ESI Aktiv 10S 4-stars Reviews

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.

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.