Amazon Echo Sub, Powerful subwoofer for your Echo, Requires compatible Echo device

Amazon Echo Sub-Woofer Where do I start? At this point I am here to say this is a GREAT product, well worth the money. Five Stars for sure. But I digress... I started out with an Amazon Echo, first generation, paid nearly $100 for it, but was quite pleased with its performance. I was very pleased with the sound output of that small device. I liked it so much I bought another for another room. Being an Amazon Prime member, I started listening to music from Amazon. Again, pleased - and I decided to add the unlimited subscription to Amazon Music. I have a traditional stereo system - two speakers, an amplifier, and a CD player. I got to thinking I would like to feed the Amazon music into the stereo and researched the subject on the internet. Turned out to be stupidly simple. I bought a third generation Dot, now less than $50, and a simple adapter cable. The cable plugged into the output jack of the Dot and into the right and left stereo inputs on my amplifier. I had to do a little volume adjustments of the Dot and of the stereo amp to get the levels right - but that was a five minute exercise, and suddenly I had beautiful music in full stereo. But in researching the stereo bit, I discovered something else interesting on the internet - that it was simple to set up two identical Echo units to give full stereo. Well, I have two identical first generation Echos. So I tried it, setting up in a different room. A note here - it is unlikely that most of us could ever set a stereo pair up without some very simple instruction from the internet. You have to use the Amazon app on a smart phone. But with that instruction it is a very simple exercise. I did it. And it sounded great. And that’s also about when I discover the existence of the Amazon Echo Sub-Woofer. OK. I admit at first I was skeptical. How could a six inch diameter speaker generate significant base? But then how could a tiny Amazon Echo Dot sound so terrific? But they do. The gold standard for bass performance for many is the piece, “Thus Spake Zarathustra” by Richard Strauss. To quote Wikipedia, “The piece starts with a sustained double low C on the double basses, contrabassoon and church organ.” This corresponds to a tone of some duration at a frequency of 32 hertz. Only higher end classic stereo systems will deliver this tone. In most, it plays as a low level buzz that would be obnoxious were it any louder. So OK. I pulled up the specs on the unit. Hmm. Goes to 30 hertz at minus 6 db. You know, that ain’t bad! And you could goose up the low end a bit with the equalizer in the Amazon app. The built in 100 watt amplifier and cross over network built into the sub-woofer help a lot. Hmm. OK, I went ahead and ordered it. And immediately discovered that at the time there was a 4 week wait for delivery. The unit did show up as promised, and I was anxious to get it going. A comment here: normally I am rather contemptuous of “unpacking” videos on the internet. But, the packing and packaging of this unit is a performance art master class on how it should be done. I will say no more on that subject except that I was hugely impressed. Setting it up was mostly easy - but NOT as easy as the Amazon site suggests. The main issue is that if you integrating it into an existing stereo pair of Echo units, as I was, first you have to unpair the existing units, then rebuild with the addition of the sub-woofer. Very simple to do on the app - but NOT intuitive. Again, the internet is your friend. I easily found simple instructions and proceeded - and five minutes later had everything networked and playing. It sounded OK, but honestly not all that terrific. Certainly not what I was expecting. Playing “Thus Spake Zarathustra” was, frankly, disappointing. But, I have had experience with base woofers before, and had a suspicion it wold improve. It seems such speakers need to be used a bit to loosen up to reach their desired performance levels. I am very happy to report that this proved to be exactly the case. After a few hours, the speaker was clearly doing better. A few days and it was sounding great. And today, I was sitting in my chair listening to Hans Zimmer’s sound track for “The Dark Knight”, a piece I had played several times before. But this time, it seemed like the whole room was shaking from an outstanding base source. I was astounded - and hugely delighted! I am truly pleased. A closing note - truly serious audiophiles are guaranteed to turn up their noses at this system. I am talking about the people that only use virgin vinyl records for a music source, heavy oxygen free copper cables to the tube amplifier with heavy iron transformers, huge engineered bass reflex speakers or the like etc. etc. Good for them - and perfection has its price. But for us lesser mortals who love music, the Amazon system offers a quality system offering a lot of pleasure at a modest price.

