Subwoofer Reviews

Bottom Line

The MSUB-A122 leaves me with two questions. First, is it the world’s best crazy-cheap speaker, or does that honor fall to the Dayton Audio B652? I can’t decide, so let’s just call it one of the best speaker bargains in the world. Second, what would a stack of four of these things on each side of my room sound like?

Test Bench

Frequency response

47 to 130 Hz ±3 dB

Bass output (CEA-2010 standard)

• Ultra-low bass (20-31.5 Hz) average: NA

20 Hz              NA

25 Hz              NA

31.5 Hz           98.3 dB

• Low bass (40-63 Hz) average: 115.3 dB

40 Hz              112.3 dB

50 Hz              117.9 dB

63 Hz              115.6 dB

I made the frequency response measurement seen in the chart with the crossover set to 150 Hz, using ground plane technique with a Clio FW analyzer in stepped sine mode. The sub sat on the ground and the microphone was placed 2 meters from the front of the sub. The measurement is smoothed to 1/6th of an octave. Obviously, this isn’t a deep-bass subwoofer. Whoever engineered it seems to have taken the meager resources at his disposal and wisely focused 100% of his efforts on the range from 40 to 100 Hz. Combined low-pass function of the crossover, driver and enclosure is about -16 dB/octave.

To measure bass output, I used the CEA-2010 method. The MSUB-A122 has plenty of output in the low bass octave (40-63 Hz), comparable to what I’ve measured from average 10- and 12-inch subs. There’s still decent output at 31.5 Hz, but below that, bupkis.

Incidentally, when I hooked up the Dayton Audio B652s I checked the subwoofer’s speaker-level and line-level outputs with a digital multimeter to see if they include any high-pass filtering to take the bass out of the satellite speakers. They don’t.