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3300 preamp use question

thxdave

thxdave

Department of Redundancy Dept. (Retired)
Subscriber
I have a 3300 that I'm hoping to rebuild sometime soon and I have a question. It has a variable Center Channel output on the back. Does anybody know if this would be suitable for feeding my subwoofer? I'm assuming it is a summed L/R signal (full-range?) but wondered if anybody had used this output for this purpose. Crossover freq would be handled at the subwoofer (SVS S1000 Pro) input.
 
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I've used the center channel out to power a powered sub with the model 33 preamp I used to have. It worked fine.
 
Thanks for the replies. Any suggestions for setting the level of this output? I'm always wondering about gain staging when feeding a variable output into something else with a variable input.
 
You should be able to just leave the center channel volume all the way up and use the gain control on the sub to adjust the output since the main volume control also controls the center channel volume.
I used a splitter cable to connect the single center channel out to the sub that had R&L RCA line level inputs.
 
I've since learned that the Center Channel output of my 3300 only becomes active IF I feed the amp's output back to the pre for speaker switching duties. It creates the summed signal from the outputs of the amp. <sigh>
Was hoping to avoid using that feature of the 3300.
 
Not so fast there. I just looked at the 3300 user manual. Apparently, there is a way to get a mono signal out of this unit to feed either a powered sub or mono amp + regular sub.

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I understand but I'm only going to power one set of speakers and was trying to avoid having to send the power amp's signal back to the pre. Granted, in my hope for signal path simplicity, I'm giving up the Center Channel feed as well as the headphone output. I may still have to revisit this.....and I've never been accused of being too fast! ;-)
 
thxdave said:
I understand but I'm only going to power one set of speakers and was trying to avoid having to send the power amp's signal back to the pre. Granted, in my hope for signal path simplicity, I'm giving up the Center Channel feed as well as the headphone output. I may still have to revisit this.....and I've never been accused of being too fast! ;-)
Click to expand...
Get a 33. It has a separate preamp for the cenger channel!
 
ocdecio said:
Get a 33. It has a separate preamp for the cenger channel!
Click to expand...
I restored a 33. It has separate everything. Seperate boards for each channel, separate preamp for center channel, and separate headphone amp.
I forgot about the speaker selector in the 3300. That's the preamp they started that with and carried it on from there. It does mean extra wiring if you want to use the center channel in the 3300. I rarely have more than 1 pair of speakers connected and rarely used the built in speaker selector. I liked Sony's approach.
They put the speaker selector in the power amp. The Sony TA-3200F I restored had two preamp inputs on a switch, speaker selector and output power selector.
You could select 25wpc, 50wpc, or 100wpc.
 
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