Help Wiring Speakers

[PicoMaster]

So a little bit of context, I have three tweeters and one subwoofer, I had originally connected the tweeters to, lets just call it AMP 1, and then the subwoofer was connected to AMP 2, I ran a normal aux to rca from my computer to AMP 1 to run the tweeters, and I ran a mono aux from my computers subwoofer output to AMP 2.

 

Now, my question is, how would you suggest that I connect this same exact setup to my laptop, the only problem I see is that my laptop only has a single aux output and not the aux and sub and center, etc that my pc has.

[TheKDub]

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0047T79M2?tag=tomsguide_forum_vgl-20 Something like that might work for you (Don't get that exact one, it's quite overpriced, you should be able to find the same thing for around $5, if that), otherwise you'll likely need a USB DAC that has all the needed outputs.

[PicoMaster]

6 minutes ago, TheKDub said:

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0047T79M2?tag=tomsguide_forum_vgl-20 Something like that might work for you (Don't get that exact one, it's quite overpriced, you should be able to find the same thing for around $5, if that), otherwise you'll likely need a USB DAC that has all the needed outputs.

That is what I thought about doing, but isn't the signal from the Center/Sub output different from the aux output?

[TheKDub]

1 minute ago, PicoMaster said:

That is what I thought about doing, but isn't the signal from the Center/Sub output different from the aux output?

I'm not too sure, I've never had to deal with a separated speaker and subwoofer setup, I've always just used 2.1 computer speakers instead. It could be worth a try.

[anothertom]

Ignoring the fact your terminology is all over the place.

 

1 hour ago, PicoMaster said:

how would you suggest that I connect this same exact setup to my laptop

That depends on how permanent you intend this setup to be. If it's short term, then don't bother. If it's going to be a longer term setup then you will want an external decoder to extract both the L/R and C/Sub channels. Most of these will be designed for either 5.1 or 7.1 so you'll likely end up losing whatever details are only in the surround channels. A quick search shows some dodgy looking boxes using HDMI for under £50 and more promising looking devices costing a bit more.

 

Alternatively, you could replace your two amp (note amp is not an abbreviation so doesn't need to be capitalised) setup with a receiver with an integrated amp stage, again usually connected via HDMI and getting HDMI 2.x usually costs a bit more.

[kirashi]

2 hours ago, PicoMaster said:

So a little bit of context, I have three tweeters and one subwoofer, I had originally connected the tweeters to, lets just call it AMP 1, and then the subwoofer was connected to AMP 2, I ran a normal aux to rca from my computer to AMP 1 to run the tweeters, and I ran a mono aux from my computers subwoofer output to AMP 2.

 

Now, my question is, how would you suggest that I connect this same exact setup to my laptop, the only problem I see is that my laptop only has a single aux output and not the aux and sub and center, etc that my pc has.

Short answer? Buy a multi-channel USB to Audio adapter for your laptop.

Long answer? Replace both AMPs with a single multi-channel AMP capable with a built-in crossover to filter out the low's from highs.

Best answer? Do the long answer, but also get some midrange drivers too, since I can only imagine what BASS and HIGHS sound like without any MIDS.

[anothertom]

2 hours ago, kirashi said:

<snip>

Can we stop with the arbitrary capitalisation please, I can't imagine you shout random words during conversation...

[kirashi]

2 minutes ago, anothertom said:

Can we stop with the arbitrary capitalisation please, I can't imagine you shout random words during conversation...

Don't TELL me WHAT to DO! You're not my MOM! Seriously though, I get your point. My bad - I was just trying to emphasize the heavy bass and treble that OP would have if he had no midrange speakers.

[rhyseyness]

12 hours ago, PicoMaster said:

That is what I thought about doing, but isn't the signal from the Center/Sub output different from the aux output?

Laptop output will have the full range of sound (about 20Hz to about 20KHz).

You don't need to run the sub and tweeters off of specific outputs.

 

Tweeters won't be able to produce anything much under 2KHz.

Sub won't be able to produce anything much over 200Hz.

No idea how this sounds good  You have no midrange...

 

Anyway, what I'm saying is you can just plug the audio output from the laptop into the amps, with your speakers connected.

You can split the output to go to your 2 seperate amps.

 

However, this is not a good solution if these amps don't have adjustable cut-off/filter.

This will mean your sending the full range to both the tweeters and the subwoofer.

You wouldn't have this issue before because the filtering was done on your PC (i.e. "sub out" will have a low pass filter).

It sounds like you were sending full range to the tweeters anyway.

Some of the output from the laptop will be outside the frequency range of the tweeters and the sub, which could cause some distortion or just sound bad.

 

To be honest, when you have no midrange anyway, you probably don't care that much about audio quality,

I'd say you should just split the laptop output to your 2 amps with a 3.5mm to RCA splitter, then another RCA splitter.

(Giving you 2 sets of RCA outputs, one for each amp).

This will work just fine, but won't sound great... tbh, doubt it'll sound much different to what you're already doing.

Missing midrange will be way more noticable than sending full range to the sub.

 

No idea how you're going through life with no midrange, but hope this helps

[spwath]

What do you mean by tweeter, and subwoofer?

This is what a tweeter is:

 

 

And a subwoofer is this

[anothertom]

1 hour ago, spwath said:

What do you mean by tweeter, and subwoofer?

11 hours ago, rhyseyness said:

No idea how this sounds good  You have no midrange

See, I took OP's post to mean that they had three 'high range' speakers (aka bookshelf speakers or satellite speakers from a previous 2.x type system) and a sub (either from an x.1 system or stand alone) rather than literally three tweeters/compression drivers and a low range driver. Possibly OP is from the world of cars, where tweeter is used wrongly and more often as a term for a non-low range speaker.

 

Alternatively not an English native or familiar with the English terminology.

 

Or has a very strange setup.

[rhyseyness]

16 hours ago, anothertom said:

See, I took OP's post to mean that they had three 'high range' speakers (aka bookshelf speakers or satellite speakers from a previous 2.x type system) and a sub (either from an x.1 system or stand alone) rather than literally three tweeters/compression drivers and a low range driver. Possibly OP is from the world of cars, where tweeter is used wrongly and more often as a term for a non-low range speaker.

 

Alternatively not an English native or familiar with the English terminology.

 

Or has a very strange setup.

Good point, your interpretation sounds much more likely than mine