Home | Reviews | Subwoofers | Velodyne Acoustics

Velodyne Acoustics SMS-1 Subwoofers

3.5/5

(2 Reviews)

Write a review

Where To Buy
Specifications

Store	Promotions	Shipping	Price

Product Description

Face it - bass is tough to get right in most listening environments because of the relationship between your subwoofer and the room it's placed in. Now you don't have to worry about it. The SMS-1, featuring Velodyne's revolutionary Digital Drive room correction software, provides all the tools you'll need to adapt ANY subwoofer to the anomalies of your room. With all the features of Digital Drive, including full DSP control, an on-screen display and 8-band digital parametric equalizer, you can see your subwoofer and room's unique characteristics on your TV and adjust the sub's performance accordingly. Presets enable you to tailor the bass to your listening tastes and source material. The SMS-1 won't turn your subwoofer into a Digital Drive sub, but it will get the best possible performance out of it. The SMS-1 comes in a slim, one unit high configuration.

Review Options: Sorted by Latest Review | Sort by Best Rating

Reviews 1 - 2 (2 Reviews Total)

User Reviews

Overall Rating:

Value Rating:

Submitted by sbe a AudioPhile

Date Reviewed: September 9, 2007

Bottom Line:

First of all, this is the third time I had to enter a review for this item on this website because someone keeps deleting my review, so I'll keep it short this time.

The unit is nice and well-made and sounds good. It is best used for the casual user that is not too discriminating with the overall results bust just wants to attempt to do something about their bass management. It could easily be a much better product.

Expand full review >>

Used product for:   1 to 3 months

Duration Product Used:   AudioPhile

Product model year:   2006

Price Paid:    $500.00

Overall Rating:

Value Rating:

Submitted by S a AudioPhile

Date Reviewed: July 10, 2007

Bottom Line:

This is a well-manufactured product that looks good and sounds good. It comes with everything you need to get started, including a terrific owner's manual with "quick start" instructions and detailed instructions for really dialing in the sound. I did not notice any degradation of sound quality from the high-pass filter, and lows were blended seemlessly with the main speakers with no issues of phase or spikes or dips in the response. The problem that I have with this unit is that it is marketed to people wanting to account from individual room acoustics, yet it does not allow the user to make enough correction. After paying for the unit, I found this most frustrating because now I have to buy another product to get the job done. When I called the company to inquire about why the parametric equalization of the low frequencies are not more adjustable (they adjustable, but not enough!) and if a software upgrade (or modification) was an option for me, I received a very cold reply about not using the unit according to its intended purpose and given no opportunity to pay for an "upgrade" or modified unit. Regardless, I still give the unit a good rating for sound quality in general and to blending subs to mains and for trying to compensate for room acoustics. However, when you're dealing with a subwoofer system and you need a certain amount of dB adjustment to get a flat response, then the SMS-1 will most likely NOT compensate enough due to lack of enough adjustment of the low-frequency parametric equalization slider bars. An adjustable high-pass crossover frequency would be nice, too, for users with smaller speakers. The fixed 80Hz / 6 dB/octave high-pass will be a little too aggressive for some smaller speakers if using this unit for home theater applications (which most users will).