Acoustic Audio PSW400-10 Home Theater Powered 10" LFE Subwoofer Black Front Firing Sub,400 Watts

For this price point, I had my doubts. I'm an audiophile, and musician/producer/composer. I geek out on audio equipment a LOT. This replaced a Yamaha subwoofer that finally stopped working. I love a lot of Yamaha's electronics, so this subwoofer here was a budget decision.Fortunately, thus far, it does the job very well for this particular room it's in. As good...maybe better than...the Yamaha. It is a bigger sub, so that helps. But the features and setup seem very good.

The high output is not a bass output but rather is designated right and left speakers and is high pass filtered to match with the bass speaker at reference volumes, being ten more decibels to the bass speaker than the side speakers lower frequencies, but not separately adjustable. The only adjustment is a "gain" labeled knob. Thus, one gain controls all volume levels from the output, base and side speakers at the same time. The bass doesn't sound like a 500 watt system. I think it might be totaled with the side channels, each of them being around 90 to100 watts, leaving around 300 watts to the bass channel and speaker. So, if that's all you use, the bass, you shouldn't expect this to be 500 watts, Secondly, watts is bullshit if it means "peak power" instead of RMS. I'm calling bull on the 500 watts, I won't ever believe it's RMS. I believe it to be Chinese advertising. How powerful is it? It compares well and sounds terrific at very low or very high volumes paired with my Onkyo TX-8140 which is driving 8 ohm speakers around 110 watts max. Its aux left and rignt aux line outs are hooked together and sent to this subwoofer for subwoofer only, without the side speaker outlets hooked up. I don't use them.This is tunable enough to send more midrange than you would want through the bass speaker, up to 140, and the cutoff is also tunable far lower than I'd ever want to use. I think for home theater munitions booms, if you want that, like maybe for theater or for gaming. The high power outputs put out nothing under midrange, being filtered very effectively for high pass only, against bass contamination. The bass is remarkably clear and distortion free. It pairs well with a music system running 100 watts RMS over an 8 ohm stereo system. I can't speak for the side channels clarity or quality as I've not used them, but if they are as good as the bass, then this is an excellent gem of a component, but is not a standalone 500 watt bass amp, with 500 watts of bass. Less bass than that.

I bought this from Amazon warehouse at a lower price and saw absolutely no issues with the appearance. I've been building a budget 5.1 solution for a small apartment living room. Highly recommend the micca rb42x series (also refurbished). I was looking at subwoofer solutions under $150. After reading many positive reviews on the theater solutions subwoofers, I started looking through the 10 through 15 inch options. I wouldn't doubt if acoustic audio and theater solutions are the same parent company just throwing different logos on the box. Digging through both companies options for Amazon warehouse deals, I settled on the 10 inch front firing from acoustic audio because it just happened to work out that way.I appreciate the input options and ability to daisy chain signal if you wanted to expand down the line.The sub will power on and off with the receiver if you actually set the power switch to the center option of "auto", not sure why people are having problems understanding that.I would personally get a new set of RCAS, or at least the splitter if you're needing to use it, because that item seems pretty cheap and can cause humming problems if it's not aligned perfectly. The male end that goes into the receiver is relatively loose, but if you use speaker wire or LFE hookups, this isn't an issue.This item fills the low and mid-low range if all you have is small bookshelves in the front. If you've got towers with 6.5" or larger woofers, you might want to step up to a 12 or 15" to fill the low end a bit better.I might end up getting a matching 15" to daisy chain to round out the low end, setting this 10" at a higher crossover freq to help blend the mid-bass and set the 15" for the sub-45hz freq. This setup adds more flexibility and range for less than a single higher end sub. If you've got the space, I'll always recommend multiple budget subs vs one more expensive sub.Overall, not mad at this purchase at all.

I live in an apartment but also wanted to add some more low end to my HiFi system. I thought the best way to start would be with a smaller subwoofer due to space limits and not wanting to bother my neighbors. It came double boxed and in good shape. Only a minor cosmetic issue on the front upper left where the vinyl wrap is slightly bubbled. It seemed decently well built and I tested a couple of locations for it. I was very impressed with how something so small could really make the low end feel more full! I was looking for something that was subtle and blended in nicely and this did the trick. It just sounds like my speakers did deeper, which is what I wanted. It’s been great for music and films. I connected it up using the sub out on my Yamaha AS-801 into the LFE port on the sub. I do appreciate that is has speaker level ins and outs so that people with more basic amps or who want to use the sub for some bass management can. I’ll likely one of the models in this line for my sister at some point since her amp has no sub or pre outs. In summary, this is exactly what I needed for my system.