Pol PSW10 Subwoofer Review

[yepimonfire]

SPECS:
Dynamic Power 100 watts
Continuous Power 50 watts
Overall Frequency Response 35Hz - 200Hz
Crossover
(subwoofer) variable 80Hz - 160Hz
Inputs Speaker level, line level
Enclosure Front-Firing Port
Cabinet Size 14-3/8" H x 14" W x 16-1/8" D



I recently ordered a PSW10 from newegg because they had them for like 100 dollars of the MSRP and was looking for a budget sub. From reading the specs i had a few ideas of what might be a problem with it. First thing is i was worried it would not have enough amplifier power to keep up with my main system being the amplifier was only rated at 50w RMS and 100w Peak because the last sub i owned had a 250w RMS amplifier and if i cranked the main volume too high it always seemed to "run out of gas".

So i took the sub out of the box and my first impression was, wow this is well built. It has a very sturdy MDF cabinet and a "solid" feel to the touch, i felt like i had a well built sub. I took the grill off to inspect the driver and it had a very tight suspension and the driver material fell very stiff and hard, much better then the paper cones of my previous subs. I then hooked the sub up to my receiver via the line in inputs using the active x-over in the receiver crossed over at 80hz and after taking some time to find the best position for the subwoofer, decided to put on some bass heavy music by Chevelle. I chose this artist because the artist has a deep breathy voice and an authoritative bass line and plenty of kick drums. First thing i had to do immediately was adjust the tone controls on my receiver to a flat level, then i turned the knob to about 3/5 of the way, which seemed more then sufficient. The bass fit in very well with the mains and sounded almost seamless, sitting in the listening position you can not tell there is a seperate speaker producing bass. The sound was impressively "flat" with no peaks or dips at certain frequencies and had a very accurate sound, especially on the kick drums. I placed my hand on the cabinet to see how much resonance i could feel and it seemed to be pretty good at damping it, about the only thing i could feel was the hard "thump" of the kick drums and the cabinet did not appear to produce any coloration or sounds of its own, and there was no "mechanical" noise coming from it. I then cranked up the main volume control of the receiver to see just how much power 50w could provide, no matter the volume level, it was able to keep up cleanly with no distortion or "slapping" of the woofer, the driver is apparently very efficient as it always seemed to have extra headroom left over no matter the volume. The overall sound of the sub is not thick or heavy, but natural and tight. I unhooked the line in inputs and set my mains to LARGE and ran the receiver in 2 channel mode and hooked the speakers into the "speaker level" inputs. One problem i noticed is that the subwoofers built in x-over is a low-pass ONLY, it does not filter out the low frequencies from the mains it simply passes a full-range signal on to the mains. The crossover knob appeared to not be very accurate in its ratings because at 80hz, i was getting mostly 60hz and below material to the subwoofer, setting my active x-over on my receiver to 80hz (yes the receivers x-over is accurate as i have tested it with sine waves before) and turning the knob down to 80hz, or even 100hz on the subwoofer causes a noticable gap in the low frequency range, when turned all the way to the highest setting, it is not noticeable.


Overall this is a very good subwoofer and i doubt i will be looking for a replacement or upgrade soon and the power ratings exceeded my expectations.

 

[j_garcia]

I owned the PSW 202, the predecessor of this sub, but they are essentially identical in specs. I wouldn't even call it a "sub" woofer since it doesn't go deep at all (35Hz); I would almost call it a midbass. I found it quite easy to push this thing beyond its capabilities and sending ANYTHING below about 25Hz would cause it to suffer. With music it was OK, as long as it wasn't bass heavy. Yes, the cabinet was well built as well, but the amp is anemic by any standards. It does add bottom end if you have smaller bookshelf speakers that need it in a smaller room, but it lacks impact of any kind. Surprisingly, I didn't find it too boomy either, but it is hardly what I would call clean and headroom is not something I would use to describe it by any stretch. It took a long time to dial it in and get it integrated because it was hard to place in the room to keep it sounding right - I too found that it needed to be a minimum of a few feet from a corner. The LSi7s that I had it paired with weighed as much as this sub. I kept it for about 6 months before selling it. The only reason I had it was because it came with the LSi7s.

Basically ALL subs have a low pass x-over only. The high pass is fixed on pretty much every sub and sub amp I've seen. It may be adjustable in a few, but it isn't manually adjustable with a knob like the low pass has, and the low pass does not affect the high pass at all. This is nothing new.

