Audio Video News

During the press junket that introduced Audyssey Labs’ DSX 10-channel surround-sound technology, the company also gave us an advance listen to a new product it was working on: the Sub Equalizer. Now that the Sub Equalizer has been officially announced, we’re free to talk about it.

The $799 Sub Equalizer is a slim black box that optimizes the performance of one or two subwoofers for the acoustics of the room they’re installed in. It’s like a bass-only version of the MultEQ auto room compensation technology found in many A/V receivers. Audyssey chief technology officer Chris Kyriakakis said that the Sub Equalizer’s resolution is higher than that of the subwoofer equalizing function built into MultEQ.

Everyone who's hip to home theater knows by now that two subwoofers are better than one, but positioning and calibrating the subwoofers so they don’t “fight” each other is a mighty task indeed. Fortunately, the Sub Equalizer works for two subs, automatically setting their level and delay, and producing an EQ curve that works for both.

A removable faceplate hides a connector for the calibration mic and a USB port that interfaces the Sub Equalizer with a laptop computer (which is required to run the calibration software). On the back panel are two RCA inputs, two RCA subwoofer outputs, and an RCA line out for a satellite speaker (used only during calibration).

The Sub Equalizer we heard six weeks ago in Audyssey’s Los Angeles headquarters was just a prototype; its software and features hadn’t been finalized yet. The demo was weird, brief, and not particularly convincing; it merely made a very muddy bass line from Standing in the Shadows of Motown sound slightly less muddy. However, I’m betting this box is far more effective than Audyssey’s demo suggested.

The $799 Sub Equalizer is sold through custom installers, who calibrate the EQ using the Audyssey Installer Kit. The Sub Equalizer is slated to ship on July 1. In addition, the AS-EQ1 SubEQ, a consumer version of the equalizer, has been available from SVS for a couple of months. Kyriakakis hinted that Audyssey might eventually license the Sub Equalizer’s technology for use in receivers and surround-sound processors.

--Brent Butterworth