Subwoofer Help.

I have two indentical Dayton 12" powered subwoofers in my HT set up. My room is 16 ft. wide x 28 ft.long. I have the subwoofers placed at each end of the room. I had to use two 25 ft.Dayton Audio subwoofer interconnect cables connected together to get to the back subwoofer.

The back subwoofer does not seem to have much output compared to the front subwoofer. Even when I turn the volume on the back sub to maximum. I am not sure if I am losing something with such a long subwoofer cable run.


Does anybody have any suggestion or recommendions?

Equipment
970 processor
7125 amp

Have you tried tinkering with the phase control on the sub? It's possible that the back sub is out of phase and you're getting cancellation.

I take it you're daisy chaining the Daytons through the line level inputs/outputs since the 970 only has one SUB output?

Swap the subs and see if the problem follows the sub or stays with the location.

You can also move the second sub closer so that you can swap cables to eliminate the potential bad cable.

It's not unheard of for Dayton equipment to have problems straight out of the box.

I'd figured he was using a splitter at the Model 970.

Guys

Thanks for your response. I do have the subs daisy chained from the front sub and tried adjusting the phase control on the back sub. I have tryed both subs in the front location and the output seems to be the same. I am begining to think I have a bad run of cable to the back sub. I will check this out this week end.

Maybe not. I've recreated your problem with my Dayton amp and a spare Infinity sub I had laying around. The same thing happened: The Dayton worked fine and the Infinity sub barely moved.

I was about to try the Y connect per gonk's post but the 7-year-old's bedtime forced me to power down.

I'll look into it more later.

I don't know how the Daytons' amps work, but if the first sub's gain setting is applied to the output jack, that could yield the problem you're having. I would prefer to split the output at the 970 and have parallel runs to each sub. The splitter will produce a 3dB drop, which will be experienced by both subs equally.

Try using the longer cable as the input to the first sub. That will tell you if the long run is bad. Then connect the shorter cable to the back sub. That will tell you if the sub has a problem. You will have to move the back sub to the front but it will make it clear what the problem is. I have two subs which I have connected to my Onkyo 886 via a splitter and the cables are different lengths but they work perfectly. I'd put my $$$ on the daisy chaining vice a bad cable. On another note while you are getting a splitter, get two 90 degree couplings for your subs and reduce the stress on the connections.

There was a cabling problem in my setup causing the low output. The 970 went single-ended into the red input on the Dayton and I took the white output of the Dayton to the second sub. Actually I was suprised it worked at all.

Reading the Dayton manual I found that they recommend a Y-cable from the source to BOTH inputs on the amp. I tried it both ways. The Y-cable hookup resulted in more volume from the single subwoofer. Strange: I figured that 1 + 0 = 1/2 + 1/2 but obviously there's something in the Dayton amp that wants both inputs.

So now I added the second sub (the Infinity) in a daisy chain configuration and ran single ended and "stereo" configurations from the Dayton to the Infinity. The Infinity was louder when I ran both connects ("stereo" connect NOT Y-cable, NOT single ended).

According to the docs if you hook it up this way the low level outputs are unmodified copies of the input signal. i.e. no gain or filtering is applied.

Hope that helps. Good Luck

p.s. I was quite suprised by this and now I want to add the second sub to my setup

Let me make sure I understand these hook-ups. I currently have a Y connector to the red and white inputs on the front sub and then a Y connector from the red and white outputs to the back sub with a Y input to the red and whites inputs.

When you say "stereo connect NOT Y-cable, Not single ended" are you running two interconnect cables full length cables to the back sub red and white inputs?

Correct: I am running two interconnect cables the full length from the front sub to the back sub.

The Y-connector on the outputs of the front sub is most likely your problem (unless it's a stereo connect??). It's never a good idea to short/combine outputs together unless the manuals specificaly call out that they can be connected which is not the case for the Daytons. You can damage the output drivers of you amp.

I suggest you remove both Y-connects between the front and back subs and run a single cable Red-to-Red and see what you get. If that works run a single cable White-to-White. If that works too all is well with you amps. In that case running a single cable on the Red output of the front sub to a Y-connect on the input of the back sub will work if you don't want to run an extra set of wires.

Hi Guys,

Would the new OAW3 solve my 50 ft. cable run to my back sub? How would you hook this up with two subs? Would you hard wire to the front sub and use the OAW3 to the back sub?

The OAW3 is designed specifically for the case of your 50ft cable run to the back sub.

If you had a sub in front that was easy to wire, I would suggest splitting the sub output with a Y cable. The front sub would be hard-wired from one half of the splitter, and the other half of the splitter would connect to the OAW3 transmitter. The OAW3 receiver would be connected to the back sub.

I'm seriously considering jumping on the SMS-1/OAW3 combo that Outlaw is currently offering. Hardwire from my 970 to the SMS-1. Hardwire from the SMS-1 to the front sub: about 6 feet in my setup. Wireless from the second output of the SMS-1 to the second sub.

You could do something similar although, obviously, it's more $$ than gonk's approach.

Just a follow up to the low output on my back sub. I followed EEman's recommendation on the wiring hook-up to the back sub and adjusted the phase control. I removed the Y connector from the front sub input and connected to the red only. Then used the red only output to the back sub with a Y connector to the inputs. When I removed the Y connector from the front sub input it reduced it's output a little and balanced things out.

Thanks for the advice

I also plan to order the OAW3 for my back sub. This will allow me to move the back sub around to different locations for the optimum bass response.