News

Oct 17, 2024

The 4 Best Subwoofers of 2024 | Reviews by Wirecutter

By Brent Butterworth Brent Butterworth is a writer dedicated to audio gear. He has been reviewing speakers and other audio products for more than 30 years. We tested the Rogersound Labs Speedwoofer

By Brent Butterworth

Brent Butterworth is a writer dedicated to audio gear. He has been reviewing speakers and other audio products for more than 30 years.

We tested the Rogersound Labs Speedwoofer 10E (a less-expensive version of our top pick) and the PreSonus Eris Sub 8BT, and added our thoughts to this guide.

A home audio system without a good subwoofer is like a rock band without a bass player: It just never sounds right. When you’re ready to step up to a serious subwoofer, we recommend the Rogersound Labs Speedwoofer 10S MKII. Despite its relatively compact size, it offers impressive deep-bass output and has a tuneful, melodic sound that we don’t normally associate with subwoofers.

This 10-inch subwoofer offers an ideal blend of bass power and finesse in a compact package, but you can buy it only directly from the manufacturer.

This model delivers the best performance we’ve heard or measured from a subwoofer priced under $300, but it looks like a plain, black box.

This subwoofer is powerful and offers more tuning options to tailor the sound to your taste and room. But it’s large, and it has that stereotypical subwoofer look.

If you need high performance but don’t have space for a big subwoofer, this subwoofer is a great choice—but it can’t deliver as much deep bass as our top pick.

We limit our testing to subwoofers priced under $900 to keep the focus on living-room-friendly designs.

We test subwoofers with a listening panel and conceal the identities of the subwoofers to eliminate bias.

We conduct CTA-2010 output measurements (PDF) of all subwoofers to obtain an objective comparison of their capabilities.

Big subwoofers tend to sound better and play louder, but they take up a lot of space. We’ve included picks of all sizes.

This 10-inch subwoofer offers an ideal blend of bass power and finesse in a compact package, but you can buy it only directly from the manufacturer.

The Rogersound Labs Speedwoofer 10S MKII 10-inch subwoofer is a refreshing surprise for anyone who thinks subwoofers are nothing but big, ugly boom machines. It’s an updated version of a subwoofer that has been a top recommendation of numerous publications for six years running. The MKII version adds a couple of new features that make it subtly better, including separate listening modes for music and movies.

At 16 by 15 by 16.75 inches (HWD), the 10S MKII is compact enough to fit unobtrusively into most rooms or even under some end tables. But it’s sold only through the Rogersound Labs website.

Advertisement

This model delivers the best performance we’ve heard or measured from a subwoofer priced under $300, but it looks like a plain, black box.

Simply put, the Monoprice SW-12 12″ 400 Watt Powered Subwoofer performs better than any budget subwoofer we’ve tested. Not only does this 12-inch model produce enough low-end output to deliver serious home-theater sound, but it also offers tight, tuneful bass that works wonderfully with any kind of music. That said, it doesn’t sound as full and natural as our more expensive picks.

On the downside, its plain, boxy design and matte-black finish won’t win admiring looks, and its cone-shaped plastic feet might damage a wood or tile floor.

This subwoofer is powerful and offers more tuning options to tailor the sound to your taste and room. But it’s large, and it has that stereotypical subwoofer look.

For home theater enthusiasts and audiophiles, the Hsu Research VTF-2 MK5 12-inch subwoofer is the stuff of dreams. For those who crave a beautiful living room, however, it may be the stuff of nightmares, since its bulky, 21-by-15-by-22-inch (HWD) physique and basic-black-box design certainly conform to subwoofer stereotypes.

In our tests, on average the VTF-2 MK5 played 50% louder across the entire measurement range than our top pick, and our panelists were impressed with its ability to shake their listening chairs. Multiple tuning modes allow you to optimize this subwoofer’s sound to suit your taste.

Like our top pick, this model is sold only through the manufacturer’s website, and shipping costs are not included in the price.

If you need high performance but don’t have space for a big subwoofer, this subwoofer is a great choice—but it can’t deliver as much deep bass as our top pick.

The SVS SB-1000 Pro is a great choice for people who live in small spaces or who are averse to cluttering their living-room floor, as well as for audiophiles who want to dial in their bass to perfection. Measuring 13.5 by 13 by 13.75 inches (HWD), this subwoofer is compact enough to hide under many end tables, yet in our tests it exceeded the performance of some larger subs we evaluated.

