The low frequency sound waves emitted by the
SW-8 are quite long and will therefore interact
greatly with the walls of your room. Consequen-
tially even small placement adjustments can
make noticeable alterations to the sound you
hear. A room corner will provide maximum out-
put for a given power level.
Low frequencies tend to be non-directional so if
your subwoofer is placed and calibrated well, you
should not be able to
easily
localize it. Factors
that can affect performance in this regard are
rattles from walls or nearby objects, distorted
output, or a high crossover point. If you are hav-
ing issues with bass localization, try to isolate
rattling or buzzing objects if any, or try another
corner in your room. If the sub's output is dis-
torted, check to see that you are not at the
maximum sub level setting on your receiver.
This can induce audible distortion, so you may
need to turn down the subwoofer level on your
processor and turn the level up on the subwoofer
to compensate.
Note: Subwoofer placement in
the back of the room can provide good results,
but we find the most natural sound in most
rooms is obtained with placement in front of the
listeners.
...One last note.
Although the advice in this section will certainly
help you enjoy the best possible sound from your
Rocket Tyke Series speakers, you might want an
even fuller exploration of how rooms and speak-
ers interact. If you do, we suggest beginning
with F. Alton Everest's
The Master Handbook of
Acoustics
(McGraw-Hill). Currently in its
fourth edition, this is THE source for anyone who
wants to understand more about this fascinating
topic.
Section 3-Making the Connections
Now that you've got your speaker placed prop-
erly, it's time to connect them.
Before you begin
connecting your speakers, turn your system
components OFF. That way, you won't run any
chance of "shorting" your amplifier and possibly
damaging it as you're hooking up your speakers.
And remember to turn your system back
on...then you're done! No, we're not being funny
here. You'd be amazed how many people forget
that little step!
3.1 Connecting Your Speakers
All Rocket Tyke speakers feature a single pair of
spring loaded binding posts. Each terminal will
accept bare wire or pins only and is not compati-
ble with spade lugs or banana plug connections.
If you're using bare wire connections, make sure
you've properly prepared the wire first. Expose
about 3/8" of each conductor by stripping the
insulation with a wire stripper or sharp knife (BE
CAREFUL, please). Twist the stranded copper
leads tightly, depress the binding post, and in-
sert the copper through the exposed hole in the
center of the terminal. For pin connections, fol-
low the same general guidelines. If you're at-
taching pins to your speaker cables, read the
instructions supplied with the termination you've
chosen. Make sure that you don't leave any
loose strands of wire exposed as you're attach-
ing the pins or bare wire. If you're using pre-
terminated wires, the manufacturer has already
taken care of this potential problem for you.
With a pin termination, depress the binding post,
insert the pin through the shaft hole, and re-
lease.
