Overall, this sub over-performs for the amount of money you put into it. At this price point, I wouldn't be surprised to find a boomy, muddy mess. What I found was a speaker that could make a worthy addition to any budget home theater. Will it fill a large room with bone crushing bass? No, but do you really expect it to at this price point? What it will do is provide convincing and at times tactile bass in a small to medium sized room. Port chuffing is a problem during certain scenes that you need to be aware of before you purchase. For a system that is mostly geared towards music, the x-sub is a no brainer. This sub would be an easy recommendation for any budget minded consumer in a small to medium sized room.

Measurements and Analysis

Even though this is a budget sub, we decided to do some basic measurements just to see how well this little sub preformed. My initial plan was to take the sub outside and do some ground plane measurements but was foiled by my old Onyko receiver that just up and decided that it wanted to go into protect mode. Instead, I placed the sub in the middle of the room and took the measurements at ½ meter to minimize any room interactions using the ground plane technique. I utilized the Rives Test CD 2 because of their Radio Shack SPL meter corrected tones. I adjusted the crossover on my Denon 3805 up to its highest setting (250 Hz), disconnected my mains, and calibrated the sub on the 80hz test tone (to 80dB, 90dB, and 100dB). The 100dB calibration was pushing this sub pretty hard though I never heard it clip (quite an accomplishment in my book).

At ½ meter I could hear no port chuffing at during the 80dB test. I heard a bit of chuffing at the 20 and 25Hz test tone during the 90dB test (though it wasn't really measurable in my setup). During the 100dB test, I could hear port chuffing all the way up to the 40Hz tone. This definitely affected the measurement as the chuffing was louder than the tone coming through the sub.

The -3dB point of the x-sub is 28Hz just like the manufacturer claims. Upper bass extension is very linear up to about 120Hz making it a good match to blend with smaller satellite speakers that require a higher than 80Hz crossover setting. The sub runs clean and relatively flat (the bump centered at 60Hz was likely a result of the inroom measurement limitation). Once I drove the sub to around 100dB (1/2 meter), port chuffing became dominant below 40Hz which inadvertently showed up as the increased amplitude response below 30Hz in the 94dB graph.