Just getting started with Polk Audio System. Any help is appreciated

[SINGHJG]

I just bought the following
1. Polk Monitor 70 series II front speakers (2)
2. Polk PSW125 Subwoofer (1)
3. Polk Monitor 40 series II rear surround (2)
4. Polk CS20 Center Channel (1)
5. Denon AVR-1912 receiver
6. 16G oxygen free copper wire
7. Sanus 18? speaker stands for rear speakers
8. Need to get a projector and a screen still

As you must have understood, I am working on a home theatre system. I have no experience on hooking up any audio or video before. I just had a flat screen TV and a DVD player before which of course needs a simple hook up. I was astonished by the size of front and rear speakers. From the size and wooden frame (comparing to Bose), did I buy speakers from stone age or they are used today also ??? I saw they have been discontinued by Polk. As you can realize I didn?t do much research. It was very confusing with all different brands so I bought the ones with a good deal

1. What do I really need for basic hook up. These speakers have red and black points in the back ??
2. Does the speaker wire needs a special cutter ??
3. Is the receiver ready to play out of the box or it needs tuning or bass management or whatever else
4. If I want to play any music, do I have to have a dvd player hooked up to it?

These just arrived today and I want to get them ready before the weekend

Your help will be greatly appreciated


Thanks,
Jas

[wolfman1138]

Congratulations on getting a new system. And don't worry, it is not too hard to get this set up.

1) The back of the receiver and the back of the speakers both had black and red terminals. Red is Positive and Black is negative. Just hook reds to reds and blacks to blacks. They are marked this way so that when you hook up the speakers to the amplifier, you get the same polarity. Reverse polarity only hurts the sound, not the speakers. Think of it this way. With a tone played through all the speakers, you want them all to push at the same time and pull at the same time. If some speakers push while others are pulling you will get dead zones in the sound and the sound will not sound correct. The speaker wire will usually have some sort of markings. Cheaper wire will have a clear jacket with one wire copper and the other silver. Better wire will be marked, usually with a stripe or + or colored.
2) No, normal dyke cutters are fine. You can get fancier cutters for cutting coax cable, but regular wire cutters work best. Scissors usually just end up making a mess. You will need to get some wire strippers to cut off about 1/2 inch worth of insulation.
Once the insulation is off, then give the wire a light twist in the direction it already twists in order to prevent stray wires. Unscrew the binding terminal a few turns to expose the metal. Most binding posts will have a hole drilled through the post for the wire to go through. Slip the bare wire through the hole far enough to cross the post so the wire will be smashed flat across the binding post when you tighten the screw down. This makes a good connection. Make sure you didn't fray the wires which can cause a short.

3) Yes, the receiver is ready to go out of the box, but because the Denon has Audussey, I highly recommend using it. It has a little microphone which you place in the listening positions (At ear height!) and then it runs a series of clicks and tones. It will automatically set all the speaker delays and optimize the sound for your room. I don't know which version the 1912 has, but mine (the 4311ci) will ask you to move the microphone to several different positions to set up for multiple people in the room. There are a lot of websites that can go through the placement of the speakers in your 5.1 setup to help optimize your system.

4) You will want to run HDMI from the DVD player to the Denon and then run the denon to your TV or Projector. HDMI carries both Video and audio. If you have an older DVD player without HDMI, then you will want to hook the DVD players digital audio output to the Denon with either a coax (Orange RCA) or Optical cable. The DVD player can also be used to play CDs into the system, even when the TV is off.

The subwoofer will need to be set up as well. It is best to use a RCA cable to hook the LFE output from the Denon to the input of the subwoofer. Look in the manual. Some subwoofers, like my older Polk PSW300, needed a splitter to drive both the red and white input on the subwoofer from the single output of the receiver to make it work.
You may try placing the dub in different places in the room to optimize it's sound. Subs can be placed virtually anywhere because the wavelength of the sound waves. Place it closer to a corner or wall for the best effects.

For watching movies, set all your speakers to small. I know they look huge, but the that Large/Small setting is about setting the subwoofer crossover and you are 99% of the time better off allowing the sub to handle all the frequencies below 80Hz. (The small setting)

I hope this helps you out. It really isn't as daunting as it seems until you start running cables in the walls. :)
Good luck and congrats on being a new Polk family member.

[nap]

Welcome to Club Polk !

[GlennDog]

Nice run down Wolfman!

Welcome to CP, Jas! As you can see, very helpful group here . . .

[BlueFox]

From the size and wooden frame (comparing to Bose), did I buy speakers from stone age or they are used today also?

Generally speaking, the bigger the speakers the better. Small stand mounted speakers are for amateurs.

[cbow8]

welcome to cp. youll love watching movies now!!!

