my parents have a Bose lifestyle 5.1 all inclusive system. i want to replace only the AV receiver in the system, keeping the speakers and hopefully subwoofer. the problem is since they've bought into the bose ecosystem, everything is proprietary.
the receiver connects to the subwoofer - and only the subwoofer, it doesn't connect to the speakers directly - by a proprietary "Bose Link" cable. it's actually just a Mini DIN 9-pin connector, with a nonstandard pinout and a $60 pricetag. each speaker is wired to the subwoofer through a two-wire cable that ends in a generic RCA plug which plugs into the subwoofer, and then their signals go through the proprietary bose cable to the receiver.
what i want to do is hack off those RCA plugs and then plug the speaker wire directly into a new receiver. is this possible? the negative of the speaker wire should be connected to the outer ring part of the RCA plug, and the positive should be connected to the center pin, so it should be pretty easy to remove the plugs and label the wire + and - myself and run that to the new receiver. copper is copper, so this should work at least in theory, no?
and if this is true, then the same should be possible of the sub and its bose link connector. i found a diagram online that says the RCA signal and ground should be pins 3 and 4, or 5 and 9. i can get a multimeter on amazon for under 20 bucks, can i somehow connect that to the bose link connector wiring while the system is powered on, and find the sub pos and neg with the multimeter?
or can i just use a 3.5mm to RCA cable to output music from my phone and test it by connecting the copper from the bose link cable directly to the RCA output? i know the center pin of RCA should go to pos, and outer ring should go to neg. to find pos and neg i can try switching the copper cable from pin to pin and back and forth from RCA ground and pin. shouldn't take too long, but does this risk damaging the sub? especially since it won't be through a crossover, will the sub be trying to produce high frequency sound and blow itself up? or will it just not make noise since it'll be going through the puny headphone amp of my phone?
thanks in advance.
the receiver connects to the subwoofer - and only the subwoofer, it doesn't connect to the speakers directly - by a proprietary "Bose Link" cable. it's actually just a Mini DIN 9-pin connector, with a nonstandard pinout and a $60 pricetag. each speaker is wired to the subwoofer through a two-wire cable that ends in a generic RCA plug which plugs into the subwoofer, and then their signals go through the proprietary bose cable to the receiver.
what i want to do is hack off those RCA plugs and then plug the speaker wire directly into a new receiver. is this possible? the negative of the speaker wire should be connected to the outer ring part of the RCA plug, and the positive should be connected to the center pin, so it should be pretty easy to remove the plugs and label the wire + and - myself and run that to the new receiver. copper is copper, so this should work at least in theory, no?
and if this is true, then the same should be possible of the sub and its bose link connector. i found a diagram online that says the RCA signal and ground should be pins 3 and 4, or 5 and 9. i can get a multimeter on amazon for under 20 bucks, can i somehow connect that to the bose link connector wiring while the system is powered on, and find the sub pos and neg with the multimeter?
or can i just use a 3.5mm to RCA cable to output music from my phone and test it by connecting the copper from the bose link cable directly to the RCA output? i know the center pin of RCA should go to pos, and outer ring should go to neg. to find pos and neg i can try switching the copper cable from pin to pin and back and forth from RCA ground and pin. shouldn't take too long, but does this risk damaging the sub? especially since it won't be through a crossover, will the sub be trying to produce high frequency sound and blow itself up? or will it just not make noise since it'll be going through the puny headphone amp of my phone?
thanks in advance.