This review is from: Boston Acoustics ASW650 650-Watt Peak 10-Inch Front-Firing Powered Subwoofer (Electronics)
I am used to the sound of sealed box subwoofers, and this was my first purchase of a bass reflex sub woofer. I am somewhat disappointed in the performance of this BA sub. When it arrived,I opened the box and hooked it up . No sound. I unscrewed the plate amp and noticed one of the speaker wires has fallen loose during shipping. The speaker itself is a well built, rigid, vented voice coil design, well secured. The connectors are cheap, however, and they fall off.
Once reconnected, I checked out the amplifier...it has internal heat sinks of good size.Because bass reflex enclosures move air from the inside of the box to the outside...no external heat sinks appear on the back of the plate amp. BA claims the box to have internal bracing. This is misleading. It does not. It has triangular corner braces. All boxes do.Cross bracing from one wall , top to bottom ....is what more expensive boxes use to reduce vibrations and clean up the sound. Reconnecting this sub to my system, I found the the bass output was of low volume and undefined...not punchy at all.Even turning it all the way up and selecting the highest crossover frequency...I could barely hear the sub.I find this rather odd. The things typically shake the room.I suspect that the "muddy" bass output is because it is not a sealed box design. Sealed box subs produce tighter, and to my ears, much better low end sound.But they must use bigger amps to compress the air in the box, thus more heat, thus more cooling fins, more cost. Frankly, I bought this beast without listening to it because the price was right, it is indeed pretty, and I have always been a BA fan. Not so much any more.