Must I run the Neutrik cables all the way back to my amp? I’m going to look into a pair of 2 meter cables if this is a possibility. Thanks for the input.
If it is a Class D amp then you would almost certainly not be connecting a sub high level input to the output terminals, but between one of them and the chassis. The 3-wire Neutrik cable is supposed to connect to the two active terminals of a stereo amp, with a single ground return, but it seems that you want to use each sub for one channel only. I have no direct experience of doing this, so I can only conjecture that one would connect both of the ‘non-black’ leads to a speaker terminal, and the black one to the other. To a simple non-audiophile this is electrically equivalent to connecting at the amp output apart from the tiny voltage drop across the speaker wires. In some ways it might actually be better because you are sensing what the speaker receives, I will be interested in the response from someone with practical experience. Once again, do not try it if you have a Class D amp.
I wish you would ask REL this question and report back here what they tell you. I have wondered about this myself. I have custom cables made for mine, each positive lead is connected to one banana, and the negative lead to the other. I hook them directly up to my amp and wonder why I couldn’t connect up to the speakers instead. (And yeah, they are Class D amps, the actual Amp designer was standing next to me when I asked him how to hook up my REL subs)
I connect them to my speaker terminal. Too much work running them to the amp. Works fine for me.
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I did ask REL tech support. I’m still awaiting a response via email which I will post here.
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I am thinking you are connecting only black and red wires to each stereo speaker and Neutrik to the high level on the RELs? No grounding issues noticed?
I have a pair of Rels, so I connected both red and yellow (tied together) and black as well for each sub, just like I would at the amp terminals. No grounding issue.
No. I run it from the speaker to ensure the sound characteristic of the speaker cable is factored in. It’s still a problem point that my Neutrik cable is different from my speaker cables, but I doubt I’ll fix that.
If your amplifier is the differential type, don’t hook up the negative. I have differential monoblocks to two RELs.
I bond the two positive lines in the Neutrik together and hook it up to my speaker positive terminal. The negative is taped and floating.
My monos need a resistor network to ground the output amp terminals when they power down to prevent hum that I bought from REL. Alternatively, you could build one yourself.
Ok, I just received my answer from REL tech support on this question:
Thank you for contacting us. When using a stereo pair of subwoofers, their High Level cables can either be connected to the output terminals on your amplifier or to the binding posts on the back of the corresponding loudspeaker. As long as you are using reasonable-quality speaker cable either option will work equally well.
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YES!
I’ve been curious about this, too, and it would make my connection soooo much easier.
Currently my REL’s are connected via RCA to the integrated amp’s subwoofer outputs, and I’ll admit it sounds fine in my system. I wanted to test the Speakon connections off the amp’s speaker terminal just to compare, but it’s a fairly long cable run from the amp, through some walls and under trim, etc…
But the subs are close enough to the main speakers that the jumper option would be great.
The other thing I was tempted to try, because the RCA’s are already in place, was to get an RCA-to-Speakon adapter for the Sub end (and an RCA to bare wire for the amplifier end), simply to use the existing RCA cables.
But this seems a bit wonky/janky/mcgyver’d, so the jumper idea is really desirable.