Infinity SSW-210
Two ten-inch drivers, a 250-watt amp, and a cabinet shaped to fit in a corner. This was Infinity's bid for the home-theater boom.
Overview
The SSW-210 is a powered subwoofer. Infinity built it as a sealed box with two 10-inch long-throw drivers, a 250-watt continuous amplifier, and an onboard crossover. You don't need a separate amp to feed it. The cabinet is the interesting part: a rectangular block with one corner cut off. The slant-sided shape tucks into a room corner and uses the walls as loading. It can also stand upright, and Infinity sold optional end panels that turn it into a low table, angling the drivers down toward the floor for boundary reinforcement. At 58 pounds and roughly 18½ by 26 by 9¾ inches, it's a substantial piece of furniture. It is not a cube you shove behind the couch and forget.
The rear panel carries a level control, a continuously variable low-pass crossover frequency control, and an on/off switch. The design is two tens acoustically coupled in a sealed enclosure, with the built-in amp doing the heavy lifting so the main speakers and their amplifier are freed from the bottom octave or two.
Audio (November 1992, p.44) put the SSW-210 through a four-way subwoofer shootout alongside the Altec Lansing PSW10, the Velodyne F-1500, and the Hsu Research HRSW 10, and the measured results are where the picture gets honest. The magazine's published manufacturer's specifications list the sealed enclosure, the pair of 10-inch cones, 250 watts continuous from the built-in amp, a rated frequency response of 25 to 120 Hz, and a variable crossover spanning 40 to 120 Hz with a low-pass slope of 36 dB/octave. Price at the time: $1,098 each, with the optional end panels at $58 per pair.
The measured performance is more complicated than the spec sheet. Audio (November 1992, p.44) found the half-power points at 28 Hz to 123 Hz, reasonably close to the 25-to-120 rating. It measured the upper-frequency acoustic roll-off at a very rapid 42 dB/octave, steeper than the rated 36. That means the sub drops out quickly above its crossover point. This is helpful if you're blending it with small satellites, but it leaves less overlap to play with. The magazine also noted that at the 18 dB/octave crossover setting the response showed greater level above 50 Hz and a measured acoustic roll-off closer to 12 dB/octave. So the slope switch has a real, audible effect on how the sub hands off to the mains.
The SSW-210 gave ground in the deep bass. Audio (November 1992, p.44) ranked its distortion performance between the Altec and the better two systems. It was reasonable above 50 Hz but rose rapidly below that, with a usable 88 dB SPL at 25 Hz at about 15% distortion. On a test disc with an almost pure 17-Hz pedal note, the magazine reported the Infinity's output as quite clean but much reduced at the fundamental. In the listening sessions the reviewer placed the Velodyne and Hsu on top, closely followed by the Infinity, with the Altec trailing.
The SSW-210 is a well-built, corner-friendly powered sub that does solid, clean work in the upper bass and mid-bass and crosses over steeply and predictably. It wants main speakers that can carry the lowest octave themselves. The corner-loading cabinet and the optional table panels were clever answers to the problem of getting a sub past the household, and the sealed box avoids the port noise and tuning quirks of vented designs. It won't shake the room at 20 Hz, and Audio's measurements show that plainly.
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