New mod see below

OK, I am an experimenter when it comes to audio. I have already listed some inexpensive ways to make this sub sound better, and now here's another. Change the driver! Yes, it's not the way Sony would have intended things, but if your ultimate goal is the best sound for the price, then trust me, you'll appreciate the difference:

1. Go to partsexpress.com.
2. In the upper left corner where it gives you the box to type in a part number, enter 299-114. This is an Ultimate 12" shielded driver.
3. Read the description (it's actually a POLY cone, not paper as they have listed)
4. BUY IT! For $25 US dollars, it's a steal! And just for the hell of it, tell'em I sent you.

And now for the bad news. It's not an exact fit! It's just a little too big. So, I used a Dremel tool with a rotory drum sanding bit to make the opening bigger. A file with a curved edge will also do nicely. Not much needs to be shaved away, and then it will fit. Also, use the screws they send you, as the have more gripping power (yes, you'll need to make new screw holes as well).

And now the good news - you'll be rewarded with louder, cleaner, DEEPER, more articulated bass, and less "boom box" sound. Yes, I hate to admit it, but "The ears" was right, even just a driver can make a huge difference in sound quality. Oh well, he's still a self serving show off, and I would love to see the expression on his face when he discovers that Canadian Bacon is really just ham.

Anyway, what cemented it for me was chapter 4 on Independence Day ID4. It shows a sattalite moving across the screen, and running into the large alien ship. With the old driver, there was an annoying tympani type boom-boom-boom as it got to the center of the picture. After putting in the new driver, it's all but gone.
Also, listening to track two of Bjork's Post album ("Hyper Ballad") the driver goes much deeper and cleaner than before. On Soul Coughing's first album, Ruby Vroom, The bass line is much cleaner and articulated.

All in all, it was a cheap way to improve the sound of this unit. At $25, I would think any owner of the sub could afford the upgrade. This & some time invested in making the hole bigger will pay off big time.

Craig

RuMBlEs LOUD for home theater.
A awesome subwoofer for the price.
And of course it plays deep with super clean bass

WOW what a sub for the price it rumbles so loud for home theater and goes so deep with super clean bass, this subwoofer is a bargain at $199.
Went over some movies like Titam AE and the house was shaking and my room was filled with super powerfull loud bass that rumbles through out the house.
great sub for a great price

Similar Products Used:

Cerwin Vega LW-12, JBL PB12

price

styling,Grill vibrates

I like this sub for movie watching, but it can be shut off with little detectable change in sound when listening to music at high volume.(I am using it with a sony receiver 100 wats per ch. hooked to a pair of JBL Decades D315 250 watt 15" woofers)
The grill has to be removed or it vibrates somthing fierce.
Overall I think it is a great value for the price. If home theater is the purpose you'll like it. If music is the purpose make sure you don't have to much system for it.

Similar Products Used:

none

Output levels from the 28Hz to 50Hz range are awesome.
Solid clean bass, deep & loud.

Not the best sub for music

First i have to say that this sub is amazing!!!.
My wife got me this sub for my birthday and when i got the raping paper of and saw the sony logo on it i said to myself huuu great a peice of crap sony ( i was wishing she would have gotton the Klipsch KSW-12 but nooooooo she got a SONY )
Well i was pissed of a bit so i hooked it up and poped in Titan A.E and all the suden it hit me in the chest & made my stomach feel funny, the bass output was intense ( to tell you the truth i was shooked at the output levels ) anyways the first few seconds of the bass it gave me goosebumbs.
I went threw my hole collection of DVD's like ( Blade, Toy Story 2, X-Men, U-571, gone in 60 seconds ) and all of the bass flew bye without any stain.
What i was relly shooked about was the SPL this sub was doing so i ran down to radio shack and bought a SPL meter and i took it home and ran my Avia bass test cd disk and put the subs volume to max and ran it through a 20Hz tone, there was not that much going on at 20Hz but i fliped a few tracks to the 25Hz tone and boy there was lots of stuff going on.
I messured 93dB @ 25Hz at my sitting spot.
I fliped to the 30Hz test tone and i got 105dB & a 35Hz test tone i got 107dB.
That is verry verry good for a sub that cost $199.
Many people dont know that the subwoofers in the town theaters drop off around 35Hz to around 30Hz and the SPL that reach your ear ( if your sitting in the middle of the theater you would hear something like 35Hz @115dB or 30Hz @ 110dB.
I found that the sony sub played cleaner then the town theaters.
The reason the Sony is so boomy for music is that inside of the Amp on the sony there is a built in equalizer & built in bass boost to help the sub get more low end bass out of a small enclosure.
I did some expairaments with the sub.
I took out the driver & i covered the walls of the inside of the cabinet with polyfill i then made a port that i could attach to the port inside of the cabinet.
I made the port and extra few inches longer i then put the driver back on the cabinet and i played some bass tones.
The sub played even deeper when i made the port longer ( which is called fine tuning )
But when i made the port longer it could not go as loud i tested the 30Hz test tone again and it reached only reached 99dB but the sub played a hell of a lot deeper.
-----------------------------------------------
For people who only use this sub for home theater and are looking for a bit more cleaner bass dont stuff the whole cabinet full of polyfill just staple some polyfill to the inside walls of the cabinet it helps out alot more.

