Need advise on how to connect subwoofer to edifier R1202T

Birblover12 · March 7

I want to add a subwoofer to my Edifier R1202Ts, however it occurred to me that they don't have a dedicated sub output. I was recommended the Dayton 800 or 1000, however I don't see how I'm able to connect the two. (I'm a noob with audio stuff so gonna need some handholding lol.)

This is what the back of my speakers look like:

And this is the back of the Sub I was thinking about:

Are the two even compatible? Could I connect the white and red "L and R" slots to the same ones on the sub? Totally confused.

saintlouisbagels · March 7

You need an intermediate audio device (a pre-amp or DAC) that will give you Line Out for the Edifier speakers, and Pre-Out for the subwoofer.

Surprisingly, this seems to be a difficult item to find when it comes to cheap and small. I spent the last 10min looking through Amazon before posting this comment.

edit: I literally cannot find any desktop options except for a very old FiiO desktop amp I use to own a decade ago, and a Monoprice desktop amp that was discontinued.

Looks like you need to buy a home theater receiver if you want to use those speakers with a subwoofer.

cmndr · March 7

There's a bunch of ways to do it and they all get you similarish results. I'm going to focus on the cheapest.

Y splitter cable. They're as cheap as $3.

The same signal gets split in half and goes to both. You then ratchet up the volume/gain somewhere else on the chain slightly.

Fiddle with where the crossover is set on the subwoofer. Also start with the gain on the subwoofer set VERY LOW.

https://www.amazon.com/s?k=aux+y+splitter
If you're doing aux from your PC, you can do that. It doesn't necessarily matter WHERE the splitter is put (so next to speakers, next to the source or next to the sub), just that the chain is continuous and everything is included.
If you're also doing it from the PC you can potentially set one of the ports as sub out in the sound config.

Some critiques of this cheap/dirty method - ideally you're doing pre-out instead of powered out, I don't think this would matter much.
No high pass filter - ideally you'd send ONLY the high frequency signals to the L+R speakers and the low frequencies to the sub. In this set up the L+R get the full range and the sub plays whatever is below its crossover setting.
The benefit for those edifiers is that their distortion profile gets way better when they're not required to play low.

Forfaxify · March 7

Its not ideal, but you can use the second input of the Edifiers as an output for the subwoofer. I used to do this when i had them. You'll need RCA to RCA (from edifier input, which will act as output, to sub line in.)