How to calculate resistance for a sub woofer


My 55 year old McIntosh MC-225 has speaker connections for 4, 8, or 16 Ohms. I use the standard speaker connections to connect to a Acoustech PL-200 subwoofer, which has in impedance of 8 Ohm. The PL-200 is connected to Focal 807v’s which are also 8 Ohm.
So what output should I use on the MC-225? I don’t know if the PL-200 connects to speakers in series or parallel (and the Acoustech support page doesn’t seem to work). Is there a standard way sub woofers work that I should assume?
I was using the 8 Ohm, but the amp died! Don’t know if this is related.
tommaster

Showing 1 response by millercarbon

The PL200 is powered. That means it uses its own circuit that first drops your speaker level input voltage down to line level. It does this with a resistor of usually 20k to 50k ohms. What this means in plain English it does not matter what tap that sub is connected to the amp does not even "see" that as a load it is irrelevant. So you can connect the sub to any tap it won't matter at all and you can forget about the sub.   

Connect the Focals to either the 8 ohm tap or if you want to compare then connect to whichever one sounds best. Which one it is connected to does not matter either, it is just there as a convenient way of getting the best sound from that amp when used with different speakers.