Rockville Rock Shaker 8 Black, 8″ Powered Su

Impossibly Great!!!
This Rockville Rock Shaker 8″ Inch Black 400w Powered Home Theater Subwoofer Sub is incredible! As a Ph.D. in Engineering Technology and an avid music fan of pristine sound, I was immediately taken by this great product! From the packaging, which is the very best I have ever seen, (triple-boxed with excellent-grade quality material), to the very components making up this awesome bargain, I am impressed. Every switch, potentiometer, binding-post, knob, fuse, bottom feet, and the power cord is as good as it gets. The outside construction and finish are impeccable. BUT the Sound will knock you out! The speaker in my Yamaha sub finally went and I saw the price on this and read some reviews and thought why not? WOW, the sound at ANY volume is clear, sweet, and melow, with a touch of snap for bottom support of the music, (down to 20 Hz)! I cannot say enough about this sub, and for $85 bucks shipped Prime on Amazon, it is an outright STEAL! I challenge anyone in finding a better deal for the money! This sub competes with others costing as much as five times more! Buy this baby if you want the deal of 2020, at least so far, in the Subwoofer Market! Bravo for Rockville, all their products seem to be Top-Shelf! And bravo for Amazon again! I don’t know how I ever got along before Amazon!

This highly inexpensive subwoofer represents a dichotomy of sorts – feel/looks vs audio quality
Wow, now this is another one of those audio products where initially I didn’t even know where to begin.Alright, let me paint the picture on how I use my audio gear in order to set the stage. I used to be a hard-core audiophile years ago – actually, make that some 30 years ago. Since then I’ve retired and my cash flow scenario is quite limited. I haven’t lost my audio standards – not by a long shot! However, the way I satisfy my audiophile cravings now-a-days is to maintain a desktop system by my desktop computer. I use a variety of DAC’s (these things have spoiled me to the max), along with a variety of active (self-powered) Edifier speakers – those specifically being the R2000DB, the R1850DB, the R1700BT, and the 3000 Pro. Each of these speaker systems are capable of providing superb sound qualities, dependent on what you feed them with. Currently, I have the wonderful Edifier R1850’s set up on either side of my 27″ monitor. I previously had a 10″ Velodyne woofer system setup under my desk, running longer Blue Jeans Cables LC-1 cables from them to the speakers.OK – now read closely here. Many folks falsely believe that you “must” have a subwoofer output on your active speaker for you to attach a subwoofer. Nothing could be further from the truth. The key here is find a powered subwoofer that has “both” RCA inputs and outputs. What you do then is to attach RCA audio cables running from either a DAC, or an Amplifier, or a Receiver to the inputs of the active subwoofer. Now use another set of RCA cables connected to the outputs on the active subwoofer to your active speakers. Now on the back of these subwoofers (the kinds who have both input and output RCA terminals), there should also be a frequency adjustment knob – or a switch. You just then set the frequency to the desire crossover frequency and what will happen then is that only those frequencies above the crossover point will be routed to your active speakers.My 15 year old Velodyne 10″ active subwoofer has both of these RCA terminals (in and out), along with a remote, and various crossover knobs and switches. The problem is that the Velodyne is much too large and I constantly wound up hitting it with either my leg or chair. So I had to move the Velodyne to downstairs by my theater system arrangement.So what to do for a smaller replacement? I look at countless active subwoofers from a wealth of brands on Amazon and other outlets, all to little avail. I’d say that 98% of the available active subwoofers either have just one set of RCA inputs (no outputs), or they have just one subwoofer input connector.However, I did find two smaller (both 8″) subwoofers that also included the “output” RCA connectors, and these are the:Emotiva Airmotiv S8 – 8″ powered subwoofer (with both input and output RCA connections) – priced at $299 and is built like a tank with superb, tight, low frequency extension capabilities.and on the other end of the spectrum…The Rockville Shaker 8″ active subwoofer that is nowhere as nicely constructed as the Emotiva above and only costs $95 or so – but it also has both input and output RCA connections – which is what intrigued me about this budget offering. Please read on…The Emotiva subwoofer was out of stock, otherwise I would have jumped on that one. So as a matter of sheer curiosity, I ordered the Rockville Shaker.When it arrived, I was pleasantly surprised to see it triple boxed, indicating that unless a truck runs over it, Rockville have ensured that the subwoofer will arrive quite safely. By the same token, I was also stunned at how light everything was – almost as if the weight was just the cardboard boxes (and not the contents).After opening the box and removing the subwoofer, I was sort of disappointed at how light it was – as if there were no guts or speakers at all in the very light enclosure. There was nothing special about the enclosure and it feels like it was composed of a very thin wood material. I looked through the subwoofer port in the