wiring outdoor subwoofer

[hemmert4111]

I have a Klipsch AW 800 SW, how do I wire it. the subwoofer has L and R ( 4 terminals) amp connectors and the sub amp has only the POS - NEG terminals.

 

[doolittle]

it appears to be a passive sub with pass-through L/R so it will use the internal crossover to pass the high frequency to the satellite speakers. Crutchfield has a link to the PDF manual so you can check it out.

I am using a BSR 15" passive sub that has a similar setup, it is a dual voice coil sub to have both L/R channels, what I did to connect it to my sub amp was bridge the L/R inputs to make it a single 8-ohm load and no satellite connections so that may also work for your AW8000SW.

Double check with a multimeter, if it measures 8-ohm load bridged you should be good to go.

 

[hemmert4111]

it appears to be a passive sub with pass-through L/R so it will use the internal crossover to pass the high frequency to the satellite speakers. Crutchfield has a link to the PDF manual so you can check it out.

I am using a BSR 15" passive sub that has a similar setup, it is a dual voice coil sub to have both L/R channels, what I did to connect it to my sub amp was bridge the L/R inputs to make it a single 8-ohm load and no satellite connections so that may also work for your AW8000SW.

Double check with a multimeter, if it measures 8-ohm load bridged you should be good to go.

I'm not sure what bridging means, but I think its tying the two NEG together from the sub speaker and the same with the POS then running it to the sub amp. I also read online about running the pos lead off the sub amp to the L channel pos and the NEG to the right channel NEG lead. I just want to make sure I'm not going to be frying anything.

 

[Karadjgne]

Series wiring: amp to coil#1 +. Coil#1 - to coil#2 +. Coil#2 - to amp. Makes 1 continuous line. For series, you add the ohms, so coil#1 = 8ohm + coil#2 = 8ohm, so whole speaker = 16ohm. Not very loud.

Parallel wiring: amp to coil#1 +, coil#1 + to coil#2 +. Amp to coil#1 -, coil#1 - to coil#2 -. Looks like a ladder, 2x lines with coils in the middle. For parallel you divide the coil ohm by number of coils, 2. So coil#1 = 8ohm, /2 = 4ohm total. Much louder.

Bridging is tieing both left and right channel together on one speaker output. Most commonly it's left channel + and right channel -. Many times this simply doubles possible output power, so 20w + 20w (L+R) would be 40w to the speaker. However, in high current amps its a little different. I have a high current amp that's 20w x 20w, but when bridged is rated at 223w.

When bridging, ohms are very important. If your load (speaker) is 4ohm, because you are bridged, you are basically in parallel with the amp, so 4 /2 = 2ohm. If your amp is not 2ohm stable, you'll fry it.

Home audio often uses 6ohm or 8ohm speaker outputs, so having 2x coils parallel would be a 3ohm or 4ohm load, amp would be 1.5ohm or 2ohm. Not healthy. Wiring 6ohm coils in series would be a 12ohm load, bridged the amp would see 6ohm (12ohm /2). Quite acceptable and nominal.

That's if the home audio is bridgable, many are not. Bridging is usually relegated to car audio amps as home audio will not tolerate the low impedance.