Price, depth, tight sound

Distortion at high volumes(don't push it)

This is a good sub. It's fairly thight for a bass reflex design, plays loud, deep and the price is right. The only negative when you turn the volume too high for that "little extra" impact! It get distorted very badly. Up to that distortion point the sub behaves very well but, there is no middle ground. It either sounds very good or very bad. This won't make your movies rattle the widows. It will give a big boost to bookshelf sized main speakers and bring fullrange sound to your music and movies.

Similar Products Used:

most all subs from polk, energy and M&K

Excellent capability for the money (even Canadian money for those Americans and Canadians who mock the exchange rates, lol) in both response and quality, good value, positional sound based on room size and shape / listener's discretion / building materials, so can't really comment there tho it works well for me, good i/o selection, easy to use knobs on front, and looks great especially cover off with silvery cone and the blue LED glowing away ;)

Sub Level adjustement knob on front seems a little too slight in affecting the output, but after it goes up past the halfway mark it increases too much, in my opinion, also no spiked feet on mine, so obviously minor drawbacks here...

I purchased the Energy S10.2 after looking at (and trying) a Celestion 8" subwoofer from the same store. I found that it didn't even come close to filling my family room with the deep, rich bass that I wanted... so, I picked up the S10.2 as a replacement and took the Celestion back. The setup I have is as follows... RCA 5x100W RMS amp (model number unavailable at time of review writing) Prolinear PL5.6T Mains (towers, 6.5" cone) Prolinear PL5.5C Center (dual 4" cones) Prolinear PL5.5B Surround (x2, single 4" cones) Energy S10.2 Subwoofer I have run Dolby Surround / Digital / DTS sound thru this setup, and it sounds great. The subwoofer rumbles nice and low, and hits a nice frequency level on bass tests that you may not expect froma 10", but would of a 12" or easily a 15". The Audio versus Video switch on the front gives little difference to the sound quality on some types of music, but the effect is noticed on others. Video settings seem to give a push to the explosion and jet rumbles of military movies, but seem to not affect much in the way of standard movies or a lot . However, the sound is all in the ear of the beholder, so I can't say any more than try it and see what you think. I found that letting it sit about a foot and a half or 2 feet out of the corner of the room I'm in gives a good response, and seems to be fairly even down the spectrum. Bass tests reveal exactly where this sub's peaks are for response, and it takes quite a bit to get it to whiff at lower freqs, but these are ones not commonly noticed so it won't really matter, unless one specifically lives and dies on bass tests (in which case why go for a 10" when a 15" would do you better?). As far as music response, everything from Enya's "May It Be" and Sarah Mclachlan right on down to Nickelback and The Crystal Method (almost anything if you listen to them and know the type of music, lol) sound like new tracks on this sub. The aforementioned Enya track actually has a slight bass note to it that even my $55 Koss earbuds wouldn't pick up, and anything by The Crystal Method is guaranteed to rock the house (as well as anything precariously balanced on shelves, etc). All in all, I haven't heard a better sub for the money, for pretty much any size. Unless you are able to find a massive 12" or 15" on the auction block at half price, I don't think you'll find better.

Similar Products Used:

Klipsch / JBL / Celestion / RCA / Technics (note: not all used personally, some are friends' units that we compared one on one with)