What are some tips for the best way to connect a REL Acoustics subwoofer high level?

When you get your new REL sub home, if it's not an HT model, if it's a TX and S a reference, you're going to see that it has this beautiful cable with a speakon on one end. This plugs in we'll come back to the speakon in a minute, and then you'll see three wires. Now, basic coding of life is that hot colors are hot.

0:30

That would be the red and the yellow and black is ground. Right. We deliver them exactly like this. I just took the bag off this two minutes ago. And you can see that we've actually pre-stripped this. Now this is not connected to an RCA. Just want to make very, very clear. This is a high level connection. All right.

High level, meaning it's coming off the binding posts on the back of your power amplifier. The purpose of this whole thing is to give the REL the same input signal, meaning the entire chain of custody, right? Sources, cables all the way through preempt amp, all of that. That's what we need to feed through to the REL.

1:00

So that it's dynamic and tonal signature is exactly what your speakers are being sent. We don't supply them with connectors. Why? Well, because five-way binding post vary so much. Some of them work brilliantly with bananas. Other ones work really well with spades. We don't know what you've got.

1:30

We don't know how much space you have, but what we do know is if we supply it with 22 gauge, really high quality copper, pre stripped. Now we start the stripping and I'm going to show you. There's a real pro tip here, everybody that gets these the first time he asked him off. Now you got two inches of copper that wants to fray and split and short, be very careful.

You do not want to have dead shorts happening. I'm going to show you and we may have to cut away here. Oh, this one's nice and smooth. You want to pull this back about half the distance. So you can see this red piece is about two inches, about 50 millimeters long.

2:00

We don't want to just pull that off. Want to leave that on. Why? Because what we're going to do is actually pull this over the connector and leave this on so that it remains an insulator. We're going to do this right now. I've just bent this into a little horseshoe, right? And I'm going to slip this over this connector right here. Just like this. We do this in the field all the time. Right, and then we snug this down really nice and tight.

2:30

There we go. Now we have a perfect really tight connection here and it can't short to anything. So if I then go for example and put on, do the same exact thing with the yellow and connect this up to this hot connector over here and repeat the process, these can't short. This is just an insulator, works brilliantly.

3:00

The other pro tip then is if your speaker cables are connected, for example spade, you would probably want to go with a banana for these. It's really important to understand you want to have a really good, solid, tight connection for your main speakers. If you're using spade, we recommend that when you go to connect the RELs up, you use a banana because that doesn't interfere with your primary connection. Conversely, this would be what I would do if the customer were using banana connectors for their speakers. That make sense?

3:30

So go with this connection. When you've got bananas that are your primary speaker to amplifier connection and go with the inverse, go with bananas on this anytime that you're dealing with somebody who's already got spades that are mounted hard, really nicely clamped down tightly at the amplifier for example.

[BaZzacRe]

Hey there John, im so glad i found this Video. It makes perfect sense now!
I just bought my T/7X (my very first Sub) and as i'm a music producer i just have one small Amp (Bryston 2B) and as i use Amphion One 18 Speakers, i dont listen really loud (therefore also my choice of the T7X). As i was confused on how to connect the Sub i wrote to Thomann the Music store before and the told me i should connect my Amp to the Sub and then Back to the Speakers, which is not possible with the T*X Subs so i was really confused how to do it. I thought i need to buy another Amp and connect this to the Sub but then how do i connect the out to the Sub and the AMP, Y-Split cable ?? etc etc but this Video man, the solution is so simple and easy that i would never thought of this. So thanks again you saved my day (and the money for another Amp :)

[srkgv]

Can you make a video for Rel Stereo Pair, how to connect.

[jon]

What about connecting to the Schiit Tyr? It’s a differential monoblock amplifier where both the positive and negative are hot.

[In-Rainbows]

Red should have gone to the right speaker terminal. Whoops!

[jmlaso]

Hi! If I use spades for the speakers, it's less recommended to use this way to connect my T5i to the speakers (LS50 Meta) instead of my amp?

[davidyan]

Hi REL, I would like know if I can simultaneously connect high level to a 2-channel amp, and the LFE to a separate AVR amp? So that the sub can do double duty, music and HT, but not both at the same time of course.

[chrisp]

I have an S/510 coming. My amp is a Moon 700i which is a fully balanced differential dual mono. Do I need to use one hot channel only or limited to RCA?

[awwbollocksthen]

I've been running both high-level and .1 LFE's on my stereo pair of T5i's, and after disconnecting the high-level connections to do some .1 LFE speaker levelling, I realised only one of the subwoofers was working! Which told me both subwoofer inputs are probably running parallel, meaning that both running the same way.
Even though my arcam avr20 apparently is able to do four independent subwoofer outputs, however that's with dirac live bass management! Perhaps when finances become available the Rel 3D HT will be for the near future. Therefore in the meantime I was wondering would be beneficial for my particular 5.2.4 setup to implement a Y-Splitter ?

Any advice would be appreciated! Cheers

[eladdaniels]

Hey 👋
I have a pair of wharfedale elysian 2 connect to audio analogue maestro anniversary amp.
Is the rel t9x or rel t7x will work good with this setup. I only hear music.
not for home cinema use.
🙏 thanks

[irunsanaxox]

does this work for lower powered amps? like 25 watts or is the amp in rel sub doing the lifting ?

[hkraytai]

My Arcam SA20 amp has a phono ground. Can I connect the black wire to it?

[iluxman]

I've tried all guides how to solve the humming sound from TZero Sub for my desktop hifi sytsem, but in vain! Rel seems to make thing complicated.
I've duo JL Audio Subs to mate with my Maggies 3.7 speakers, also connect high level input, without no problem at all.

[ArrogantBaSStard]

Are we okay cutting the cables if we have shorter runs? The included high level cables are pretty long.

[pedrovandeweghe]

Hi, my speakers are connect to the A- terminal of my amp. There's nothing connected to the B-terminal of my amp. Can i use the B-terminal to connect the sub cables? The signal should be the same...Or is there a specific reason that the sub has to be connected to the same terminal as the speakers?

[paulk]

Why is it that the cable is not supplied with the HT range? What do you supply with the Ht range speakers?

[jazzabana]

When r u guys gonna release new rels with the phone app?😅

[alexpal]

How are we gonna high pass speakers when we connect subs to high level input

[Peter-znus]

Where do you connect the other end with a black cap it didn't look like a RCA male

[Leo-ynfx]

i still don't understand this. Where is the speaker cables from the speakers themselves going to if you're already connecting to the binding posts? Basically if you wrap those wires(from the high level input) around the two binding posts, and you're using banana plugs for speaker cables, you still plug all 4 in? Call me dumb but isn't that a bit hazardous to share one post with 2 cables? I'm lost.

[darrenchase]

Confused, why don't you just set your speakers to small like audioholics recommend no you just marketing something your know for subwoofers but not loudspeakers that's the difference