I have just today purchased my first amp and 5.1 speakers. The speakers are the mordaunt short 900 series and the receiver is the cambridge audio 540r. We've set it all up and the problem is we are getting next to no bass, to be honest I could f*rt harder.
The front speakers are the MS 908's with built in passive sub. This is connected to PCA (phono) sub output of the amp, the only sub output as far as I know. Having read online for a while now I am starting to think that the amp cannot power the passive sub, which would make sense.
Question is what do I do? I am really stuck here and I've tried everything I can think of. Help would be much appreciated.
From what I understand the sub pre-out output is not powered by the receiver amp, it assumes a powered sub. That would probably be the problem. Not sure about a solution, I'm still learning myself.
How on earth did you plug the RCA sub-out cable to the speakers? It's definitely not right. What kind of connectors do you have on the back of the speaker?
"The front speakers are the MS 908's with built in passive sub. This is connected to PCA (phono) sub output of the amp, the only sub output as far as I know"
The sub out just sends the lfe signals to the sub, which the receiver assumes is self powered. Am I understanding correctly that the front speakers have two inputs - one for the top driver and tweeter and one for the passive sub?
This would be very odd, and would make you buy two pre-amps for the subs in each speaker.
Otherwise you have somehow connected a speaker to a sub-out terminal of a receiver. How you did this I would love to know. You should just connect the two front speakers to the front left and right terminals of the reciever with speaker cable. The sub is usually self powered within the speaker.