Hello,

I have the Quintet III speaker package with the Synergy sub-10 sub-woofer.  My receiver is an entry level Harmon Kardon, it doesn't have a lot of power, but I don't necessarily need it.  The receiver is rated at 30 wpc X 5 but I believe HK's generally rate much lower than most.  I had a 50 wpc H/K prior to this one that was very loud, so I think the 30 wpc is fine for my purposes (small room).

 I've messed around with the settings and believe I finally have just the right fit.  Per others recommendations I have the satellites all at 120 (crossover). I also have the sub maxed out (120) on the low-pass so I think I'm not missing much as far as bass goes.  Even though the sub's crossover is maxed it still sounds great (at only about 1/2 way up on the gain).

 My question (finally) is, how much power is actually pushed to the sub as oppossed to how much it generates on it's own (with the sub's amp)?  Would a louder receiver be able to push the sub better due to more power being pushed to it?  Or is the sub's power independent of the receiver?

I was just curious how the relationship between sub/receiver is made.

Thanks again for the great info.  Just searching the threads here I've learned some good stuff.

Processing section of reciever sends the LFE .1 signal in the 5/6/7.1 configuration out to sub via sub pre out.  Sub then takes the signal and the on-board amp provides the power.  If you are using a two channel source and not DD/dts most receivers will matrix and route the LFE to the sub (If you choose) depending on x-over setting.  Either way the sub provides the power.  The amp on the receiver will not have to worry about supplying power to the lower frequencies.  

'Beesley' pretty much summed it.

The sub signal (if you are hooking it up with an RCA cable to the "sub-out" connection) is a "line-level" or "pre-amp" output, that is, it is sent out of the pre-amp/processor section, before it even hits the amp section of the receiver.  Thus the receiver's own amplifier is not doing anything to the signal, thus even if you have a 1000watt amp in your receiver, it is not going to make any difference in the subwoofer's "loudness".  The subwoofer's own amplifier is doing the work handling the bass output - the receiver is just simply sending it a signal so the sub knows when it needs to play, in your case, anything below 120 hz.

In fact, that is a common suggestion for people to do, especially if they have relatively smallish amplifiers in receivers, is to set their main speakers to "small", thus letting the sub handle all the bass duties, since it has it's own amp, thus relieve the receiver of the work and more power to handle the mids and highs.

Here is an analogy that may help understand when connecting a sub via speaker wire instead of RCA connections:

If you are outside a door with a peephole, and on the other side of the door someone is turning the light on and off, you can tell by looking through the peephole whether the light is on or if it's off.  Very little light is coming through the peephole, but you have no trouble determining if the light's on or off.  Now imagine a very, very tiny peephole that allows virtually zero light throughput.  You can still easily tell if the light's on or off, but no light "power" is flowing out the peephole.  You can even tell if the light is being dimmed or brightened if it were on a dimmer. 

That's how the speaker level input to a sub works.  It's a very high impedance input meaning no signal flows, it just senses the amplitude of the signal.

 Hope this helps.

Thanks for the replies. 

The reason I asked this was I heard the sub-10 in Best Buy with the Quintet III and they sounded great.  They were being powered by a pretty high-end Yamaha which is obviously louder than the receiver I have.  I just was curious if that more powerful amp had any affect on the sub's power/performance.  From what I gather from the responses they are pretty independent of one another.  Really what I'm looking for is a lot of 'punch' in the bass which I think I have with this sub (in a small room, I can't fit the sub-12).

Right now I'm using the sub pre-out from the amp and using a splitter to go to both L and R inputs.  I noticed there was mention of running the sattelite speaker wires differently (through the sub).  I'm  not sure how this works, if I did that would it affect performance?

Thanks again.