rear and didn’t see anything special – noticing what appeared as a generic speaker as the woofer. I couldn’t see the electronics. On the other-hand, the rear with all of the inputs/outputs turned into a welcomed, pleasant surprise. There I witnessed far more options that you’d see on only far more expensive powered subwoofers to include the rarely found RCA inputs and outputs. It also has a removable AC power cord.So I plugged everything in, and selected roughly an 80-90 Hz crossover point using the frequency adjustment knob. The Edifier R1850DB’s that I was using at the moment had a 4.5″ woofer, so I felt that an 80-90 HZ crossover point would be ideal. A frustrating thing here is that the frequency adjustment knob has no indents or clicks and moves freely and easily. In addition, all the little indent markings do not have any frequencies written by them, so you’re left guessing what they are. You have 150 HZ all the way to the right and 50 HZ at it’s lowest turnover point to the left – but in between, there is nothing marked and the small indent markers are not logical (such as expected 5 or 10 HZ increments). Instead, they appear more like 3.5 HZ or some other strange scenario – so you’re left guessing (ball park I suppose) at the frequency you are looking for the crossover point.In addition, if you don’t have powered main speakers, you also have input and output speaker connections (using banana plugs) on the rear of the Rockville – another nice surprise.Alright – now on to the sound (bass). Now what I discovered is that yes, the Rockville will add a tremendous amount of bass, but you have to be very, very careful where you set the subwoofer volume level. I found that I moved the subwoofer volume level to just the 3rd or 4th indent level up to achieve the ideal balance between natural bass and the rest of the audio spectrum with the main speakers, otherwise the rest of your music will be overpowered with heavy, boomy bass.What I also noticed is that I was so glad that Rockville provided a removable power cord because with this power cord, the bass sounded more bloaty – not as tight as more expensive subwoofers. I noticed this specifically with instruments in a classical orchestra such as the string bass or cello that sounded overly boomy and bloating. I then reached for one of my audiophile power cords (which are quite thick and weighty), removed the stock thin power cord that came with the Rockville, and attached the WAudio 3.3FT AC Power Cable 10AWG HiFi Audiophile Power Cord with US Plug IEC Connector. The link for this cable on Amazon is (copy and paste the link if need be):https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01L2MBYWC/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o03_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1With this audiophile quality cord attached, the quality of the bass was improved substantially, with tighter, less boomy qualities. I still maintained the volume level at 3 to 4 notches and everything balanced out nicely. The lower registers are handled with aplomb and the overall sound features a added richness. Now keep in mind that if the music you are listening to has no bass, don’t expect the subwoofer to conjure up some bass. I always have to laugh when I hear some folks complain that a speaker has no bass – in particular, when certain musical arrangements may not call for bass. You’d be quite surprised to witness how many folks out there wish that their speakers “had more bass,” as if to imply that the woofers should somehow “add” bass notes where none are called for.I realize all of this was wordy, but I wanted the readers to understand where I’m coming from. And why did I give this Rockville Shaker subwoofer 4 stars? Well quite frankly, for $95 USD, the overall build-quality and light weight will have you shaking your head with slight disappointment, but in the end the bass sound qualities can have you smiling. Now is this the subwoofer to add if you have $5000 main speakers? Hell NOOOOOOOOO. I would strongly recommend this Rockville for use under the desk of a computer system where the user has smaller bookshelf speakers on either side of a monitor or laptop. You will become quite surprised at how good this combo will sound.Now in revisiting the “add-ons” that I provided, it is always important to note that upgrading things like cables and in this case, an audiophile quality AC cable also – will bring incremental improvements to the sound reproduction. The cable I suggested above is inexpensive and you will be quite shocked at how large it is, but it will help quite a bit in tightening up that bass – that’s for sure.I still intend on getting the Emotiva when they get it back in stock, but I’m downright satisfied with what I’m getting from this Rockville unit. Again – considering the inputs, outputs, and other options on the rear of the Rockville 8″ Shaker subwoofer, the ridiculously low price of it ($95 USD and free shipping) – along with the bass output – assigning it 4 stars was not difficult. If it had a better build quality and heft to the system, I would have assigned it 5 stars. But hey…for under $100 USD, you must factor in that you get what you pay for.As is the case with any review of any audio product, your mileage may vary with how you use the items.

Nice bass for a small price.
I replaced my ancient, crackling, Polk bass unit. This one is fine as a replacement. Happy with my purchase.