It's not even close to our $500 SRS ported 10" sub, but it's not even in the same echelon, to be honest, so it's not worth comparing. I do have an Energy ported 8" sub that I purchased about a decade ago, that it can be compared to. To ensure the Energy sub doesn't sound terrible, I have to set the Energy sub's cross-over to the minimum setting (there is no LFE for this sub, only component-level inputs). The Echo Sub, by comparison, seems to be set very well, mostly pumping out very low frequencies. From the Echo Sub I was honestly only expecting a modest upgrade; I was expecting to want to return it right away, actually. That's not the case. Even in the same room where we have our 10" SRS sub, it emits clear, accurate low-frequencies that fill both the room it's in and the adjacent dining room and kitchen (open floor plan). Our family-room group consists of our family room sound-bar (hooked up to a 2nd-gen Echo Dot, as well as SRS 10" sub and Energy 8" sub), kitchen Echo (which is actually situated right at the border of the family-room/dining-room, on the family-room side of the partition. I was expecting so many different devices to compete and not sound harmonious (at best) or cancel each other out (at worst). The subs had to be phased to prevent cancellation, but the rest of the speakers, playing together, allow for a very nice room-to-room experience! We listen to classical music during dinner and hear it in the dining from from all angles, which has a very nice affect. While cleaning, I don't have to turn up the family Echo Dot-to-sound-bar (and sound-bar/subs), because the other Echos (and Echo Sub) compliment the family-room speakers nicely, allowing for (again...) room-to-room transit with relatively consistent sound. The benefit to this: turning up the family room set (Echo Dot-to-sound-bar and Subs) causes some low-frequency reverberation in the kitchen and other areas of the house (e.g., the bathroom). With it at a lower volume and the Echo Sub providing the low-frequency response for the kitchen and dining room area, things sound much better. If we're solely hanging out in the dining room or kitchen area, I don't even feel the need to turn on the family room Echo Dot (and etc.). The output from the Echo and Echo Plus in the area, supplemented by the Echo Sub, sounds great. If you're expecting this to sound like a $500 sub, you're delusional. If you're looking to add a very nice upgrade to the low-frequency output of your Echos or Echo Plus' easily, then this is your sub. Installation: I've got very low patience and expect things (especially from Amazon) to be top-notch, and found myself only MILDLY frustrated setting this thing up - the Echo Sub took maybe four times longer than any other Echo (we have 7 total) to setup, but it really isn't that bad. The setup of this will DEFINITELY be revised to help out those who frustrate easily or who aren't savvy enough to figure things out on their own, but most people who have even a rudimentary set of tech skills shouldn't have a problem. Setup: 1. Mine did not go into pairing mode right away. I had to press and hold the single button on the Echo Sub for MORE THAN the instructed SIX (6) seconds for the dot to turn orange. Note: You can't SEE the color of the LED, because it's in the center of the button and obstructed by the finger you're pressing it with...while pressing. Kinda dumb ... 2. Once the sub was in pairing mode (orange light on the sub lit), things went swimmingly, using the app. This is the ONLY part that I had an issue with, since the included instructions were OVERLY simplistic and didn't cover it. If anyone wants a more detailed how-to, just comment below and, if someone hasn't already provided one online, I'll do so.

Combined with a pair of Amazon Echo 4th Generation it performs very well, they are a good match, both in terms of size and performance. Integration is seamless, imperceptible. There are no user adjustments provided, none. You can try placing the sub in different locations within the room such as, in a corner or away from a corner. I do not find this to be a problem, I think the automatic integration between the subwoofer and the Echo satellites is entirely correct, and the addition of the sub adds a little heft to movies and music and also allows the trio to play a bit louder than the stereo pair alone can. I am glad I got the subwoofer to augment the bass. I think expectations need to be realistic: this is a small and inexpensive subwoofer which matches perfectly with the small Echo speakers, you won’t rattle any furniture or feel the bass, but you will get the best performance possible from your Echo speakers by adding it. I think that for most users, probably, the easy set up and lack of adjustment is a benefit. This sub and satellite setup is best suited to a small room or apartment, which given their size, is to be expected. Medium-sized rooms will require the system to play near or at their limits and likely lead to some disappointment. Why only 4 stars? I paid full price for this and I think I got a good deal, but I would have been willing to pay more for a larger, more capable, Echo Subwoofer.