The SB-1000 Pro costs more than our top pick and doesn’t deliver as much deep bass, but its accompanying smartphone app has an equalizer that lets you adjust the sound to be smoother and more natural.

Advertisement

I’ve been reviewing subwoofers since 1991, and I’ve probably reviewed more home-audio subwoofers than anyone in the world, for publications such as Home Theater Magazine, HomeTheaterReview.com, Lifewire, Sound & Vision, and SoundStage. And as an upright bass player who has recorded and performed for decades, I have a good understanding of what the low-frequency content in music should sound like.

For this guide:

A subwoofer is a speaker dedicated purely to reproducing bass: the deep, couch-shaking tones of kick drums, bass guitars, and synthesizers, as well as explosions and crashes in movies and TV shows. Bass is important because it’s what makes you tap your feet or bob your head when music is playing. Without it, most music doesn’t seem realistic.

However, many people have a bad impression of subwoofers because they can make a boomy, annoying sound if improperly positioned and adjusted. Proper subwoofer setup, as I describe in this blog post, is important and can help any subwoofer perform its best.

Note that the shape and size of a room, and the positions of the subwoofer and the listening chair or couch, will emphasize certain bass tones and cancel others. Many audio enthusiasts combat this phenomenon by using two or four subwoofers, which makes the bass sound more even as you move from seat to seat. If you care about whether your system delivers quality sound across several seats in your room, buying two relatively inexpensive subwoofers may be a better idea than upgrading to a more expensive single subwoofer—but as I found when I compared one-, two- and four-subwoofer systems, a single, more powerful subwoofer can be a better choice when you have only one or two listeners.

Correct hookup, positioning, and adjustment of a subwoofer is critical for good sound. Here’s a simple, five-step method.

Advertisement

This guide combines two previous guides: one for budget subwoofers under $300 and one for high-performance subwoofers priced between $301 and $900. Here are the factors we consider when deciding which subwoofers to test:

Even though we’ve evaluated more than 55 subwoofers for this guide, we can’t test everything. But we have at least gotten samples of the newest offerings from almost all of the leading manufacturers, and I also maintain an online spreadsheet showing the measurements of most of the subwoofers I’ve tested in the past, so you can see more in-depth comparisons.

For our latest tests, I connected the subwoofers to a Sony STR-ZA5000ES home theater receiver and used an ELAC Debut 2.0 surround-sound speaker system, the runner-up in our guide to the best surround-sound speakers for most people. I used a crossover point (the frequency at which sounds are redirected from the speakers to the subwoofer) of 80 hertz, and I matched their levels to within 0.5 decibel using a calibrated NTi Mini SPL microphone and an NTi Minilyzer ML1 audio analyzer (which has a Z-weighted measurement mode necessary for accurate measurements of subwoofers).

When auditioning the subs for our listening panel, I used several of the toughest bass test tracks I know of, including Holly Cole’s “Train Song,” Olive’s “Falling,” Kanye West’s “Love Lockdown,” and the recording of Camille Saint-Saëns’s Symphony No. 3 “Organ” from the Boston Audio Society Test CD-1, which has notes that drop to 16 Hz. (A tuba would have to measure about 9 feet tall to play that low.) I also used bass-heavy action-movie soundtracks—most notably, the opening scene of Star Wars, Episode II: Attack of the Clones, in which a spaceship flies overhead and then explodes, and various scenes from U-571.

In our evaluations, our panelists considered the following primary criteria:

I finished by running CTA-2010 output measurements (PDF) on each subwoofer. CTA-2010 is to subwoofers what a grip test is to fitness buffs—a precise strength evaluation in which there’s no way to cheat. This measurement uses test tones that show how loudly and clearly a subwoofer can play at several different frequencies in the bass range; the higher the number, the louder the subwoofer plays, and the clearer it sounds even if it’s not cranked to the max. I keep a log of all my CTA-2010 results in a spreadsheet.

The chart below shows the average CTA-2010 results from 20 Hz to 31.5 Hz (the deepest and toughest range of bass to reproduce), versus the price for our top picks and a few other subwoofers we tested.

This 10-inch subwoofer offers an ideal blend of bass power and finesse in a compact package, but you can buy it only directly from the manufacturer.

The Rogersound Labs Speedwoofer 10S MKII offers practically everything one could want in a midpriced subwoofer, including the power necessary for action-movie soundtracks and the subtlety and precision required for great sound on music recordings. It incorporates a 10-inch woofer in a ported enclosure, driven by a 400-watt internal amplifier, and it measures a relatively compact 16 by 15 by 16.75 inches (HWD).

