Where to plug in subwoofers

[Calija]

Ive recently picked up a pair of studio monitors which sound amazing but while messing around with some eqing I found myself looking for a more prominent lowend and started looking for a subwoofer. Only issue is The only spot i could think to plug this into would be the headphone out on my audio interface. As someone with little experience with sound systems this seems like a reasonable solution without buying a new audio interface. Just wanted to make sure this wasnt some kind of cardinal sin that would make my house explode, or if there was a better option i just wasnt aware of.

 

[Winspear]

It would work ran like you said, but the mains would still have bass - you don't want that!
Most subwoofers have a built in filter and in-out jacks - you plug the LR main outputs from your interface to the subwoofer, it extracts the bass, and passes the highs onto your main speakers - plug the LR monitors into the subwoofer outputs.

 

[Calija]

It would work ran like you said, but the mains would still have bass - you don't want that!
Most subwoofers have a built in filter and in-out jacks - you plug the LR main outputs from your interface to the subwoofer, it extracts the bass, and passes the highs onto your main speakers - plug the LR monitors into the subwoofer outputs.

thank you for the help. I would need to buy a couple more cables to set that up so I wont do it right away but it will be high on the to do list.

 

[7deadlysins666]

A lot of them also include either a foot switch to turn the sub on/off or an input to add one later. Something to look for that is likely more useful than you'd think while mixing. About to add a sub to my rig as well!

 

[JimboLodisC]

yeah easiest path would be adding a powered sub that has a "thru" so you can run audio from interface to the sub and then forward that signal on to your studio monitors, and the sub should have some kind of low pass or crossover so it's not playing anything but low freq content

I'm at the other end of the difficulty spectrum currently, just ordered a rackmount PA amp with a low pass switch to push a couple of my old car audio subs, and having to deal with only two balanced outputs on my interface I had to buy a Behringer rack mixer since my studio monitors don't have a thru jack either... a lot of gear needed to get it up and running but should be a lot of power running two 12" speakers at 300W each... spent about $270 today and I still need cables to hook everything up