Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion Technical Questions Subwoofer wiring question for Porterplex V3

As some of you know I am doing some remodeling of the Plex (Version 3), do to a sump pump failure earlier this year. Had to rip out most of our carpeting/padding. I put Dri-core subflooring down this time to get things up off the concrete.

I am also enclosing the theater portion off from the rest of the recroom/bar section. It will make the room a bit smaller, but I think I will like the isolation more and hope to improve on acoustics in the room.

One of the mistakes I made the first go around was not putting in enough jacks for subwoofer placement. All this talk about multiple subwoofers was not discussed much back then. I have been frustrated with running long lengths of cable from one sub to the other daisy chaining them around the baseboards.

So, now that I have the framing done, I need advice on how to set this all up.

I went to Home Depot today, they have a lot of Leviton products that offer modular Quickattach jacks/wall plates for speaker wire, F-Connector, etc. I was unable to find a freaking RCA jack, what is up with that? so at this poing I am planning on using Coax within the walls to each location, using two Leviton F-type connectors. Then I will have to buy some shorter length cables to go to the sub in that location with an adapter to go from the RCA back to the F-Connector to hook to the wall plate. Seems cobbled, but don't seen another option.

Also, the reason I am planning on putting to jacks at each plate, then I can run a second shorter cable from my line-out on the Sub A, back to the same plate, and have another coax run within the wall running over to the next wall plate. Basically, daisy chaining within the walls, if that makes sense.

The alternative is to run seperate runs to each location, but that is going to involve purchasing a lot more cable.

Unless this Home Depot didn't have much for supplies, I can't believe they don't make a modular jack with RCA on the outside, and F-Type on the back side to hook to the coax within the wall.

thanks for listening....ps: I would prefer to get stuff locally this time to rush the project, versus ordering online.

Randy

One thing I forgot to mention..The reason I'm considering wiring things as described above, is because my Denon 3808ci only has 1 subwoofer LFE out jack. I'm starting to see some newer receivers offer two or possibly three seperate sub out jacks, which would be better for fine tuning/calibration. So that is another reason why I'm considering running seperate coax runs to each jack.

partsexpress.com.

Can you use a Y-splitter at the receiver?

yes, you can split the signal at the receiver or at the subs, but it still is just one signal with my current receiver. Running seperate lines would help setup me up for if I ever get a receiver with seperate lfe-out jacks for seperate calibration of each sub. The newer versions of Audyssey will actually do an independent calibration of each sub, but that is only if the receiver is setup for that.

I guess I'm just looking for best practices for wiring a room for multiple sub locations.

Oh. I didn't know that the new receivers had two(or more?) separate subwoofer channels. I always thought that the avr's with two jacks were running from the same output within the receiver.

You are correct, most of the receivers with two jacks are no different than using a y adapter as it is the same signal. Some of the higher end receivers coming out with the latest setup calibration offerings, are now incorporating 2 or more seperate subwoofer channels.

They do make RCA ones, buthey're really hard to find in store. I have the kind that are cat5 on the back, but they also had double sided RCA.

Yes my AV7005 has two subs outputs but it is still the same signal, so not much different than a y-jack.

I would think that you are going to be running the subs on opposite walls etc., so you should still only need runs to all 4 walls at either the midpoints or corners and then use Y connectors of the avr output to feed all 4 outlets a signal, at least until you upgrade to the latest and greatest avr. I would still order from Monoprice, you would get the parts in a couple of days. You should be able to use Keystone jacks in any configuration you want for coax.

http://www.monoprice.com/products/subdepartment.asp?c_id=109&cp_id=10426