It’s one of the best-sounding subs we’ve ever heard. This is a relatively rare subwoofer in that it sounds punchy and precise enough to reproduce the chest-thumping, upper-bass snap of kick drum and thumb-slapped electric bass, yet it also maintains its composure—and shakes the couch—when asked to reproduce ultra-deep bass tones, such as the submarine-engine and depth-charge sound effects in the soundtrack to the film U-571. This combination of versatility and compact size is what made this design so popular with our listening panel—and with many professional reviewers and audio enthusiasts, too.

In our listening tests, the panelists praised the original Speedwoofer 10S for its ability to blend with the other speakers, and the new version, when set to the music mode, duplicated that achievement. Lauren noted that “it sounds like an extension of the rest of the system,” and Ron commented that “it has a clean transition from the upper-bass notes down to the low pipe organ tones.” I slightly preferred its sound to that of any of the other subwoofers we tested—it seemed to have a more natural and tuneful sound with music, even though some of the larger models shook the floor more.

Note that Rogersound also offers a less-expensive version, the Speedwoofer 10E, which looks almost identical but has a less powerful, less sophisticated amplifier. The two models measured similarly, and to us they sounded about the same with movie soundtracks. However, we thought the 10S MKII produced more tuneful and precisely defined bass notes when playing music, so it’s a more well-rounded choice. But if you like this form factor and just want to play movies, the 10E is the better value.

It’s versatile in both performance and connections. The 10S MKII offers two listening modes, which you access via the crossover-frequency knob on the back of the subwoofer. Turning the knob clockwise puts the sub in the music mode, which activates its built-in crossover. Turning the knob fully counterclockwise clicks it into the LFE mode, which bypasses the crossover and boosts the low bass by around 6 decibels, which gives your system a little more oomph when you’re watching action movies or listening to hip-hop or EDM recordings. Note that when the subwoofer is running at very high volumes, as it does in our CTA-2010 output measurements (PDF), the low-bass output of the two modes is the same.

The 10S MKII offers line-level RCA stereo inputs and outputs, which make it compatible with receivers that have a line-level subwoofer output. If your audio gear lacks a subwoofer output, note that the 10S MKII also has speaker-level input connections. (See our blog post on subwoofer setup for more information on these connection types.)

The 10S MKII also has a noise gate, which the manufacturer says reduces the hum problems common to powered subwoofers. It has a built-in wireless receiver, too, so you can pair it with Rogersound’s inexpensive wireless transmitter for even easier setup and positioning.

Its CTA-2010 measurements impressed us. In LFE mode, the 10S MKII put out 115.9 dB in the midbass and 108.8 dB in the low bass. Its low-bass output was higher than that of about half of the pricier models we tested, although the less expensive Monoprice SW-12 produced even more output. This ample deep-bass output makes the 10S MKII more fun to listen to than most subs at or below (and sometimes even above) its price range. And the way the 10S MKII is tuned makes its bass sound more powerful than that of the Monoprice SW-12.

Although the 10S MKII adheres to the “plain black box” visual aesthetic common to subwoofers, at least it’s an attractively finished and reasonably compact plain black box.

Here I have to add a disclosure: When I was working as a consultant prior to my employment at Wirecutter, Rogersound Labs paid me to measure the CTA-2010 output of some prototype subwoofers that it was developing at the time. I also gave Rogersound my CTA-2010 measurement results for the original Speedwoofer 10S at no charge (which the company then published on its website). Now that I’m on Wirecutter’s staff, I no longer do consulting work, but to avoid any potential conflict of interest, we relied on the opinions of our other listeners and on the objectivity of the CTA-2010 measurements when making our picks for this guide.

At least one less expensive model technically outperforms it. Though the 10S MKII’s measurements are competitive for a sub of its size and price, the less expensive (but 42% larger) Monoprice SW-12 did produce more output in our measurements. However, in our listening tests, the SW-12 didn’t sound as full—and fun—as the 10S MKII did.

It doesn’t have an app or fancy digital features. This sub has neither an accompanying smartphone app nor any type of equalization or automatic room correction, but all the subs we’ve tried with those features cost considerably more.

It’s available only through the Rogersound Labs website. That means you can’t go to a different retailer if it sells out, and you’re 100% reliant on Rogersound for support. Unfortunately, this subwoofer seems to go out of stock often.

