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Review 1 of 1
Price Paid:
$349.00
from Harman Direct Summary:
I purchased the Infinity CSW-10 factory direct from Harman Audio. I had a friend who worked at Circuit City and I was able to take advantage of his employee discount, reducing the price of this unit to a mere $349. At the time of the purchase, this sub retailed for about $800-1000, and now I know why. I consider myself an audio enthusiast who is just starting to explore mid-range audio equipment.
My Setup: Marantz 5600 7.1 Receiver, NAD 2100 amp, acoustic research PS2262 Fronts, Infinity Beta C360 center, and classic Cerwin Vega HEDs as surrounds.
Out of the box impressions: Wow, this thing is heavy. It weighs a solid 56 pounds and is built like a safe. The thick MDF veneered in unassuming black gives it a minimalistic look, which quite frankly is all a subwoofer should have, in my opinion. The metal grill is a nice touch (but not solid enough as I will explain later). The 10 foot power cable gives it sufficient play for positioning.
Hooking it up: I could not wait to put this in to replace my pathetic KLH home theater in a box piece of junk subwoofer (which I will not even compare this to). After nearly throwing my back out sliding this sub in the corner below a table, I connected it up. I would first like to mention that this subwoofer lacks high-level inputs, so only LFE equipped subwoofer could take real advantage of it. I simply hooked my cable into the L input, turned all the knobs to nominal values, and set the switch to LFE. After setting up the rest of my components, I could begin some listening tests.
How it sounds: Utterly amazing! It plays quite loud, and exceptionally clear with all media I threw at it, thanks to its monstrous 650 Watt RMS power output. Testing a 2.1 channel music setup, the subwoofer added an immense amount of bass to my fronts (which go down to about 32 Hz -3dB). It was never overpowering, and blended well with my other speakers. This is an important attribute to look at when considering any setup. Next, I tested it with some various DVDs. This is where it truly shines as a “sub” woofer. At some points, the sub shook the entire house with a deep, almost scary rumble that propagated through the couch into my torso. Some of my friends leapt up out of their seat and were actually confused as to what they just felt. Using a signal generator, I did some testing to determine what levels I could actually hear, and was surprised to learn that below about 24-26Hz, I could only really feel the bass. This was the sensation we all experienced watching the movie. The CSW-10 handles this with hardly any rolloff of intensity. I fell in love with this sub, and have yet to hear one that is as commanding for anywhere near this price. I have set up the included RABOS test system, which comes in a nice case. My room features a huge peak in SPL that needed adjusting. The kit takes about an hour to setup correctly, but is well worth it. The final result was a reduced level where the annoying peak was present with no negative effect on the surround frequencies. It actually works!
Strengths:
Exceptionally powerful, clear music and movie audio reproduction. At this price, it is an unequalled value, which i would say if this sub cost me twice as much. It is solid, and will definitely last many years. I actually sat on the unit when i was plugging in cables and never felt the slightest inkling of stress on the cabinet. I have been contemplating purchasing Infinity Intermezzo 4.1T's to upgrade my fronts, which feature very similar integrated subwoofers rated at 850 watts. I am afraid I will be dissatisfied if those don't perform as well as the CSW-10. It is truly an engineering marvel to have such quality at a great price (I am a mechanical engineer). Weaknesses:
With the good, always comes the bad. First, the grill was not well manufactured. The metal is a nice touch, which features a cloth insert as a damping material. However, it was not well glued, so i caulked it in place, which worked fine. BUT, the grill rattles like hell. Since the woofer features such a large excursion distance (about 1" in positive and negative directions = 2" overall), it physically touches the grill at higher SPL. This can be accomodated by using spacers in the nubs on the grill, or by removing the gril completely, which I don't advise. Ya never know when your foot might end up kicking the sub accidentally. Other dislikes: The adjustment knobs lack tick marks and values. They simply click a certain number of times from the zero position, which is defined by the manual. Similar Products Used:
Velodyne, Energy, Klipsch
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