Is my subwoofer dead ?

[amateur]

Hello All,

After probably 1 year+ or so, I added my old old YAMAHA SW 215 sub to my HT. As soon as I connect it and switch it on( no connection to Amp yet ) I heard loud hum noise. It had collected some dust which I cleaned. Connected to AVR and tried the following :

Here are the things that I tried :
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1. Connecting the sub to Denon A/V Receiver
2. Changed the settings to mark SW as YES and LFE+MAIN as the option with crossover at 80Hz.
3. Connected the subwoofer cable to subwoofer pre-out of Amp, "mono" in the subwoofer as per the spec.
4. Ran the "test tone" - speakers, subs were ok when I ran the test tone.
5. Played music - no output from subwoofer.
6. Changed the subwoofer cable - Despite that the same output.
7. reducing the volume, cut-off, etc tried in subwoofer - still the same issue
8. Repeated with the same with other Denon AVR - old one - Same issue
9. Managed to change the speaker settings to LARGE , SMALL - both resulted in same behavior - no output from sub.
10. Ran test tones by connecting in both AVRs separately, test tones played ok by speakers and sub woofer.
11. Power source changed - same behaviour.

After this I am not sure what should I do, I ran out of options - Is my sub dead / gone once for all ?

NOTE - Without amp connection, just powering on the sub itself gives hum noise.

Also, I didn't connect sub woofer by connecting the speaker cable from amp to sub and from sub to speakers. i.e. the network having sub as part of the chain.

 

[tuff]

So the sub plays the test tones?

 

[amateur]

Yes it plays the test tones, I edited by first post to emphasize that. The hum noise is there even after disconnecting from Amp- that's only making me suspect if anything is dead inside sub itself :-(

 

[amateur]

any suggestion or any other troubleshooting that I should do ?

 

[elangoas]

2. Changed the settings to mark SW as YES and LFE+MAIN as the option with crossover at 80Hz.

Raise your crossover to 150Hz and set LFE only and test few songs.. Play them on stereo mode..

 

[MaSh]

Try playing a 5.1 content. Try switching between lfe and lfe+main. I prefer lfe only, rather than lfe+main. Try auto setup too, for the receiver to set correct gains for it.

MaSh

Sent from my Redmi Note 3 using Tapatalk

 

[Kannan]

One simple test is to run a RCA cable from either the front right or left output to the sub.
Play some loud music and see if the sub responds.
You can set the sub out in the AVR to none so that the right and left outputs play full range and set the crossover on the sub. Start from the highest LPF setting and drop it down to see if it starts to distort badly or shuts off.

If there is no usable output from the subwoofer, you can try its high level inputs (speaker inputs). Just run a pair of speaker cables from the right/left channel of the receiver to the speaker input terminals on the sub. The from the speaker output terminals, connect to your main left and right speakers.
Set the crossover on the subwoofer. Set subwoofer to no in the AVR.

 

[amateur]

Try playing a 5.1 content. Try switching between lfe and lfe+main. I prefer lfe only, rather than lfe+main. Try auto setup too, for the receiver to set correct gains for it.

MaSh

Sent from my Redmi Note 3 using Tapatalk

I tried this yesterday, nevertheless didn't toggle between lfe and lfe+main. will try that - thanks

 

[amateur]

Raise your crossover to 150Hz and set LFE only and test few songs.. Play them on stereo mode..

Ok, will try the same, all my tests were only on stereo mode except for once I tried to play 5.1 content.

thanks so much, will increase the cutoff to 150 Hz and will try.

 

[amateur]

thanks for many suggestions - will try them and post updates.

With no amp connected, is it expected to get hum noise ? I don't remember getting it earlier.

 

[MaSh]

thanks for many suggestions - will try them and post updates.

With no amp connected, is it expected to get hum noise ? I don't remember getting it earlier.

Yes, some subs have that, although very low db. Will hear it if you are really sitting on the sub and straining your ears to hear it. I used to get that in the Bose freestyle and the Boston acoustics subs, but my wharfedale sw150 and the current Pioneer run absolutely silent, when not connected to the receiver.

MaSh

Sent from my Redmi Note 3 using Tapatalk

 

[ItsMe]

I have once faced similar situation, and tested my sub by connecting it to left channel in stereo mode and played sometime with the crossover. Then I switched back to sub connection and it was working well. It seems the issue was with the crossover knob, which was not working at some positions. If you are trying it, do it at your own risk as I am not sure whether it will damage your sub or not. Anyhow, ensure you keep the AVR volume low to avoid any potential sub damage .

 

[amateur]

Hello All,

thanks for the suggestions, pointers. Finallly my sub is working - some basic mistake(s) that I did or rather overlooked and ofcourse due to not using it for sometime the hum noise had to be rectified - a service was done.

the setup :
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1. Logitech blutooth receiver - 2 channel out connected to Denon AVR 1610
2. Subwoofer preout connected to Subwoofer via single cable ( subwoofer cable ).
3. Tracks played in stereo mode.
4. no output from preout - perhaps I should have changed to prologic or 5.1 mode to get the LFE output from AVR - in such a case subwoofer would have honoured the crossover setting.

How it worked now:
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1. Logitech blutooth receiver - 2 channel out connected to Denon AVR 1610
2. Connected the line out from Denon 1610 - DVR out ( 2channel ) to subwoofer .
3. All frequencies will be received by subwoofer too now as it's line out from AVR. Yamaha subwoofer has knob to configure cut-off frequency to control the LFE between 50 - 150 Hz. So if I set as 80 Hz, any greater than that will be filtered.
4. After doing this , sub came to life
5. If I do it like this , I believe I don't have to configure AVR to enable subwoofer, crossover setting. ( reason is that I take the line out from AVR directly and feed to subwoofer ) - I haven't yet set the subwoofer to NO in AVR but theoretically I think that's the way it should work.

 

[amateur]

Hello All,

If I connect the sub at line level out from AVR, I could see disconnect ( not coherent) when I play the music - does it require finetuning ? Ideally I wouldn't want to hear anything come out of sub it should smoothly merge with speaker output.

Also playing in 2 channel/stereo mode, subout from AVR doesn't work which I think is expected - Does this mean subwoofer is meant only for movie experience i.e. those that's recorded in 5.1 mode ?

how generally coherency is achieved in 2.1 setup ?

Thanks