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AVR and Two Subwoofers

Scott Wilkinson  |  Oct 12, 2011

I want to hook up two Velodyne Impact 10 subwoofers to my Integra DTR-6.5 AVR. Do I need three signal splitters? Will I lose some signal using that many splitters? Should I use the Zone 2 sub output?

Mario B.

You can certainly use a signal splitter to send the AVR's main subwoofer output to two subs—the line-level input impedance of most subs (including the Impact 10) is high enough that connecting two in parallel won't cause any problems with signal level. I'm not sure why you specify three splitters, except that you might be thinking about using both the Left and Right inputs of both subs. This is not necessary, since these inputs are summed internally, so you only need to connect one of them to the sub output from the AVR.

You could use the AVR's Zone 2 output for the second sub, but you'd have to manage the Zone 2 signal—that is, make sure it's assigned to the same source as the main zone, deal with volume, etc.—which, in my opinion, is more trouble than it's worth. Using a single splitter from the main sub output to one of the inputs on each sub will work just fine.

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