sattelites and sub from Logitech Z-5500 used with receiver

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Hello everyone,
I'm daring to post my question here, because on these forums I have found a topic about a hack to get the Logitech Z-5500 speaker system to work without it's control pod.
My scenario is different though.
I want to upgrade from this speaker system and I have a chance now, because my current control pod has a issue and I will be sending it back to Logitech and in return they will send a new box with speakers+control pod (basically a new set). Because of this I will still have my old speakers.
I'm planning to sell the box I will be receiving and then buy a Yamaha or Pioneer receiver.
But I won't have money to buy stand-alone speakers at that time and I was thinking to try and use the speakers that I have from my old Logitech set with a receiver.
I'm sure there won't be any problems using the satellites, but the subwoofer has the amp built in and I will have to open it up to do a wiring job (bypass it or perhaps even remove the amp, unless I can find a way to use it with the receiver I will buy).
I was wondering if anyone ever attempted to do all this and if there are any suggestions on how to do certain things.
Later on I will start buying stand-alone speakers and get rid of the Logitech ones, but I can't do all this now, so I need to find a way to get this working.

I have searched this forum and Googled this scenario but I couldn't find anything related to it.

Mods I am not sure if i posted this in the right section, if that is the case I apologize. Feel free to move it where it should be.

Thank you.
 
From the looks of things you supply power to the sub woofer unit.

Then you plug the wire from the control unit into the sub.

This would appear to provide power to the control unit and allows it to function.

The control unit looks like it contains all the fancy processing stuff. In other words you feed it the direct digital signal from the sound card and it decodes it into the 6 separate channels.

After the 6 channels have been decoded the line level (low level) signal is sent from the control unit to the sub woofer via the thick cable.

The sub woofer would appear to contain all the amplification. After the line level signal has been sent to the sub, it amplifies them to drive the loudspeakers. You then plug the loudspeakers into the phono sockets located on the sub's back panel and away you go.

This looks like how the entire thing functions. What I don't know is how much the control unit 'controls' the entire system. For example can it initiate standby mode within the sub? IE powering down all the amplification? Or to put it another way, is the sub dependant on some external control to bring it online? Is the crossover done within the control unit, or are the filters pre selected inside the sub?

From a simple point of view you'd do something like this.

Take the digital output from the sound card and feed it into the digital input on receiver. The receiver will then decode the digital signal into 6 analogue channels. Five of them will then be amplified inside the receiver and the five logitech speakers will be attached accordingly.

This leaves the sub woofer's signal, which wont be amplified inside the receiver. This will stay as a low level signal, expecting to be plugged into a sub with internal amplification, which you already have.

At least from a technical point of view that's what you have. The hard part is figuring out what you need to do to the electronics inside the sub to make it operate without the control unit. But also figure out where you can feed the low level signal from the receiver such that the sub operates.

I'd guess that you might need the receiver to do all the work with regards to the crossover between the satellite speakers and the sub also.

None of this is definite as I'm only guessing after looking at a few pictures of the system from google. I reckon it'd be rather 'simple' to do providing you know what you're doing. However if you don't then I wouldn't even try as the internal voltages can be lethal. Not only this, if you did something wrong you could potentially damage the unit irreparably or even worse damage the receiver. I'd guess though that it could all be done with just two or perhaps three of the pins in the control unit's cable.

The simplest/safest way, would be to buy a powered subwoofer to use with the receiver and the logitech satellite speakers. Then set the receiver to handle all the processing and set the main speaker size to small.
 
Yes, you are right.
The control pod is an audio receiver without an amplifier, so it controls everything.
I will definitely try 1st to use the sub with it's built-in amplifier.
What I was wondering is, if I cannot do that, will a stand-alone receiver be able to drive (amplify signal for) the sub, without an extra amplifier?
Cause if it can do that I will be ok for a while with the setup.

Another question that I have is about the satellites and sub's OHM specification. I guess the speakers will have to match the receiver I will buy..
 
Thanks Khron, I saw that thread. I will be using the information from there to get my sub working with the receiver.
I bought a Pioneer receiver yesterday and installed it with the satellites from the Logitech system. All working great for now..
Now I need to hook up my sub and it's amp to the receiver but it's going to be tricky.. I hope I won't burn anything ...:D

P.S. I'm also originally from Romania ;)
 
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