good as much of the same sound information is reproduced by the subwoofer and the main L - R speakers. The sound quality is reduced in this mode.

I have a single cable going from the 990's sw1 output to the subwoofer's LFE input. When any cable is going to the subwoofer's LFE input all high pass and low pass filters in the subwoofer are disabled for that input. This makes sense as this input would be used for LFE when the 990 is doing all of the crossover calculations. The problem for me is I can only use this setting for stereo music and have the correct crossover if I use the 990's processor. Which I don't want to do when I am playing back music from my cd player.

My subwoofer also has SAT/SUB L-R inputs from a preamp. When connected these inputs take the full range signal and basically do the crossover calculations using the subwoofer's internal high and low pass filters.

I'm wondering if I can connect the 990's unbalanced L - R preamp out connections and connect them to the subwoofer's SAT/SUB connections? The requirements are that the peramp outs connections must be full range and there must not be ANY crossover settings applied to this signal. The 990 manual only states that these outputs carry 7.1 channel audio to an external amplifier. The manual also states that the balanced and unblanced preamp out connections can be mixed and matched. It does not state however whether there can be both balanced and unblanced connections for the same channel. For example front L and R.

Does your sub have speaker level inputs? I also use the analog connection for the CD player and use Bypass. Polk Audio suggests connecting the sub via the speaker level inputs. Here is a link to their article. http://www.polkaudio.com/education/article.php?id=19 . On the 990 I set the mains to large and the sub to None so all the LFE and small speaker bass gets sent to the front mains. Then I connect the sub to the speaker level inputs and use the crossover and level adjustments on the sub to blend it with the rest of the system. Some may say that this gives double bass. Not if the sub is adjusted correctly. My main speakers are full range and reproduce freq down to just under 40Hz. I set the xover on the sub to 40 so that it picks up where the mains start to roll off. I tried other configs using the sub output on the 990 and have found this setup to work best for both music and movies. If I only used my system for one or the other I would do things different.

By speaker level inputs I think you mean the SAT/SUB line level inputs. Which this subwoofer has available. Here is a link to the subwoofer manual in PDF format. http://www.dynaudio.de/manuals/DYN_SUB250_manual.pdf

Daryl means speaker level inputs - many subs include binding post connectors for routing the speaker cables through the sub (see this picture of the LFM-1 for an example). The result would be functionally the same as the sub/sat connections on your sub, except that they occur after the amp instead of between the processor and the amp. Your sub lacks these, however, so Daryl's arrangement wouldn't work for you.

I haven't ever tried connecting both unbalanced and balanced outputs on the 990 simultaneously to know if it would work. An e-mail or call to Outlaw could get that answer. Obviously, you could use the 990's unbalanced pre-amp outputs and connect them through the sub's amp and then to the 7500 as shown on page 11 of the PDF file you linked to, but that'll mean annoyingly long interconnects as well as not being able to use the balanced connection between 990 and 7500. Either way, however, you'll need to make several changes at the 990 to make use of this mode (these will look familiar to Daryl's setup): set the sub to "off", set the mains to "large", and use the sub's low-pass crossover adjustment to prevent the sub from extending into the territory that the mains are capable of reproducing. With no crossover upstream of the mains, they'll be trying to run full range.

Here's a third option to consider: your sub's low-pass crossover doesn't have an option for bypass, just a max setting of 150Hz. On the bright side, that means that even with the 990's analog bypass mode engaged, your sub won't ever reproduce data higher than 150Hz. With this low-pass crossover behavior in mind, you might leave your cabling as it is now and experiment with two things (either separately or in conjunction with each other): lowering the sub's low-pass crossover setting to reduce the area of overlap (maybe ~100Hz), and adjusting the 990's 2-channel sub offset down some.

Couple more options.

With a pair of Y adapters such as this http://www.outlawaudio.com/products/cab_y_about.html you could split your un-balanced output to your amp and run a full range signal to your sub. This would accomplish the same thing that I have by using the speaker level input. I plan to use the balanced connection between my 990 and amp so this wouldn’t work for me. If I could use the balanced connections for the amp and the un-balanced connections for the sub I might use that. That is a question that I would need an answer to before I tried it.

Another option would require the un-balanced connection from the 990 to the subs via the Sat/Sub input on your sub and then another cable from the Sat Output on the sub to your amp. Depending on where your sub is, this may not be very convenient as far as running cable to and from the sub.

Thanks Daryl and Gonk. I already thought about the preamp out to the sub and back to the amp but like you have said I then lose my balanced connections between the processor and the amp.

As for lowering the sub's low pass crossover setting. Neither the low pass nor the high pass crossover setting has any effect when I have the cable going into the LFE port on the sub. I have verified this by changing these settings while music is playing and only the sub is active. I have to use the SUB/SAT inputs to use the high or low pass filters on the sub.

Where do I change the 990's 2 channel sub offset? Would that be available using bypass in analog mode? I would think that all 990 crossover settings would be disabled in this mode as all outputs - speaker and sub are full range.

If you have to use the sub/sat input to get to the low-pass, you could simply move the cable from the 990's LFE output down from the LFE input on the sub to one of the sub/sat inputs. The sub doesn't have to know that the incoming signal is from the LFE output.

The 2-channel sub offset is in the surround config menu, and I think it will work with analog bypass mode.

Thanks Gonk. I'm wondering now however how this affects my 5.1 channel sound? If I change the speakers to large and the sub to none and move the SW1 output to the SUB/SAT input on the sub what will happen to LFE on movies? I'm assuming it would go to the front L -R speakers which is fine. But I also want it to go to the sub.

If you change the sub to none, you can't use the sub output of the 990. You'd want to either leave your 990 speaker setup as it is and move the sub output cable to one of the sub/sat inputs on the sub. Leaving the mains small and using one of the sub/sat inputs on the sub will let you use the 990's bass management effectively for non-bypass inputs and use the sub's low-pass filter to control the sub's signal when in stereo bypass mode.

If I connect the 990's sub output to the SUB/SAT input on the sub and leave the speakers as small in the 990 won't I get double bass management with 5.1 material? The low pass filter on the sub and the 990's bass mangement.