Advertisement

This model delivers the best performance we’ve heard or measured from a subwoofer priced under $300, but it looks like a plain, black box.

The Monoprice SW-12 12″ 400 Watt Powered Subwoofer represents a big step up in performance compared with all the other sub-$300 subwoofers we’ve tested. Its maximum output rivals—and often beats—that of much more expensive models. It has a tuneful, precise sound that music listeners will enjoy, although it doesn’t sound as full and satisfying as the Rogersound Labs Speedwoofer 10S MKII or the Hsu Research VTF-2 MK5.

The SW-12 uses a 12-inch woofer in a ported enclosure, driven by a 400-watt internal amplifier, and it measures a beefy 18.75 by 15 by 20 inches (HWD).

It’s amazingly powerful for the price. The SW-12 produces far more bass output than any other budget subwoofer we’ve tried; in terms of the sheer intensity of the sound and the ability to energize a room with explosions and crashes in movie soundtracks, it’s competitive with many models priced far higher.

This sub’s strength—and its weakness—is its mid-bass punch. That punch lends extra excitement to slapped bass notes and action-movie sound effects. However, on mellower fare such as pop or jazz music or tamer movie soundtracks, our top pick, the 10S MKII, delivered a fuller, more satisfying sound. It’s sort of like comparing an exciting, aggressively hoppy IPA with one that has a more balanced flavor overall.

The SW-12 put out an average of 120.7 dB in the mid-bass and 111.1 dB in the low bass. Those results are 5.9 decibels and 9.1 decibels more, respectively, than what we’ve measured on the next-best budget subwoofer we’ve found, the Dayton Audio SUB-1200. On this test, the SW-12 even outperformed our top pick, the 10S MKII, but because of the way this Monoprice sub is tuned, it didn’t sound as full to us as the Rogersound Labs model did.

It’s no thing of beauty. The SW-12 is a generic-looking, matte-black box, although its curved front-to-back edges give it a tiny touch of style. But that’s the norm for subs in this price range. At least it comes with a fabric-covered front grille to hide the woofer. Its cone-shaped plastic feet, however, could damage a wood or tile floor.

At this price, it’s no surprise that the SW-12 lacks fancy features such as built-in EQ, a control app, and different tuning modes.

This subwoofer is powerful and offers more tuning options to tailor the sound to your taste and room. But it’s large, and it has that stereotypical subwoofer look.

The Hsu Research VTF-2 MK5 is the subwoofer your ears may want you to buy but your eyes might rather you didn’t. It’s the plainest of plain black boxes, and its 21-by-15-by-22-inch bulk will likely offend interior designers—yet it delivers a thrilling sense of shake and presence that can subjectively transform your living room into a battered submarine, an earthquake-ravaged building, or the Indianapolis Motor Speedway. It also offers tuning modes for tailoring its sound to any taste.

This sub is powerful. The VTF-2 MK5 has a 12-inch driver powered by a 350-watt amplifier. It can play loud and deep enough for people who like to crank up their music or for home theater fans who love to feel their couch shake every time a cannon fires or the Hulk smashes something.

All of our listening panelists were impressed with its sheer power and its ability to reproduce the deepest pipe-organ notes from Saint-Saëns’s “Organ” Symphony, one of the most notoriously difficult pieces of music for a subwoofer to play.

Its performance is versatile—but its setup process demands patience. The VTF-2 MK5 offers five different tuning modes. You can choose a sealed mode that delivers a tight, punchy sound for music, a ported mode that delivers maximum deep-bass output for extra couch shaking during action movies, or one of several modes in between.

However, these adjustments require physical changes—plugging or unplugging ports and flipping switches or turning knobs on the back panel—rather than a few finger swipes in a smartphone app. So finding the mode you like best requires lengthy trial and error, and changing modes to suit different types of material (such as movies and music) is not as practical as it is with app-controlled or remote-controlled subs. But we expect that the tuning modes will allow a patient audio enthusiast to get whatever sonic character they want from the VTF-2 MK5.

Technically, this sub is as good as it gets for the price. I measured the VTF-2 MK5’s CTA-2010 output in three modes. The best result was in its ported max output mode, where it averaged 120.8 dB from 40 Hz to 63 Hz and 114.4 dB from 20 Hz to 31.5 Hz. Its results, on average, were better than those of any other subwoofer we’ve tested for this guide, though some others came within a decibel or two, and this small measured difference didn’t produce a noticeable advantage in our listening tests.

