Don't know wether I should give a signal to my powered sub woofer from my receiver or through RCA from the source

[techman123]

So I put two extra speakers in my office and I also put a sub woofer in there that I am going to power them by the zone 2 feature on my receiver. The sub woofer was from one of the home theater in a box systems so it only has a RCA input. It is also a powered sub woofer so it doesn't need power from the RCA. So I was thinking either put the two speakers in series and and send the other channel to my subwoofer by soldering speaker cable to a rca plug or i can send 1 channel to each speaker and get a rca splitter and send one to the reciever and one to the subwoofer. I don't know what to do and this is my set up right now:

 

Computer's 3.5mm >  3.5mm to 2 RCA converter > Receiver > 1 Chanel to sub woofer and 1 channel to both speakers in series 

 

Or i can have it set up like this:

 

Computer's 3.5mm >  3.5mm to 2 RCA converter > RCA Splitter (for left or right channel) > 1 to sub woofer and 1 to Receiver > 1 Channel to left speaker and 1 channel to right speaker

 

I dont know what to do. Thanks for helping.

[Enderman]

from receiver

unless you receiver has no sub-out

[techman123]

from receiver

unless you receiver has no sub-out

I can either wire one channel to the subwoofer or I get the signal from the source

[Enderman]

I can either wire one channel to the subwoofer or I get the signal from the source

does your motherboard have 5.1 or 7.1 out? plug the sub into the subwoofer output

[techman123]

Nah it doesn't. Its a pretty old pc.

 

Thanks for replying

[SSL]

RCA doesn't provide power. It's a line-level connection.

 

Do not try to solder a high-level speaker connection to a line-level input. Even if this doesn't spectacularly break something, it is still dumb and not how these things work.

 

Do not connect to speakers to one channel. This defeats the purpose of heaving two speakers in the first place as they will not output stereo sound.

 

Use something like this (a splitter adapter, NOT a converter):

 

https://www.monoprice.com/product?c_id=102&cp_id=10218&cs_id=1021815&p_id=5598&seq=1&format=2

 

Use an additional RCA splitter for one of the channels (doesn't matter which) to send to the sub.

 

http://www.amazon.com/Video-Audio-Splitter-Adapter-Female/dp/B003L1AI8O

[techman123]

RCA doesn't provide power. It's a line-level connection.

 

Do not try to solder a high-level speaker connection to a line-level input. Even if this doesn't spectacularly break something, it is still dumb and not how these things work.

 

Do not connect to speakers to one channel. This defeats the purpose of heaving two speakers in the first place as they will not output stereo sound.

 

Use something like this (a splitter adapter, NOT a converter):

 

https://www.monoprice.com/product?c_id=102&cp_id=10218&cs_id=1021815&p_id=5598&seq=1&format=2

 

Use an additional RCA splitter for one of the channels (doesn't matter which) to send to the sub.

 

http://www.amazon.com/Video-Audio-Splitter-Adapter-Female/dp/B003L1AI8O

So if I solder high-level speaker connection to a line-level input, it can eventually break something?

[frozencellmate]

I think SSL is pointing out that its highly impractical not that it will necessarily break something.