Polk Subwoofer

Review by Mikel Burlingame : Excellent! Very pleased with this thumper!

I am not an audiophile as one other reviewer mentioned, but I was very happy with what I would call thundering bass in my 23' x 24' room with 9' cielings. I have the volume on about 1/3 level. This thing blows my old 8" Infiniti sub away.I'm very pleased...and all at a great price. Don't hesitate at all if you are shopping for a sub under $150. That was my price point and I couldn't be happier.Good luck!

Review by Chad A. Hasselius : A Good Home Theater Subwoofer

At this price, what you will find essentially is two types of introductory powered subwoofers: one is built for home theater, and one is built for listening to music. And this is fine, because there are basically two types of listeners: one who mostly wants to listen to music for home parties and such, and another who mostly wants to listen to blu ray movies with high fidelity sound. The subwoofer built for music will give you that "thump, thump, thump" bumping sound you hear when listening to hip hop or pop music. At the introductory level it will have more of a "one note" sound, but will have a kick to it. The subwoofer built for home theater will give you more of a crisp sound to it, which will allow you to hear movie special effects such earthquakes, lightening, explosions, trees falling, the "wop, wop, wop" of a helicopter, etc with high fidelity. The lower the volume is the higher quality the sound will be, and at the introductory level you will not get a kick to the "thump, thump" sound in music. This Yamaha subwoofer is clearly built for home theater. Why is that? For starters it's only 100 watts, and dynamically tuned so it starts out at only 45 watts. Also, it has Servo technology, which has a feedback mechanism to give you more crisp sound. Granted, it's not particularly advanced Servo tech, but nothing else even close to it's price range has Servo. The frequency response goes all the way down to 25hz, which means it can give you a lower tone than anything else in it's price range. It also has two input jacks in the back instead of one, and is of a relatively small size. Unlike most subwoofers, it is magnetically shielded so it can be used close to a TV. It only has two types of crossover setting's, with the recommended one being at 80 hz- which is ideal for home theater (where a sub made for music has variable crossover settings because crossover will be much more involved.) This kind of explains why there are two types of reviews for this product. Some people love it and some people hate it. If you are using it to listen to Dr Dre you are going to be disappointed, and you'd be better off with Onkyo's introductory sub or maybe even Polk's. But, if you are listening to a Transformers movie on Blu Ray with a 5.1 or 7.1 sound system, you will be blown away. If you want a sub that can do both movies and music well you will need to step up in price (HSU or SVS comes highly recommended on message boards.) Also, I know this has been beaten to death but speaker placement will make a huge difference in subwoofer sound quality. Speaker placement will make or break any subwoofer because of the ways the soundwaves bounce around and can cancel each other out. Like others here, I wish it had an auto on/off feature, but it wasn't a deal breaker. I just leave it on all the time.

Review by Michael Beckham : Excellent natural sound

This subwoofer puts out plenty of deep tight natural sounding bass, not "boomy" bass. It sounds great! I am using a Harmon Kardon 3380 receiver and 2 Klipsch SB-1 bookshelf speakers, and this sub in a 12x20 room and it fills the room with sound.I listen to mostly jazz and classical, with some new-age thrown in. On ocassion though I pop in Sound Garden or Metallica too. I find that I have to adjust the bass output down quite abit when rockin' out, or the bass is overwhelming.There is no auto on feature on this sub, but I have it plugged into a switched outlet on the receiver, so it goes off and on with it.Overall, I recommend it highly.

Review by C. Laub : An OK inexpensive subwoofer

I purchased this subwoofer to augment some rather small bookshelf speakers. I reviewed the owner's manual online before buying and decided that this sub would match up well because the built in low-pass crossover would match the roll off of the small speakers. The sub arrived and was well packed in the manufacturer's carton. The sub is not heavy so you can expect the same experience (no shipping damage). I connected the sub via the speaker level inputs and played around with placement and level with a variety of music types. For the price, you get a lot of bang for the buck. Overall the sub looks nice and is not large so it can be hidden easily. Because it only needs 45 watts of input power, I could connect it directly to a switched power outlet on the back of my equipment so I didn't mind that there is no "auto-on" feature. I was not really too impressed with the overall quality of the sound, but I have some pretty good hi-fi equipment at home to compare it with. If you want really good sounding bass with more extension and control, buy something else but be prepared to spend at least 5 times the $$. For casual listening and for non-critical ears, this is a great buy and you can even afford to buy a stereo pair.

Review by Kevin J. Nicolellis : Nice Sub

This makes plenty of nice, tight, bass sound for a small/medium room. Put it in a corner and have it face at a 45% angle toward the sofa or chairs. It does not auto-turn-off, but it has an off switch in back.

Review by D. Smith "A/V & Music Freak" : The Sub That Doesn't Overwhelm

If you want a sub woofer that doesn't "take over" this one's for you. It's size is nice and it's sound is smooth. The only negative is that the "on/off" switch is not conveniently positioned and it is an either/or situation with this model. (I just leave it on all the time because when there is no audio to amplify the amp is using virtually no power). I'm a Yamaha fan, so I'm biased; but this sub fit my needs perfectly.