Similar Products Used:

JBL PB12, Klipsch KSW-12, Cerwin Vega LW-12

Very Cheap. Good sound.

Not a lot of defination

Seems we have some real reviews and some sony haters out there. I will try to give a real review to anyone who is looking to purchase this.

This sub is very cheap for what you get. It sounds very good for apartment listening (where you don't have it turned up to full along with your receiver). The bass is deep and the sound is good.

The only real downside is the sub gets a little "loose" when really going. Many people have suggested doing some simple mods that make it sound much better...I haven't tried this yet. You definetly get your money's worth on this sub, because for $199, where else can you get a sub that is this good?

This guy named the "Ear"...sounds like he is 12 year's old....he only rips on the Sony by naming off Subs that cost more than most people's complete system. This is ridiculous. If you can afford an $1,000+ sub, you probably wouldn't be looking for a review under Sony, nor would you want to hear a comparision between the two. I'm not going to tell you that a Accord sucks because there are Ferraris and Lamborghinis on the road...

If you are looking for a good sounding sub for your apartment or dorm room, you can't go wrong with this one.

Similar Products Used:

Kenwood (don't know the model)

Earth shattering base. You can feel it in your chest, because it vibrate your ribs.

Paper cone which can cause distortion when stressed

First of all, if you are an millionaire, and you have money to throw away, and brand name clothes is all you wear, don't come here. This is a site for the rest of us.

I like to thank the creator of this site, and the sister sites that allow people to voice their opinion on different categories of products, so we can all be smarter, informed consumers. The sites' creators are doing us a favor, and perpetuating the internet as a media for people to speak their mind freely. I believe that through making smart buying choices, we, as consumers, can encourage manufacturers to make better products and charge reasonable prices.

I found the best way to use this site is to sort the products by rating. A product that has a high rating, and a great number of people has given their opinions means it is a pretty safe bet. A product that has few opinions means that the rating may not be as accurate. To top it off, if a popular and highly rated product is also low in price, this has got to be a winner, and the manufacturer should be rewarded as such, by natural selection. This is Darwinism at work in a capitalistic society. For those who trash post (send their opinion more than once) this site to try to skew the ratings, they should be ashame of themselves. They are doing a great dis-service to humanity. A person who judge a product solely by its brand name and price is just plain ignorant, and deserves only to live in dark ages.

This Sony Subwoofer is a great product and cheap too. It is no wonder they can't make enough to satisfy the demand. I was in this site by chance. I was really looking for a car, and found that there was also a sister site for rating audio equipment. I bought a Sony Subwoofer and I was really impressed by the sound quality.

Human audible hearing is capable of frequencies between 30 Hz and 13,000 Hz. This Sony speaker is capable of going to 20 Hz. Some poeple said that the speaker is boomy. I think that I need to add some explanation here. Placement of subwoofer is critical. If you put a subwoofer too close to the wall, the sound wave bouncing off the wall could add a ghost signature to the sine wave, causing the sound to become adulterated, resulting in the boomy effect. This is true for any speakers, even if you have a thousand-dollar speaker. Have you ever been in a high fidelity show room that has sound deadening covering on the walls. They are there to absorb the rearward firing sound waves that can create mutiples (noice in a signal) which make the sound muddy. For someone who has not tried to deaden this echoing effects off the wall, or played with the placement of the subwoofer, to say that the Sony subwoofer is boomy is NOT being fair.

Further, the source of the sound is important to what you can hear. There is common saying, "Trash in, trash out". If you have a bad recording, you will get a boomy sound. If you don't have Dolby digital sound source, your rating of this speaker can NOT be trusted. You need Dolby Digital equipment and Dolby Digital Sound Source to fully appreciate this subwoofer. Dolby Digital and DTS are recordings that have six discrete channels of music. One of the channel is dedicated to recording untra-low frequency which is fed to the subwoofer through a Dolby Digital receiver decoder. If you listen to any other kinds of music source (Dolby Prologic, Dolby Surround, stereo), you can't expect the same result as Dolby Digital or DTS. Dolby Digital use a digital compression of 12 to 1, and DTS uses a digital compression of 2:1. This explains why DTS movies usually has better sound quality and more expensive.

