Question Subwoofer Not Receiving Signal

[CamronB]

My house has a built-in surround sound setup. Well, it would if they had included a center channel. It’s technically just multi-channel stereo with a subwoofer right now.

The subwoofer is passive. I’m trying to use a Rockville RPA5 as the amp, but it’s not receiving any signal from the receiver (Denon avr-s540bt).

I’m using an RCA mono plug from receiver (Pre-amp 1) to amp (channel A). The amp is set to crossover mode and bridge mode. The receiver has the subwoofer setting set to “yes.” The other speakers are set to small.

As far as I’m aware, that’s all how it should be setup. But there isn’t any signal going from receiver to amp. Any ideas?

 

[dwd999]

My house has a built-in surround sound setup. Well, it would if they had included a center channel. It’s technically just multi-channel stereo with a subwoofer right now.

The subwoofer is passive. I’m trying to use a Rockville RPA5 as the amp, but it’s not receiving any signal from the receiver (Denon avr-s540bt).

I’m using an RCA mono plug from receiver (Pre-amp 1) to amp (channel A). The amp is set to crossover mode and bridge mode. The receiver has the subwoofer setting set to “yes.” The other speakers are set to small.

As far as I’m aware, that’s all how it should be setup. But there isn’t any signal going from receiver to amp. Any ideas?

Did you try running the Auto Setup mode to see if that produces any subwoofer sound? What is the model of the subwoofer and what is the recommended crossover frequency and is the receiver set to match that crossover frequency? Just in case its not set to the default, you could check the Subwoofer Mode setting and make sure its set to LFE+Main.

Also, are you sure the amp is suitable for this application? Normally the output from the receiver would be in Digital Coaxial format which is not the same as an analog signal which it appears the amp is designed for. Just because Digital Coaxial uses an RCA jack doesn't mean its compatible. Is this amp designed for digital to analog conversion?

 

[CamronB]

Did you try running the Auto Setup mode to see if that produces any subwoofer sound? What is the model of the subwoofer and what is the recommended crossover frequency and is the receiver set to match that crossover frequency? Just in case its not set to the default, you could check the Subwoofer Mode setting and make sure its set to LFE+Main.

Also, are you sure the amp is suitable for this application? Normally the output from the receiver would be in Digital Coaxial format which is not the same as an analog signal which it appears the amp is designed for. Just because Digital Coaxial uses an RCA jack doesn't mean its compatible. Is this amp designed for digital to analog conversion?

Ah. I didn’t even think about the output of the receiver being digital and the input to the amp possibly needing to be analog. I’m relatively tech savvy, but audio equipment is out of my realm. I’ll look into that. Is there a converter that I could use to solve that?

What type of amp would you recommend for this situation? My other surround setup uses an active sub. So I’ve never had to deal with a dedicated sub amp.

PS
I don’t know anything about the sub other than it’s passive, unfortunately. It’s built into the wall, with a mesh screen glued over the front of it. I could rip that off, but I’d like to try to avoid that if possible.

 

[dwd999]

Ah. I didn’t even think about the output of the receiver being digital and the input to the amp possibly needing to be analog. I’m relatively tech savvy, but audio equipment is out of my realm. I’ll look into that. Is there a converter that I could use to solve that?

What type of amp would you recommend for this situation? My other surround setup uses an active sub. So I’ve never had to deal with a dedicated sub amp.

PS
I don’t know anything about the sub other than it’s passive, unfortunately. It’s built into the wall, with a mesh screen glued over the front of it. I could rip that off, but I’d like to try to avoid that if possible.

There's a lot of devices like this:

https://www.amazon.com/PROZOR-Digit...ix=digital+to+analog+converter,aps,114&sr=8-3

but its one of things where you don't know if it works until you try it.