In fact, during our latest round of testing, we auditioned several similarly priced subwoofers that did not outperform the VTF-2 MK5 but came quite close and may be more appealing to certain people. You can read about them in Other subwoofers worth considering.

It’s available only through Hsu Research’s website. Also, the price of the VTF-2 MK5 does not include shipping. The last time we checked, shipping and handling costs typically added about $100 to the total.

Advertisement

If you need high performance but don’t have space for a big subwoofer, this subwoofer is a great choice—but it can’t deliver as much deep bass as our top pick.

Consider the SVS SB-1000 Pro the opposite of the Hsu Research VTF-2 MK5: It’s the subwoofer you buy when you want one that’s small and sleek enough to disappear into your decor but still powerful enough to deliver satisfying performance.

With its 13.5-by-13-by-13.75-inch sealed enclosure, this sub is easy to conceal, yet its performance is impressive, and you can easily control and tweak it through SVS’s smartphone app.

It looks much nicer than most subwoofers. The SB-1000 Pro occupies only a little more than a cubic foot of space, so it can slip easily under many end tables or into a corner behind a potted plant.

Because you can control all of the sub’s functions through its accompanying smartphone app, you don’t sacrifice convenience by hiding it away. And its built-in equalizer lets you fix sonic problems that may occur if you place the sub where it looks best rather than where it sounds best.

The stock black-ash finish looks okay, but if you need to place the SB-1000 Pro where it’ll be seen, an extra $100 buys you a sleeker-looking gloss black or gloss white finish.

It sounds great for its size, but it doesn’t rival our top pick in deep-bass output. This subwoofer uses a 10-inch driver in a sealed cabinet, powered by a 325-watt amp. It has a punchy, precise sound that works great for music, most of which doesn’t have much deep-bass content, and pretty well for action-movie soundtracks. However, it can’t match the low-frequency power of larger subs: We felt a bit of couch shake when the depth charges in U-571 exploded, but the effect was subtle rather than thrilling (although some people might prefer a subtler-sounding subwoofer).

The SB-1000 Pro’s output measured well for a subwoofer of this size, averaging 116.6 dB in the midbass (40 Hz to 63 Hz) and 102.5 dB in the low bass (20 Hz to 31.5 Hz). It slightly outperformed the Rogersound Labs Speedwoofer 10S MKII, by 0.7 decibel, in the midbass, but it fell 6 decibels short of that model’s average in the low bass.

You can adjust it via an app, but tuning requires some audio skills. SVS offers a Bluetooth-connected smartphone app that allows precise adjustment of functions such as volume and crossover frequency, as well as selection of movie and music listening modes plus a user-programmable custom mode.

The app’s big advantage is its parametric equalizer, which allows you to boost or cut three different bands of audio. You can select the frequencies and widths of these bands in the app. And you can do all of that from your listening chair, so you get an accurate idea of how the subwoofer is performing.

However, getting good results from the parametric EQ requires some knowledge of audio, as well as some way of measuring the subwoofer’s frequency response (the evenness of its output through all the different frequencies of bass). Using the pink-noise generator and audio spectrum analyzer included in the inexpensive AudioTool Android app, connected to my sound system via Bluetooth, I was able to quickly adjust the parametric EQ to get an even, flat bass response from my listening seat and then from there to fine-tune the sound to my liking. (iOS users can get similar results with Spectrum Analyzer RTA.)

All that being said, though, you can use the subwoofer on its own, without the app, and probably still get good results.

If you want the high-tech adjustability of the SVS SB-1000 Pro with a little more low-end prowess: Consider the SVS SB-2000 Pro or the SVS PB-1000 Pro, both of which use the same Bluetooth-connected iOS and Android control app. In our tests, the SB-2000 Pro averaged 117.1 dB in the midbass (40 Hz to 63 Hz) and 106.7 dB in the low bass (20 Hz to 31.5 Hz), while the PB-1000 Pro averaged 119.1 dB and 110.8 dB, respectively. Those results place the SB-2000 Pro in the same range as the Rogersound Labs Speedwoofer 10S MKII and place the PB-1000 Pro a couple of decibels higher.

