I borrowed this Energy sub from Tom's for a couple of weeks while the Sunfire True sub was being fixed by Anders.
This is a very handsome sub with a 12 inch driver (using funky looking elliptical surrounds, see pics) and two down-firing ports, powered by a 300w RMS amp. It has a the usual assortment of controls and input options, but I bypassed everything and went straight to the RCA LFE in, sing the preamps x-over to feed the right waves to it. The rest of my system includes a Yamaha RX-V3900 9.1 (two height channels) and an Adcom 200x2 driving the mains and decent speakers all around. So the sub was in good company.
On the plus side for this sub:
- Good looking and decent finish
- Front level control, so no need to reach in the back to tweak levels
- Solid and bass down to about 30 hz - no excessive uncouth droning bass - easily used as a music-only sub. The bass is consistent with what you should expect from an $700 sub.
On the neutral side:
- Perfect for a medium-sized room home theater - not enough output for a large room (to be expected - very humble on the power side)
- The sub is not capable of producing the lowest notes - so not the right sub if you are into "feeling" the 15hz notes
- While handsome, this sub is a tad large (20" x 16" x 18") for what it produces in terms of output (but remember that my reference is a Sunfire True sub, an abnormally small but still powerful sub with an amp many times more powerful)
- For use with vintage equipment, this sub lacks speaker-level out connections - so you would need to run the mains full range or find some other way to high-pass them. But I suspect very few folks would opt to high pass the mains in a vintage setup anyway
So in summary - a decent sub that kept me going in my home theater while the Sunfire was in surgery. Not sure how much Tom is asking for it, but it would be worth considering for a master bedroom system or a music room.
Pepe
