Setup and wiring multiple speakers plus subwoofer for two rooms

[Raphaz]

I have two receivers, two sets of speakers (for different rooms) and one subwoofer hooked up to two receivers.
The goal was to be able to adjust loudness and switch the sound on/off independently for each room/speaker set.
Gear list below.

I’m constantly wondering if I wired everything the right way or if I could improve (if not even simplify) things. I feel like the sound is not consistent - sometimes everything is slightly distorted or more “shallow” (in both rooms) and the sub can be boomy and inconsistent (I confess that the sub’s settings are rather confusing to me).

I’m convinced that this gear could sound consistently better. Am I dreaming?
How would you wire this setup?

Here’s how I have it set up now - bear with me:
Everything except of the 3 pairs of Optimus Sevens (and the speaker switch) is in the main room.
Right now the R-2000 is the main receiver. I bi-wired the KEF Qs and set the R-2000 Pre-Main coupler to off. The sub is connected to the R-2000 Pre-Amp out/in.
The R-2000 is connected to the Nikko via Tape 2 Rec Out and the Nikko feeds the 3 Optimus pairs (the switch after the Nikko can turn each pair on and off).

I had my laptop (mainly for streaming Spotify) and CD player fed into the same Aux input on the R-2000 via quality Y split but recently changed it so that the CD goes into Aux and the laptop onto Tape 2 in/playback - they now both seem to sound cleaner but very different from each other - and of course I loose a tape channel that way. The TT is connected to Phono in (nothing special there).
Also, I recently wonder if I should look for a different sub and if bi-wiring the Qs is worth the “cable-salad”…


I generally use decent quality wires.

Can I do better?
Any advice is highly appreciated! Thank you!

Yamaha R-2000
Nikko NR-1019
Technics SL-D 3 (w/Concord OM-20)
Denon DVD-1520
Nakamichi LX-3
2 x KEF Q-500 / 1 x KEF C4(sub)
6 x Realistic Minimus 7
A good quality speaker switch (I forgot the brand but it can apparently take care of differences in speaker Ohm loads if needed)

 

[Semanon]

Two confusing things to me:

1. How and why is sub hooked up to both receivers? Can you hear the bass well in both rooms? If you are playing the same program in both rooms, what benefit are you expecting by doing this?

2. How are the 3 pairs of Minimus 7s wired up?

if it were mine, I’d go back to the basics of troubleshooting and simplify.

• Get rid of the second room, the switcher, and the sub.
• Get the main room sounding as good as possible. Live with it for a while. Determine if you like or see the benefit of bi-wiring (some do, some don’t).
• Add in the sub and make sure it sounds as good as possible.
• Add in the second room with one set of speakers. Make sure you like it.
  
• Add in the next set of speakers in the 2nd room
  
• Add in the speaker switch and the third set of Minimus 7s
• Add the sub for the 2nd room.

At some point your problem will start to appear, and we all will have better info.

I would suspect the 3 pairs of speakers are creating too low impedance for the receiver, but don’t know if that would impact the sound in room 1. I’d also suspect that the wiring for the sub is creating issues. Maybe as a first test, you disconnect that.

Good luck.

 

[Raphaz]

Thank you, Semanon!

1. The sub is hooked up to the R-2000 only - I don’t even know how I would hook it up to both receivers. No need for that anyway. Hard to explain but the rooms are not fully separated, it’s basically one large, tall wide open warehouse-like space with lofts - I get enough bass from the sub, plus the 7s are surprisingly good for their size in that department.

2. The Nikko’s Speaker A out is wired into the switch, which “splits” the signal to feed each pair of (identical) Minimus’ separately - the switch also takes care of possible Ohm load issues.

I went through what you suggested already - well, sort of.
The system organically grew over time, starting with the R-2000 and large old Polks.
I then upgraded to the Qs and realized that for the large, tall main space the bass wasn’t sufficient and added a JBL sub (which turned out to be broken), then found/added the KEF sub (I haphazardly replaced a capacitor to fix an apparently common issue with humming and distortion with the C4s).
After a while I bi-wired the Qs - which maybe sounded slightly better, if even that, not sure.
I then added a pair of small Polks for my office to channel B on the R-2000, but was not happy with them (dull, boomy). Got a pair of the 7s instead (and was mighty impressed) - and later got more of them for the other rooms.
At this point it would’ve been wire-galore throughout the apartment, plus, I couldn’t control the 7s’ volume separately from the KEFs, so I added the Nikko and the switch.
Also, I just recently moved the stereo and rewired (with better wires) everything, one by one (same setup, same apartment) and listened each time. The results didn’t reveal a particular pattern for me. Some of the issues prevailed, persistently inconsistent, even with just the R-2000 and the Qs alone, or the Nikko and one pair of 7s added to it. The only thing I changed (as a possible remedy) was to get rid of the Y split (as mentioned above).

Adding the sub (as the last component) may have made it worse - hard to tell. Maybe it’s just not the right sub. I feel like when I listen very close to the sub, the same bass frequencies (let’s take a repeating bass line) sometimes don’t have consistent punch on the sub, they seem to cut in and out, as if the crossover can’t decide which way to send the signal. Am I just making this up…? Is it possible that, if the sub does have issues, that this would then translate negatively to the Qs (or even to the 7s)?

Is it worth to try to go back to single wiring for the Qs?
Is it a bad, broken sub?
Should I wire things differently?
Are the Qs not powerful enough to fill the main space?
Could the R-2000 have issues?
Or… am I just asking for too much?