Ken Kreisel DXD-300 12" Powered Subwoofer (DU)

Ken Kreisel DXD-300 Subwooofer

Ken Kreisel invented the "self powered subwoofer" (now referred to as the "active subwoofer") in 1977. 

The DXD-300 is the culmination of decades of research and development, pushing the boundaries of subwoofer design to produce the most accurate, natural sounding subwoofers in the world - so good they're used in studios worldwide.

The DXD-300 home theatre subwoofer uses the same quality components as the range-topping DXD-1000, but presented in a smaller, room friendly form factor for the average household, retaining the same speed and agility of its bigger brothers. Ideal for those wanting high quality bass for music or movies, but without the wardrobes.

The 480mm high, 400mm wide, and 350mm deep matte finish cabinet houses a long-throw 12" bass driver driven by a cool running Class D amplifier, producing 300 watts of continuous output in total.​

As with all Ken Kreisel designed subwoofers, the DXD300 is a sealed design, ensuring the fastest possible transient response, as well as articulation and texture that's just not possible with a ported subwoofer. This gives the best possible experience with music as well as movies.

Its sealed aspect also makes it easier to successfully incorporate it in the average room, where ports take more care in correct placement to avoid issues.

what makes Ken Kreisel's subwoofers be so competitive?

For one thing, there's no excess of exotic cabinet materials in order to make the design look more expensive than it is. The cabinet is there to perform a function - outside of that function, any amount of money can be spent to "dress it up". The majority of the budget of a Ken Kreisel subwoofer concentrates on the most important aspects first, such as the drivers and electronics.​

There's also no "over-engineered" bass drivers with massive roll surrounds and magnets the size of a small family car. The lightweight drivers of a Ken Kreisel subwoofer are designed in such a way that they do not need over-sized magnets in order to keep them under control - which partially explains the level of speed and detail a Ken Kreisel subwoofer is capable of.

Ken Kreisel subwoofers aren't designed to produce the highest possible output at a particular frequency in the middle of a field (a popular testing technique in the U.S.). They are designed to sound good in-room - real world situations - utilising the natural gain of your room's boundary to reinforce their output. Because of this, a Ken Kreisel subwoofer will sound far more natural in any normal room situation, where many other subwoofers end up sounding boomy, and in definite need of EQ'ing in order to get closer to a flat response..​

Their low end output is also "unfiltered". Most other subwoofer designs - which try and produce the best specifications from as small a box as possible - will have a low end limited in order to make sure the driver and amplifier don't suddenly find themselves completely out of their depth (pardon the pun!). Ken Kreisel subwoofers are able to handle this, and the absence of this filter also allows them to reach lower than other designs. One of the many reasons mastering studios worldwide use Ken Kreisel subwoofers.

There will be plenty of subwoofers out there that produce "more" bass than a Ken Kreisel subwoofer. The aim of many subwoofer manufacturers is to produce as deep a bass as possible, and as much bass as possible, from either the smallest box possible, or from something the size of a wardrobe. A Ken Kreisel subwoofer is designed to produce a good, balanced, in-room response in almost any room, producing a more natural sound that sounds just at home with music as it does with home theatre.​

Many movies have been produced using Ken Kreisel subwoofers, some of them Oscar winning for sound design - Peter Jackson's King Kong, Pearl Harbor, Black Hawk Down, Lord Of The Rings, Star Wars: The Phantom Menace, and one of my favourites, The Incredibles! To name but a few. Even games have used them, like several of the Call Of Duty series.

Full details are on the Ken Kreisel Timeline.

• sealed cabinet design
• 12" bass driver
• Class D amplifier
• 300w output continuous
• 112dB output (at 1m for 10 seconds)
• <0.5% harmonic distortion
• H 480mm x W 400mm x D 350mm
• available in black matte finish