Can a subwoofer be hooked up in Series with speakers?

Hey guys,
I have an arcade machine which inside has 4 speakers and a subwoofer.
Durring the moving of the machine, the subwoofer broke loose along with
its wires and I cant exactly figure out where it hooked into. Can
subwoofers be hooked in series or parallel with speakers or do they
need some special connection for them?

 

Depends. If it has its own filter/crossover, it can probably be put
in parallel (not series). Otherwise, not.

Kal

 

Dual coil?

N

 

Kal- How do I tell if it has its own filter/crossover?
N- What is Dual Coil?

 

A dual coil subwoofer has four speaker terminals, two left, two right.

N

 

You look for it or for printing on the outside which indicates it.
If you do not know what/how, find a local who does.

Kal

 

Well it only has 2 terminals on it so I guess its not dual coil. The
label on it is almost all gone.. all I can see is that it says its an
8ohn subwoofer. Will hooking this in parallel hurt anything even if its
not designed to be in parallel?

 

Don't do it. Better to do without. Wait until you find an expert or a
manual.

N

 

It depends on the existing speakers and amp. If the existing speakers are
8 ohms and the amp says it can drive 4 ohm ones, then two 8 ohm speakers
in parallel give 4 ohms. Approximately. Since no two different speakers
are uniform 4 ohms across their range.

However, the normal way to drive a sub is to take a feed from both left
and right via a pair of buffer amps and parallel them. Then have a
separate low pass power amp for the sub to allow it to be adjusted to suit
room acoustics and your main speakers, etc.