Average Reviews:
(More customer reviews)I took delivery of this subwoofer yesterday and hooked it up immediately to my "second" system, which consists of an Oppo BDP-80 universal player, Onkyo TX-NR807 receiver, and a pair of Dynaudio Focus 110 monitors. The Dynaudios are small but capable of room-filling sound with decent bass extension; I had been running this setup without a sub, and it was more than adequate for casual listening and video viewing.
When you take the ESW-M6 out of the box, its size is disconcerting -- it's just 8" on a side, with three sides totally consumed by the 6" woofers (one active front-firing, two passive side radiators). You're thinking, "this might work for desktop audio, but it will never make enough sound to fill my living room, and no way will it match my Dynaudios for musicality."
Wrong and wrong again. After I set a couple of knobs and switches on the back and connected it to the receiver, I ran Audyssey MultEQ with the new speaker in the mix. Had to go back and set crossover manually, however, because Audyssey had set it at 40 Hz, way too low to give this little cube any work to do (it bottoms out at 42 Hz, according to the manual). So I tried a crossover at 80 Hz, quite nice, and at 100 Hz, even better.
Bottom line, this sub really delivers. I used two jazz CDs with good clean acoustic bass lines to listen carefully before-and-after for pitch (i.e., can you hear the note and not just a thump?) and lower distortion. The Energy sub scored high on both counts. This was not subtle! The bass line was consistently easier to follow; adding in the sub took some pressure off the Dynaudios, so they produced cleaner sound above 100 Hz, and the Energy ESW-M6 easily handled the material below the crossover point.
A bonus was that the bass now sounded more substantial. There was a very pleasant, appropriate sense of fullness to the bass sound that had been missing before. I'm not saying that those 6" speakers managed to fully pressurize my semi-large, high-ceiling living room. But they delivered a realistic, musical, "woody" bass-fiddle sound that the Dynaudios had not pulled off. And they didn't strain and distort anything in the process.
When the M6 is broken in, I'll try out more demanding material -- symphonic music and movie special effects -- and return to this review with the results. But for now, I'm really pleased. The 200-watts-RMS amp (ignore the 800 or 1200 watts "dynamic" rating) is obviously effective in powering this well-designed unit. Apparently size no longer matters! The performance of the Energy ESW-M6 far exceeded my expectations.
(OK, back with an update. Ran the lobby shootout sequence and a few other moments from "The Matrix." Sub performed very well. Did NOT best the $15K multichannel setup in my 15x19x8 home theatre, which still sounds more spacious and impactful. No surprise there. It was very interesting to note, however, that the electric bass line in the shootout often sounded cleaner and more rhythmic on the little Energy sub! Less thump, more music. I also had a wonderful time with Bach: Violin Concertos -- the cellos and basses sounding astonishingly big.)
Strongly recommended, especially for those who don't want to see a big ugly sub in a living area (the piano black finish is quite elegant, although it shows fingerprints easily). Incidentally, the backside controls include a variable low-pass filter, a zero-to-360-degree phase control, a selectable auto-on feature, and two line inputs. This is what you would expect for a sub in this price range, and it's another sign that this is no toy. It is NOT to be confused with Energy's home-theater-in-a-box products, or with computer add-ons. Rather, it's competitive with Velodyne or REL products in this price range.
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Energy ESW-M6 800 Watt Mini Subwoofer (Black)
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