ESI Aktiv 10S Reviews

Nice sub

works well in my home studio. just what i need' adding some bass to my 5' monitors

Great performance for the price

I'll start by addressing the main thing I was worried about before ordering: Does this subwoofer actually do 30hz as the specs promise? The answer is yes, thankfully. Setting the crossover to 50hz and adjusting the phase, the sub integrates very nicely with my Kali LP6 monitors. I listened to it and measured it in two different rooms: In my bedroom/home-studio it extends to 33hz before rolling off, whereas in my living room it's flat to 27hz! Not bad for a budget sub. I also took some close up measurements of the woofer & port, and the combined response is -3dB at 30hz. This may not be the most accurate measurement method, but it's a good sign nonetheless. The fully adjustable phase is very useful and in my opinion more subwoofers should provide this instead of a simple 0-180 switch, and the standby mode works really well and has never interrupted me when working at low volumes. It's also optional to enable in the first place so +1 for that. There's some significantly pricier studio subs out there that have more or less the same features and bass extension, so this is a really good offering at this price and I can easily recommend it.

Very good subwoofer for this price range.

Many Hi-fi subs for a much higher price, can't compete with this one.

Of course the looks of it it's not very pretty, but it does the job very well.

Nice, warm low frequency.

Great addon for UniK 08 +

The crossover knob (50Hz-180Hz) is just for the subwoofer crossover and does not affect the connected the satellite speakers, like the satellite crossover switch (100Hz or OFF).

By using the satellite crossover switch the connected speakers can run full range (OFF) or with 100 Hz high pass (100Hz) with 24 dB/octave.

The settings of the subwoofer crossover are related to the low end of the ESI uniK 08+ speakers.

The 12 clock position of the potentiometer for the sub crossover is around 115Hz.

By setting the satellite crossover to 100Hz you have can set the subwoofer crossover knob to 11 clock around 100Hz.

The whole thing is of course dependent on the room conditions and should be tried out, but it is best to measure it correctly.

Hope this helps !

It broke down the next day it arrived.

Ok, so there were some issues with it.

First, i had to pay 50 pounds customs fee because of brexit and it delayed the shipment nearly a week. (thanks EU)

Second, it broke down the next day it arrived and i ended up repairing and improving it.

Initially it would sound kinda hollow and it wouldn't get very low in frequency. I tryied to adjust it as best as possible with my 5" monitors and left it at that. But the next day, i left everything powered on and went to the store to buy something. When i came back there would be power but no sound.

I opened it up and for some reason it had some resistors blown. After more investigation, nearly all the opamps were fried too. It turns out that a rectifier transistor was faulty and it gave 22v instead of 15v. Because of it the opamps fried and this led to the resistors blowing as well.

So i decided to replace them all and change all caps with Nichicon high grade audio caps.

I increased the high voltage caps in the source from 220uf to 470uf. In the output section i replaced the 2200uf with 4700uf, the 470uf with 1000uf and the 220uf with 470uf.

All i can say now is wow! It is a beast! It is loud, it sounds deep and full and you can clearly hear and feel frequencies as low as 27hz but most of all it completes the low end on my 5" monitors perfectly and i couldn't be happier.

With the customs fee and parts i probably ended up paying nearly double it's price, but i'm glad it sounds good now.

If anyone wants to make the same modifications, be carefull with the power sourse pcb because it is realy cheap and double layered and the vias get broken easily. Also if you are going to replace the 2200uf with 4700uf, be sure to change the 1Kohm bleed resistors with 2 Watt ones.

Woofin' Brilliant

this has definitely helped me produce better mixes. This sub was a great addition to my 2x 5-inch monitors. The low end on the monitors alone is good, but this is a whole new level.

great build, if you use it with 5inch nearfields, you will notice a big difference in sound. the low frequencies become tight and clean.

If it doesn't sound good, don't blame the speaker, just go and find some good instructions online how to properly set up your subwoofer..

not worth it

I was very excited about the features specially at this price point. But it turns out that my expectations where way to high. In short, it sounds rubbish. For a 10”speakers there is almost no low end; nothing below 70Hz. There is a lot of 100 and 150Hz boom. It doesn’t have impact. Besides that there is some low level distortion.

Between 70Hz and 30 Hz there is a difference 20db, measered.

clean and massive sound

clear, clean and massive sound, I like it, I have it for 5 years now

used with Focal twin 6be

it is a fantastic complementary for low end extension for any pair of monitors i'd say, just needed that little extra lows on my monitors.. i've searched for may other brands but the deal breaker was the high pass filter option for the satellites .

sound-wise i cannot give a clear opinion because it's my first sub ever in the studio, but seems to be doing a good job translating low end on theatrical systems and in my cadillac DTS Bose system.. no customers complained about low end issues so far and i'm happy :)