A good-sounding crossover, for the price.

Quite poorly-built, for the price.

I bought this to replace an Audiocontrol Richter Scale crossover, which was also a 24db/octave Linkwitz-Riley crossover (which, as far as I know, is by far the best type). I was a bit skeptical that HSU's box was truly "high end", but, it does seem to deliver on the sound quality. I expected most of my improvement to come in the low-end, since this product was optimized (read: equalized and subsonic filtered) for the HSU TN-series subs that I already owned. I was pleasantly surprised the the highs showed the biggest improvement, compared to my older crossover. This may be due to the HSU's all-descrete (no op-amps) high-pass section. The bass was also good, once I dialed-down my temptation to crank the HSU's low-pass gain-control too high. I'd suggest using a test CD to flatten your system out by ear (what else matters?), then using the bass control on your receiver or amplifier to adjust for different recordings. Of course, subwoofer placement is important as well. The downside is the build quality, which is deplorable. A peek inside the shabby little case revealed numerous modifications, like wire jumpers and resistors stretched across spaces to reach places not intended-for in the original design. I realize they're trying to keep costs down, and I realize that other "high end" crossovers can cost $thousands, but maybe they should bite the bullet and get a new PCB layed-out. Plus, the power supply is a permanently-attached wall-wart. I also recieved no manual of any sort - not even a sheet of paper. Hmm... I give a 4 overall, because it has good transparent sound quality, and that's the most important thing.

Similar Products Used:

Audiocontrol Richter Scale