Good bass for the money in small room

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Good sub for a first home entertainment system

Good output for the size, easy access to controls, and good price.

At high volume, this sub looses control like an 80 year old after eating two pounds of prunes. It also requires lots of tweaking to get it just right.

At low to mid levels, this sub has good control and good output. When pushed hard, the bass sounds like a little kid making fart noises with his cheeks. I currently have it connected to my mini system (sony cmt-ex1), and it works as an excellent matching pair. For smaller home theatre, its fine. Larger ones will require either two units or a larger single sub. But for the size, and the price it is a very competent unit

Similar Products Used:

smaller polk and velodyne subs.

Price, soft bass, ideal for smaller rooms

complicated to achieve ideal combination of settings (Cut off and volume) at different listening situations.

I bought small home cinema system from Cambridge soundworks, because critics for high and mid tones for that system were great. Also weakness was poor bass. As this is not expensive home cinema system, i looked to find an adequate subwoofer for it.
I have room of about 20 square meters and this woofer really booms there. At very low volume you can feel soft bass coming out of it, and on higher it grows stronger and much more booming.
However at highest volumes you can hear distortion, but hey, these speakers aren't meant for that.
All in all, good choice for smaller rooms.

Great low frequency assist in small room

You would need two of these for a home theater of any size

To be fair the only other subs I've had hooked to my computer were quite a bit less expensive, pretty much entry level. The Yamaha is a great improvement over them. I got a great deal on eBay for one and hooked it directly to the Soundblaster rear speaker jack since I don't use rear speakers. I run NHT SuperZeros off a regular older NEC amp which in turn is fed by the Soundblaster front speaker jack. Of course some tweaking is necessary but the Yamaha sounds real good bopping out the lows under the table. It's only about half on the volume dial; I'm sure I would get to much rattling on the table at higher levels. But I can crank it up a little now and then to check out a new tune! This +-$400 set up is better than any store-bought computer speaker setup I've ever heard.

Similar Products Used:

IBM computer Sub., Altec Lansing

Good Value, Attractive, sound quality, small enough to fit in most places

needs to be balanced right with main speakers to get good results

I reciently just bought two of these litle subs for my home theatre, it has a great look and yst technology goes a long way. The only drawback to this little puncher is that you need to balance it right otherwise at higher listening levels it tries to do more than it can. Yamaha offers a way to balance it in the manual but your better off to use your own ear. Other than this quirck it is well suited for the person who has a wife and child and doesn't want to have his or her spouce take a knife to it. overall very nice unit when used in couples, quality oustanding.

The active crossover and solid construction

Way too "boomy". Instead of giving an extra punch it drowns out everything. My previous computer sub sounded (also Yamaha) sounded much better and at only 25 watts!

As I said above, the sub is of good solid construction, but vibrates everything way too much with its "boomy" bass. I prefer the punchy, hard-hitting bass which this sub does not provide. It came part of the YHT-23 package (which might I add, the speakers and HTR-5240 receiver rock; it's just the sub that sucks). If you like a lot of "bandpass" type of bass and not the sealed enclosure bass, this sub is for you. If you like the hard-hitting solid bass, this sub is definitely not for you.

Similar Products Used:

Yamaha computer subwoofer (don't know the model number)

low price, adds decent bass at low volumes

boomy weak bass at higher volumes

Well I bought this sub for $200 Canadian on sale from a regular price of $270. I'm using it with my Sony RXD7 mini system right now, and in my honest opinion the Sony 6 inch woofers on my mini puts out better bass than this sub. Let me explain. While, the sub sounds pretty good at lower volumes, if turn this thing up the bass sounds absolutely horrible (very boomy). Of course this can be remedied by turning down the volume on the sub. This represents 2 problems though:

1) It's annoying to have to adjust the subwoofer volume in addition to the master volume depending on what volume I'm listening to my music at. This is just a nuisance.

2) The second problem is much more serious. Once I turn the volume past about 18 out of 30 on my stereo, the bass from my main speakers becomes more powerful than that of the sub!

So basically at the kind of volumes I like to listen to, my stereo sounds better WITHOUT the subwoofer. The bass is either just plain weak or too boomy (depending on how you set the volume level and frequency cut). And this is in my tiny little bedroom too. Many times, I'd crank up the volume on my stereo, and get some pretty good bass out of it. But then, I'd turn the sub off and it sounded even better without it. Imagine my surprise. Though, I concede my system definately sounds much better at low volumes with the subwoofer on. But, I'm not about to spend $250 (including tax and a cable) on a subwoofer that is going to make my music sound like crap at higher volumes.

So if you've got a system that's REALLY lacking in bass, and you're tight on a budget, then I suppose you might want to give this sub a try. On the other hand, if you've got a stereo that already has fairly good bass, I'd say either get a more expensive subwoofer or don't get one at all. I'm choosing the latter, as I'm going to return this sub next week. I think I'll get a 19 inch monitor for my computer instead.

They also had a Yamaha SW-300 at my local stereo shop on sale for $388, but I think I've realized that my stereo sounds quite good enough without any subwoofer at all.

On a side note - I'm quite disappointed with the Yamaha company in general. My friend bought a Yamaha surround stereo (sorry I can't remember any model numbers), but the surround didn't even work on it. The rear speakers were so silent that you couldn't hardly hear them even when sitting about a foot away from them, while the mains were a good 15 feet away! And the mains were still louder.

Price. Size.

Not the best choice for music

I found it great little addition to my movie experince.
I didnt want to spend a lot on just a Sub and found all
I need in this product, paid $200cdn. just cant beat that.
I have it conected to my Tv as well and I get great results
from that Thou I find myself forever adjusting the volume when going back to watch a movie. Playing music however Is not a great adventure I find that it is not enough of a sub
for that but movie tracks, Its just fine and very soild sounding and have no trouble makeing the people upstairs very ... very mad at me :o)

Low cost and good value

low power handling

This sub is a good deal for only $150. The sub is quick and accurate and produces a nice warm bass. The spec's advertised are a little misleading though. The bass extension is not very low (although it is only an 8" driver) and the amp is only 55 watts RMS. The main weakness with this sub is it's poor power handling. At higer volumes, the driver becomes uncontrolled, loose, boomy and distorted. At low volumes, however, the bass is very tight. All in all a decent match to a small audio system in a small room at low listening levels.

Similar Products Used:

paradigm pdr-10. also auditioned several other brands

Good bass sound for such a small size. Ideal for apartments.

Auto "ON" switch.

When I first used the SW I thought there was something wrong with it because after 30 seconds or so, it would quit working. I soon realized that it was the automatic ON feature that was the problem. The speaker would not switch back on when it was needed after initially turning the system on. I got around the problem by setting the switch to "ON" and then plugging the power cord into a switched outlet on the rear of my receiver. This allows the speaker to remain on all the time, but only when the stereo system is in use.