I am thinking about buying a pair of old Boston Acoustics A60 speakers (which use an 8" woofer), and using one of them as the center channel for my home theater system, since I have Boston Acoustics speakers already for my L/R and surrounds (a100 fronts, a40 rears, for those familiar with these very vintage models.)
My question: is it possible--or advisable--to try using the "leftover" full-range speaker as a passive sub?
My receiver is a Yamaha HTR 5730. This is a 100-watt unit with an LFE output, but since the would-be subwoofer is unamplified, I am assuming I would connect it through the regular speaker outputs.
I am obviously new to the world of subwoofers (and even more obviously scraping the bottom of the budget barrel), but any thoughts you might have would be appreciated.
If you run the signal from the loudspeaker connections, you will have a full range signal going to the A60. That's obviously not what you want for a sub. You will have to provide some external amplification for the speaker to run from the LFE outputs. You can purchase a plate amplifier from suppliers such as Parts Express or online by putting "plate amplifier" into a search engine. Plate amps are not very expensive since they are only dealing with low frequencies. This will provide you with a crossover and level adjust for the speaker.
Now the real problem with your plan is the A60, which is not able to go very deep when you are trying to use it as a subwoofer. In room response of an A60 is still going to be limited to about 45 Hz. When run full range the A100's, with their larger woofer in a larger cabinet, will exceed that response on their own by about 10 Hz. So no matter how hard you push the A60 it will not be able to provide deeper bass repsonse than what the A100's already will give you. That wouldn't really make the A60 a "sub" woofer then; would it?
Matt Matcuk
Unregistered guest
Posted on
Jan:
Thanks for the very helpful response, and the voice of reason. When I get it, I will store the spare A60 in the basement (for parts) and await the day when I can afford a real subwoofer.