[SINGHJG]

Thanks everybody. This forum is very helpful.

I tried a knife to peel off the speaker wire and you are right it was very messy. Anyways I hooked center channel and the two front speakers using the speaker wire. It?s a good quality wire with blue stripe on it so blue went to all black terminals and the transparent to the red on both sides (receiver and speaker). For the sub, there was an output on the receiver saying ?Pre-Out?. I inserted one end of the RCA cable there and the other end was inserted into the red input on backside of subwoofer. The subwoofer has two inputs in the back for RCA. One is white (L) and the other is red (R) . The red also had a slash next to it and it said R/LFE. I believe the LFE is shared with R here so I inserted the other end of RCA into red (R) . I have not hooked the surround speakers yet as I ran out of time last night. The manual said if using RCA cable, set the front/surround/center channel to small and subwoofer to ?ON?. There was a power switch on subwoofer, turned that to on. There is also switch for phase. Its set to 0 so I left it there. The volume on backside of subwoofer was set in middle and frequency was set below 90 Hz. I just had a USB with me so I plugged that in. The 3 speakers worked but subwoofer didn?t budge. I went in the Denon settings and changed the bass settings from 120Hz to 80Hz. Still no response from sub. I played with the remote and changed the modes from music, to game or to movie. Initially center wasn?t working either but when changed the mode to music, it worked. No Sub still.

I don?t know what am I doing wrong. I did connect the Audyssey mic and started the calibration. I heard sound coming out of FL, FR and CS but when it went to subwoofer, I heard a very faint Dug, Dug. What could be the reason here for sub not workin

1. Also what does crossover means and what are the implications?
2. Is the denon receiver wifi capable. I want to use airplay option so can I connect the receiver wirelessly to the modem or it needs to be hardwired

Thanks again

[wolfman1138]

Hello again,

I don't know why you're getting low output out of the sub...may have to think about that for a bit.

As for your other questions:
1) Crossover is the frequency point at which you redirect frequencies. For the control on the back of the sub it just need to be set higher than 80Hz because the receiver is doing the crossover for the LFE channel. All frequencies below 80HZ are going to the subwoofer. If you set the dial on the back below 80Hz, you will be dropping that frequency content on the floor.
2) From the manual it looks like that there is no WiFi. The AirPLay is a separate wireless protocol that will hook up your IPod/IPad to the Denon without wires. You will not be able to use Network radio, streaming, remote apps, etc without ethernet hooked to the receiver.

But not all is lost. If you don't want run a cable to the receiver, you can get a wireless bridge for less that $50 that will allow you to hard-wire the Denon to the bridge and then hook to the rest of your network wirelessly. Ethernet-over-Power is another option, but I am wary of that one.

Quick tips. If you only have a knife, you can still get a reasonable strip on a wire. Just set the wire against a scrap piece of 2x4 and gently roll the wire along between the knife and wood. This will score the sleeve. A few passes will get you very close to the metal and then you can pull the insulation off. It is basically the same thing that a wire stripper does it, only the strippers cut all sides evenly and simultaneously.

I'm glad I could be helpful for your first post. I always like to help people get the most out of their investments. And I agree with BlueFox, the bigger the better. :) Unfortunately the size of the speaker is usually inversely proportional to its SAF (Spouse Acceptance Factor)

Good luck!

[GlennDog]

What the ??

[wolfman1138]

Reported!

[rooftop59]

SOunds like you got a bum sub. I would troubleshoot a couple things before calling polks customer service (very nice and helpful folks that will fix your problem quickly).

1. power the sub off and back on
2. try a different cable
3. Try using the left (white) sub connection
4. recheck and make sure that the sub is on and all speakers set to small (when using the sub as an LFE you generally want to turn the built-in crossover all the way up so it does not interfere with the signal the receiver is sending).


If all that fails to remedy the problem, call polk. You have a great (not so little) system there; they will be sure that you can enjoy it!

[SINGHJG]

Ok got it working last night. Seemed like the sub volume was low. Also played variety of tracks and some of them really had good beats. Frankly speaking I had thought this entire system was going to shake my house. That didn't happen. The receiver goes max to +18db, however I did not really hear any sound while standing outside my house which is a good sign. Everything is housed up in the bonus room upstairs. The center channel has extremely high shrillness built in it. I decreased that to -6 dB still too mich treble which completely overshadows the bass. So I have to crank the bass up to +10db.

I found front Monitor 70 series II to be average speakers. Perception ain't reality but you can make it a reality if you are ready to spend some dough. Perhaps the amount of money I spent justifies the sound. But it ain't the best. Still need to hook up the surrounds and get the projector in to experience the blu-ray quality

Thanks everybody for your help !!!!