Review by Zenagin : Outstanding value!

I have a somewhat aging 5.1 Home Theater setup featuring a matching set of Athena Audition Series speakers that I bought around 2003. Including the matching subwoofer that I added about 6 months later, I invested about $1,000 in the speakers alone (full 5.1). So they are not exactly high end, but certainly not economy variety either. Recently, I think I over cranked it one time too many and slightly blew my subwoofer (an 8" 300W front fire) - I could start hearing the speaker crackle more and more at various frequencies. Time for a new subwoofer! But they sure don't seem to make the one I had anymore. I pretty much only shop Amazon. I compared a number of subs all at around $100 each. Brands looked at included Polk Audio, Sony, and a few others. I googled the various brands and model numbers to find reviews, etc. Overall, this Yamaha YST-SW216 appeared to be the best combination of value and bang for the buck - with very good to great sound for the cost. So I ordered it.I was concerned that it would not sound as good as my blown older subwoofer. I spent the necessary time "dialing it in" so to speak (not much to deal with - a High Cut switch (High/Low - 140Hz or 40Hz) and a volume knob. The recommended setting in the owner manual for the High Cut switch was to "Low" (40Hz) - which seemed ideal since my mains bottom out at 40Hz themselves. Even though I got more "thump" and volume when setting the High Cut switch to "High" (140Hz), the sound was much "cleaner" and more precise when set to "Low" (40Hz) - with still plenty of "thump" by tweaking the volume knob up just a touch. In spite of several reviews that seem to peg this subwoofer as more suitable for home theater (movies and video games) than for music, I have to say that with my tweakings, this Yamaha YST-SW216 subwoofer is VERY well rounded (and that includes for music) and certainly sounds like it costs much more than it does. Oh, and by the way.... I couldn't believe it, but after testing a variety of tunes, movies and video games (XBOX 360) - this unit conclusively and notably sounds better than and outperforms my older subwoofer which cost right about twice as much 8 years ago!Hope this helps!

Review by KK : Great as a standalone subwoofer, but not with sound bar...

I bought this subwoofer to go with my Yamaha YSP-800 sound bar. Since I've added this subwoofer, the sound is so much better when watching SF or action movies with booming bass sound. The bass that this unit produces is very deep and it can be very loud, shaking the whole floor. It does provide a movie-theater-like experience in your home.The only problem is when I am watching regular TV shows (like news or commercials) that I don't necessarily want booming base, I'd have to walk over to the subwoofer to turn it off, or lower the volume, or navigate YSP-800's complicated menu to disable subwoofer output. There is more expensive YST-FSW100 which will enable the subwoofer to be controlled by the YSP-800 (or any other Yamaha's sound bar models) and I do regret purchasing this unit because of that... So anyone looking to buy this subwoofer with a Yamaha system should expect this subwoofer to provide the same level of convenience as any other manufacturer's standalone subwoofer. Otherwise, though, this subwoofer definitely give you the quality bass sound, and for this price range, it is one of the best you can get..

Review by gmallard : Great home theater sub

I am a person who can appreciate good sound, yet I would hardly characterize myself as a totally obsessive audiophile. And, that's why this sub has worked out so well for me.When my vintage AV receiver bit the dust, I replaced it with a Yamaha RX-V465, which now gave me additional speaker capabilities that I never had before. This amp had outputs for a center channel and a sub woofer, something my old receiver did not. This now allowed me to complete a 7-channel setup in conjunction with the rear surround speakers that were already in place. Since my existing system was comprised of a newish, decent quality set of JBLs, I opted for a JBL center speaker to match what was already there. Unfortunately, I was unable to get the matching sub, and the reviews for the low-end JBLs were not particularly good. That's what led me to Google to see what else might be available.This sub is just perfect for the average film lover like me - someone who already had a decent surround system but is looking for a lower-priced sub to fill in their bottom end.. It delivers window shaking punch with distortion-free clarity. Had I spent $300 on a better one, I almost doubt that I would have noticed much of a difference.For the record I waited 9 months or so to write this, since personally, I think people jump the gun by writing reviews of products straight out of the box..

Review by Avnish "Thrillseeker" : Awesome Purchase !

Many people are saying that the subwoofer doesn't have enough kick, but I think the problem lies with the positioning of the subwoofer. The manual suggests that you place this woofer at an angle of 45 degrees in a corner of your room. This setting works most of the times but sometimes it doesn't work, I mean if you don't have a square or rectangular room, there is no necessity of placing it in corner. Instead, try this trick, place the subwoofer at any random position in the room, make sure you don't have much furniture ( Temporarily remove the furniture ). Play it at a sufficient volume. Move around at every area of the room, and try to find the spot where your subwoofer sounds the best to you. Now place the subwoofer at this position. Don't worry you won't find this area in the middle of the room :), it has to be somewhere near the wall. Another important factor is the output of your preamplifier or the receiver. If it is incapable of producing the frequency range where you have good bass, like 20-40Hz, how can you expect the subwoofer to perform well. Finally talking about this subwoofer, this is truly a masterpiece, the audio quality is simply superb and most importantly its not boomy. However this doe.