Passive monitor speakers.

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mikelov

mikelov

DJ
Feb 23, 2015
17
10
54
I bought a pair of speakers from a guy on Craigslist. Got home and hooked them up to my stereo and only one worked. The one that has the power cord and amp is not working. I tried to contact the guy I bought the speakers from, but no luck. I feel like I may have set them up wrong however, I may have been taken for a fool!

I'm looking for monitor speakers in the near future ... (hopefully not)
 
mikelov said:
I bought a pair of speakers from a guy on Craigslist. Got home and hooked them up to my stereo and only one worked. The one that has the power cord and amp is not working. I tried to contact the guy I bought the speakers from, but no luck. I feel like I may have set them up wrong however, I may have been taken for a fool!

I'm looking for monitor speakers in the near future ... (hopefully not)
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If you have a 'normal' stereo amp at home, you cannot hook powered speakers to it - you'll blow them up.

It sounds like both speakers are not the same? 'The one that has the power cord and amp'. What does the other one have? If your speaker has a power cord, it is a powered speaker.

Powered speakers are for line level sounds, because they have a built in amplifier. Passive speakers are for systems that already have an amplifier.
 
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I plugged it into my stereo and the stereo said "protect" and shut off. I believe I could of blown them up. The other speaker is connected to the power speaker via wire cord.

It makes sense now about the
speakers. I plugged them into my surround sound stereo.
 
mikelov said:
I plugged it into my stereo and the stereo said "protect" and shut off.
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This would be the stereos built in protection mechanism.

mikelov said:
I believe I could of blown them up.
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Quite possible

mikelov said:
The other speaker is connected to the power speaker via wire cord.
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If you have 2 powered speakers, then they will each require a power cord. You can't daisy chain one speaker to the other via wire cord.

mikelov said:
It makes sense now about the speakers. I plugged them into my surround sound stereo.
Click to expand...

Most home stereos have amplifiers built into them. You cannot plug powered speakers into these units.

To eliminate the guesswork here, what kind of speakers are these? Are they both the same?
 
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Only one speaker has the power cord. The other is its match but it's connect to the power speaker with speaker wire.
 
Any chance you can take a pic of front and back of those speakers and post it for us? I'm guessing you have one passive and one powered but the pics may be able to help us help you
 
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mikelov said:
Only one speaker has the power cord. The other is its match but it's connect to the power speaker with speaker wire.
Click to expand...

Are these computer speakers? To eliminate the guesswork here, what kind of speakers are these? Are they both the same? Can you post pics of them? What type of stereo did you plug them into?
 
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If only one had a cord, sound like they were designed to take a line level signal into the powered one and then probably a jumper to the unpowered one .. very similar to the way many PC speakers are set up for.
 
I think Mike said in an earlier post that he was just getting into DJing .. I assume this was an early experiment in what NOT to buy.
 
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Sorry for the delayed response. I do appreciate ya'll helping me find out what I did wrong. The guy I bought the speakers from said he used the speakers for editing on his apple.

Here are 2 pics. uploadfromtaptalk1425085927285.jpguploadfromtaptalk1425085955995.jpg
 
You won't be able to drive these from a speaker output .. you'd have to use a line output. Looking at a picture online, your receiver (the Sony) doesn't have any line outputs controlled by the volume control. The only line output is the R/L REC (record) out jacks on the back. You can use the level control on the speaker instead. The speaker cable hookup is ONLY to go from the right side powered speaker to the left side passive speaker .. not to hook up to an input.

So ... to use these (if they aren't blown) use a RCA stereo cable (2 RCA plugs each end) and go from the REC OUT (on the Rec/Tape pair of jacks) pair on the receiver to the Right/Left Input on the powered speaker .. then use the zip cord speaker wire to connect to the unpowered speaker.
 
You're awesome @steve149
I smelled something funky after I hooked the passive to the stereo. (Maybe be blown). Hopefully, I don't look too much like an amateur after this post.
 
In addition, these are 25W speakers. They wouldn't be good for anything other than house use as a top / mid driver .. or as a monitor in a studio.

For the future, if a speaker has a power cord, you can't hook it to something with an amplifier. Well, you can if you want to hear and smell funny things or make toast. Those fins on the back are another giveaway, though not all powered speakers have the fins. All of them WILL have power cords.

FWIW, you could have linked the OTHER speaker (the one without the power cord) to your stereo and it would have worked fine - until you hit 25W. You really should match your amplifier speaker requirements to the speakers.

If you decide to link your unpowered speaker to the amplifier, I would link it to either Front L or Front R. Surround channels are not the main speakers. That said, your system will support 6 speakers. 5 passive drivers and one active driver (subwoofer).
 
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mikelov said:
You're awesome @steve149
I smelled something funky after I hooked the passive to the stereo. (Maybe be blown). Hopefully, I don't look too much like an amateur after this post.
Click to expand...

We all got to learn somehow and sometime. The only dumb questions are the ones you don't ask ;)
 
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mikelov said:
You're awesome @steve149
I smelled something funky after I hooked the passive to the stereo. (Maybe be blown). Hopefully, I don't look too much like an amateur after this post.
Click to expand...
No worries .. we've all been there with something.
 
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I used to purposely blow old stereos and electronic stuff up cuz I liked that funky smell!

Click! ZZZZZ! Bang! ouch! oink! Ahhhhhhhh!
 
DJ TJ said:
I used to purposely blow old stereos and electronic stuff up cuz I liked that funky smell!

Click! ZZZZZ! Bang! ouch! oink! Ahhhhhhhh!
Click to expand...

Sounds like you should have recorded that and used it for samples.
 
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