Best way to connect powered speakers and subwoofer to my laptop?

G

Gundam

Weaksauce
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Sep 22, 2006
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I've decided to ditch my desktop and get a laptop. I went with an HP Pavillion DV7TQE which now come with Beats enhanced audio out. I have a pair of M-Audio Studiophile AV 30's and an ASW-8 subwoofer laying around. Both are self-powered.
 
theres no real "good" way to use both of those in conjunction, because the m-audios are active speakers.
i suppose you could get an audio splitter and and connect both to your laptop at one time, but problem is you have no real good way of controlling the crossover point.

the correct way to do it would be to get passive speakers and an integrated amp.
you would go pc --> amp -- > sub high level input > sub high level output > passive speakers.
conrol the crossover on the sub.

now, another option that might work well is this, but it depends on your sound cards drivers.
you need to have a 5.1 sound card. set the m-audios to the front channel, and set the sub to the LFE channel. configure the sound card to disable the center and rears, and control the crossover on the sound card drivers.
 
Procyon12 said:
i think you mean some subwoofers can only accept an LFE output.
Click to expand...

Some sound cards will only output LFE material. They will not extract the bass from stereo.

I have no idea what you mean by subwoofers only accepting LFE output. Subwoofers will accept any audio channel through an RCA jack.
 
Laptop --> RCA Splitter --> One set to the speakers --> One set to the sub.

Unless the sub has the connections to passthrough the crossover via RCA if so then do this
Laptop --> RCA --> Sub --> RCA --> Speakers.

Set the crossover on the sub to whatever is needed (probably 100hz or 80hz / use your ears)
 
dragonhawke said:
Some sound cards will only output LFE material. They will not extract the bass from stereo.

I have no idea what you mean by subwoofers only accepting LFE output. Subwoofers will accept any audio channel through an RCA jack.
Click to expand...

Your second sentence is what I'm saying.it doesn't mater if the sound card sends an lfe or not, the sub will part what it can. What I mean is that some stubs dont have high level inputs, and they expect an lfe on tge rca, regardless on if they get an lfe or all the sound.

I understand what you mean now I think we were just explaining it from two different angles
 
Rossi~ said:
Laptop --> RCA Splitter --> One set to the speakers --> One set to the sub.

Unless the sub has the connections to passthrough the crossover via RCA if so then do this
Laptop --> RCA --> Sub --> RCA --> Speakers.

Set the crossover on the sub to whatever is needed (probably 100hz or 80hz / use your ears)
Click to expand...

This should work. Alternatively, he could get a USB soundcard with a dedicated LFE output.
 
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