If you have a dolby digital receiver, the receiver has bandpassed a part of the frequency bandwidth for the subwoofer, and leaves the rest of the frequency bandwidth for the regular speakers (center, left, right, rear left, rear right). My receiver sends all frequencies below 100 Hz to the subwoofer, and all higher frequencies to the regular speakers. I left the dial at the max. It won't hurt anything. It does not get anything higher than 100 Hz, and it won't reproduce them, that's all. It is better for you to keep your cut-off frequency dial on the Sony Subwoofer to the maximum setting. This allows all the frequencies which belong to the subwoofer to come through and you get a smoother sine wave (no drop-offs). By artificially messing with the dial, you are not being fair to the subwoofer or your receiver because you are not hearing the whole frequency spectrum. Again, people who play with the frequency dial may run the risk of not doing this subwoofer justice.

The only dial you should adjust is the volume dial. You can adjust this to you own taste, the environment, or how dominant you wife is.

Similar Products Used:

AR, JBL subwoofers.

This sub has great sound, lows, and detail. It goes so loud it shakes the house and your bones.

None

I think that those people writing reviews for this site who slam this product the snobish group who consider themselves "audiophiles," a type of person who is never happy with any audio product, ever. They criticize a lot, and I imagine they enjoy very little of anything.

This the 2nd Sony SA-WM40 I have bought. I was so very impressed with the 1st one. One of its nice features that no one mentions is that these subs have an audio out put so you can daisy-chain as many of them together as you want.

They are easy to install, and easy to place for good sound. The bass is great down as low as I can hear, and one of them fills a large living room with sound and rattles everything. Gee, what do you imagine a 2nd do?

I think the "audio-fools" ought to realize that 99% of us are very happy with less expensive systems that produce good sound without having to put out $5,000 to impress everyone with our "good taste."

I've got a system with Klipsch Quintet Surrounds I got for $365 at Ebay, and two of these Sony subs for $135 each at Ebay, along with a Pioneer VSX-D409 receiver I got for $165 and my system will blow you away. That comes to $799 without shipping. Pretty darn good. So audiofools, blow away and bother us normally satisfied people no more.

Similar Products Used:

Pioneer, Aiwa, Bose

Jason's recommendation to stuff the cabinet with polyfill is a good one. I was not happy with this sub's performance for music and stuffed the cabinet also. This brought the level of performance for music closer to that of my main speakers. There are alot of people who recommend setting all speakers to small in a home theater, but I was never able to do this because of the Sony's boominess during music reproduction. Now the sub sounds much better, both for music and movies. I still like to keep the mains set to large, and copy the bass from the mains to the sub. All other speakers are set to small.

Tight, clean Bass. Bang for the buck!!!!

Rather unatractive

I agree with the previous post. John is really Greg. Check out the writing styles and lack of capitalization. I also think if you live in Knoxville, you'd know how to spell it.

It is anyone's guess as to what motivates people to trash a good product. I love mine and would recommend it to anyone, regardless of budget. Why spend a fortune, if you don't have to? For value, I'd give it ten out of five if the system would let me.

Similar Products Used:

None

THIS IS AN UPDATE OF A PREVIOUS POST.
Breaks in well.

For the price, none.

It's really sad that some reviewers simply attempt to trash a good thing. Perhaps they are jealous because they spent a ton more cash for a mediocre sub. Either way, it's really childish. The ratings on this sub would be much higher if it weren't for the idiots posting multiple trash posts. Just look and see for yourself.

I have owned this Sony for about 4 days now, and I am thrilled. I have run it for at least 10-15 hours, and it is sounding even better all of the time as it breaks in. It is keeping up with my paradigms at a much better rate now that it's breaking in, and I now opt to leave it on when listening to music too. Read down and you'll find that I commented about leaving it off for straight music listening. Not any more.

I guarentee you cannot go wrong with this sub for the cost! I just lay in my living room and listen like a wide-eyed child!

I fluxuate my settings depending on what I listen to, but usually the volume level on the sub is somewhere around half, and the crossover knob is set around 2/3'rds of the way. I have the switch set to "reverse". My room is "L" shaped, and the sub is right about where the inside bend of the "L" shape is. It's nestled tight between my entertainment center, the wall behind, and a small wall-jut that sticks out about a foot on the right side. I think this tight area is why the "reverse" setting works best. I have now settled to keep my Onkyo TXDS-575 with all speaker settings to "small".

This sub is an EXTREMELY good buy, and if you don't like it, chances are you can take it back to wherever you bought it from for a full refund. But give it 10-15 hours of work first, as it improves dramatically -- not that it was ever bad to start with.

So those stupid idiots like the guy who trash-posted below shouldn't complain. They either don't know what the heck they're doing or they REALLY know what they are doing and they're jealous/scared of the tremendous value offered by this sub. Some people just aren't happy seeing happy people who didn't have to blow $500+ to get good quality sound.

So you can kiss my butt, and count me with the MULTIPLE positive reviews on here -- I'm thrilled beyond all expectation!

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UPDATE OF POST BELOW