The Velodyne EQ-Max 15 attempts to offer a glimpse of their top of the line Digital Drive series feature set and performance at a much more affordable price and give subwoofer hunters with more modest budgets access to Velodyne products. A goal well met for the most part. I was fond of the finish on the review unit. The dark brown wood grain being a welcome departure from the endless parade of black cubes. Build quality was good as well, as was parts quality, although it seems like more performance could possibly be coaxed out of the system with a heavier duty driver as the current one did seem to be over-exerted at times. The measurement session shows the EQ-Max 15 to have strong basic performance including high output headroom over theimportant 40-80Hz octave and great distortion performance above 30Hz. Looking at the measurements it does not surprise me at all that subjectively the EQ-Max 15 did very well with most any type of music I happened to throw its way. On the opposite side of that coin the modest extension and output below 30Hz showed up subjectively with a less strong performance with bombastic movies which contain a lot of heavy lifting in this area. It does do well with movies, just not as well as it does with music which was really impressive. Even without the extreme extension offered on some other subwoofers, the EQ-Max 15 offers a lot of value for the money and some features not offered on most other subwoofers in this price range, like remote control operation, EQ pre-sets and the auto EQ system. Not to mention a generous warranty term and the backing of a long established audio manufacturer. If you haven’t heard recently Velodyne has started to offer their products for sale online, which has been somewhat controversial, but means that where previously if you happened to live in a remote area you may not have had access to a reasonably close B&M Velodyne retailer, you should now be able to have a factory authorized Velodyne shipped to your door no matter where you are in North America. In the case of the EQ-Max 15, which might be the best current value in the extensive Velodyne product catalog, that can only be a good thing.

The Velodyne EQ-Max 15 receives the Audioholics Bassaholic Medium Room rating, which means that this sub is recommended as maintaining adequate headroom in rooms or spaces of 1,500-3,000 cubic feet and/or for users who usually listen at low to moderate volume levels. For further information in how we make these recommendations see the full article here.

See: Audioholics Subwoofer Room Size Rating Protocol

Velodyne EQ-Max 15 Review

velodyne.com
Toll Free: 866-243-0789
MSRP: $879