The Polk DSW PRO 440 (see image) is the most compact due to its smaller size, especially for smaller rooms.
If you’re looking for a subwoofer below the $1000 mark that gives you high-quality sound for your home theater speaker system or listening pleasure, the Polk DSW PRO 440, 550, and 660 are worth taking a look at.
In summary, these are Polk Audio's lineup of high-performance and digital subwoofers. All three of these subwoofers offer simplistic aesthetics, high-quality sound, and seamless plug-and-play installation in a budget-friendly package. The overall specs of all three are pretty similar and even share the same user manual. As the model numbers suggest, the only exception to this is their output. The Polk DSW PRO 660 is the most powerful and offers exceptional bass output, while the DSW PRO 440 is the most compact. The DSW PRO 660 is also the most expensive, followed by the DSW PRO 550 and DSW PRO 440 in descending order.
Now let’s go have a closer look.
Sound
Let me tell you something right off the bat.
The sound quality performance you'll end up getting from a speaker will always depend on your room acoustics - particularly room dimensions and speaker positions.
The impact of the combination of these two is actually so strong that in most cases, it doesn't even make sense to utter a single word on sound quality without speaking of them.
This is also why it's not unusual to see completely different reviews of the same speaker.
In one case the speaker might be placed in a sweet spot inside the room and hence the user might be satisfied. In other cases the same speaker might be ill placed and hence user might even have returned it.
The point most people miss here is that it mostly isn't even about the engineering behind the speaker itself. It's about where you place the speaker inside which room.
So, in order to solve this problem, I've partnered with Acoustics and Audio Engineering PhD Andrea Cicero from AC Acustica and created Soundton - a simple, 2D, browser accessible online speaker placement calculator.
With Soundton, now there's a way to figure the sound quality of most speakers before you buy them.
Read more about its working principles at soundton.com/documentation/.
The end colormap provides you the locations with the best (green) and worst (red) acoustics.