If you want room EQ but don’t want to mess with an audio analyzer: The ELAC Varro Premium PS350 offers app-based control that allows you to use automatic or manual EQ to tune the sub’s performance. The auto EQ requires you to run one quick measurement with your phone near the subwoofer and a second measurement from your listening position. In our tests, it gave us wonderfully smooth, even bass, but you’re likely to get the same kind of result only in the listening position where you made the measurement. With midbass output of 118.7 dB and low-bass output of 106 dB, the PS350 didn’t clearly outperform the much less expensive Rogersound 10S MKII, but the EQ is almost sure to make this model’s bass sound more even and natural in your room.

If you want big bass in a boomy room: Some rooms produce an annoying bass boom that’s hard to get rid of. The Rythmik LV12M can fix that, once you use its single-band parametric EQ to precisely attenuate the boomy frequency. The EQ controls are on the back of the sub, and proper use of them requires you to get a spectrum-analyzer app such as AudioTool for Android or Spectrum Analyzer RTA for iOS. The LV12M is about 35% smaller than the Hsu Research VTF-2 MK5, but it came close to our upgrade pick in performance, with midbass output of 120.6 dB and low-bass output of 113 dB. However, it produced a lot of port noise during our measurements. It also offers three different tuning modes, which you can select with a switch on the back.

If you want a slim, affordable design that’s easy to hide: The under-$200 Dayton Audio SUB-1000L is only 6 inches thick, so it can slide under or behind some couches and snug up against walls. In our measurements, it maxed out at 108.8 dB in the midbass and 97.0 dB in the low bass, so it’s no powerhouse—but its performance is solid for a subwoofer of its small size and low price. We use one in our test labs and have recommended it to friends and pros looking for a compact, affordable sub.

If you want a subwoofer to use with powered speakers: The PreSonus Eris Sub 8BT is an 8-inch subwoofer with a built-in subwoofer crossover that filters bass out of the main speakers. For more about it, see the Other computer speakers worth considering section of our computer speaker guide.

Advertisement

Following are brief notes about other subwoofers we’ve tested. The complete CTA-2010 results for all of these subs, and many more, are available in this spreadsheet, and you can find brief discussions of previous subwoofers we’ve tested on this page.

The Dayton Audio SUB-1200 looks nicer than the Monoprice SW-12 and costs less, but the SW-12 has much higher measured output.

The Definitive Technology Descend DN10 doesn’t offer particularly impressive low-bass output, but in our tests it sounded wonderfully tuneful with music, and its styling is much nicer than that of most competitors. So it’s a good choice when looks are important and music is the priority.

The JBL L10cs Classic Series Subwoofer has a nice, tuneful sound and a relatively compact design, but its low-bass output is weak for the price.

Like the ELAC Varro Premium PS350, the MartinLogan Dynamo 600X incorporates a room EQ system, but we found this one much more difficult to use, and we couldn’t get it to work with Android or iOS devices. The subwoofer’s output wasn’t impressive, either.

The Polk Audio HTS 10 is a former runner-up pick. It’s similar in size and price to our current top pick, the Rogersound Labs Speedwoofer 10S MKII, and we think it looks a lot nicer. However, while our panelists generally liked its sound, its low-bass output was roughly 6 decibels less than what we got from the 10S MKII.

The Rogersound Labs Speedwoofer 12S sounds tuneful and powerful, and it comes with a handy remote for accessing four different listening modes. However, it’s huge—20% larger than the Hsu Research VTF-2 MK5—and in our measurements it had 4.6 decibels less midbass output than what the Hsu Research model produced, though about the same low-bass output.

The SVS 3000 Micro is only about half the size by volume as the SVS SB-1000 Pro, and it has the same advanced, app-driven signal processing. But its deep-bass output is dramatically less, so it’s a good buy only if you absolutely need a super-tiny subwoofer.

This article was edited by Adrienne Maxwell and Grant Clauser.

Brent Butterworth

I test and write about a wide variety of audio devices, such as speakers, soundbars, amplifiers, and subwoofers. I also test musical instruments and recording gear, including USB interfaces and microphones, and I perform audio measurements for many other guides, such as our headphone and earplug guides.

by Brent Butterworth

Correct hookup, positioning, and adjustment of a subwoofer is critical for good sound. Here’s a simple, five-step method.

by Brent Butterworth

Following up on reader complaints about the Monoprice 9723M subwoofer, we did more testing, and found out why some buyers might have run into problems.

by Brent Butterworth

Subwoofers are a powerful addition to an audio system, but they vary greatly in cost. Here’s what you can get when you pay more.

by Adrienne Maxwell

Start your vinyl music journey here with our picks for turntable, receiver, speakers, and more.

Advertisement