 

[yepimonfire]

technically mid-bass is 100hz-200hz , rarely ever is there musical or even HT information at 25hz with the exception of harmonics.

my point was overall this subwoofer is exceedingly good for the price. i understand it is not high end and it is not one of those subs that will set off your neighbors car alarm, im also using it with large floorstanders and it does the job perfect so i dont see why you made the comment about bookshelfs. i would rather hear accurate good sound then overboomy sound from a sub that was built to try and overcompensate for its weaknesses, this is what that sub does, it does what its supposed to do. i also found this sub to outperform my KEF PSW2500, which makes me go hmmmm.

 

[j_garcia]

technically mid-bass is 100hz-200hz , rarely ever is there musical or even HT information at 25hz with the exception of harmonics.

Midbass doesn't really have a definition AFAIK and it probably isn't the right term so I use it loosely. I consider it to include the range of the human voice and that drops well into the range of the typical 80Hz x-over and well into the range where it will be audible in the sub. It certainly isn't a 100Hz range between 100Hz and 200Hz, and technically, you will probably want to avoid correcting people with bogus information that you pulled out of your rear.

I have heard it said many times that music doesn't have sound below 25Hz and that is not true. Musical notes are far more complex that a single sine wave and many notes have fundamentals that are well into the low 20s. Electronic music is not bound by the limitation of instruments and I have many albums that have sound that is easily in the infrasonic range. If you've never heard a good sub you probably won't have experienced this. A live event might give you this as well.

my point was overall this subwoofer is exceedingly good for the price. i understand it is not high end and it is not one of those subs that will set off your neighbors car alarm, im also using it with large floorstanders and it does the job perfect so i dont see why you made the comment about bookshelfs. i would rather hear accurate good sound then overboomy sound from a sub that was built to try and overcompensate for its weaknesses, this is what that sub does, it does what its supposed to do. i also found this sub to outperform my KEF PSW2500, which makes me go hmmmm.

I made the comment about bookshelf speakers because that is what I listened to it with. Also, this box is intended to be used with satellite speakers that have no bass of their own such as those offered by Polk. Pretty much anything that has a -3dB of about 80Hz or higher, so it is entirely relevant. I bought an AR sub/sat package for my dad a few years back and it has a 150W 8" sub that is 30% smaller than this one and it easily wipes the floor with this sub. I am often surprised at how good that AR sub is; it is a shame they don't offer it anymore.

I am not saying it is a complete POS, but for the MSRP it is quite overpriced and my point is that this sub is NOT an exceedingly good value. If someone were to pick it up for quite a bit less than MSRP, it will do the job, but I wanted to offer another opinion of this sub based on many years of experience in addition to also having experience with the (essentially identical) product as well. Polk simply isn't known for their subs.

 

[yepimonfire]

i do not pull things out of my rear ive spent a considerable amount of time studying elctro-acoustics. type into google and mid-bass you foolishly called 35hz mid-bass yet almost all lowest sounds are in that range, so you pulled it out of your rear and dont know what your talking about or are randomly throwing terms around with no basis.

I have heard it said many times that music doesn't have sound below 25Hz and that is not true. Musical notes are far more complex that a single sine wave and many notes have fundamentals that are well into the low 20s. Electronic music is not bound by the limitation of instruments and I have many albums that have sound that is easily in the infrasonic range. If you've never heard a good sub you probably won't have experienced this. A live event might give you this as wel

OOOOPS someone forgot that PA subs dont usefully extend below 35-40hz if your lucky.

where are you coming up with this stuff?????

'
quote from crutchfields article on crossover ranges "Low frequencies (say 100 Hz and lower) go to subwoofers.
Midbass speakers get frequencies between 100 and 250 Hz.
Midrange speakers would see frequencies between 250 and 3,000 Hz.
All frequencies above 3,000 are handled by the tweeters."

a diagram from lenard audio http://www.lenardaudio.com/education/images/a06/a06_xover_vari.gif

a quote from his page on x-overs and bass "There are a few audiophile sub-bass speaker systems that go down to 20Hz and are crossed over at approx 60Hz. Professional bass musicians find these audiophile sub-bass systems unusable (un-musical) as a bass speaker system in a band or orchestra."

 

[Matt34]

Thread closed.