received the compact, set it up and am very happy

Hello. I think maybe I can answer some questions for others on the fence about buying the Outlaw Compact as I think most of us that are interested in it are because we have design and/or space constraints.

My living room is large (3800 SQ ft with a large opening into a 3800 sq ft kitchen) First, I tried to hide a subwoofer in the ceiling of my living room for design reasons and bought a moderno passive in wall sub. Big mistake. Unfortunately it made the system sound horrible. No bass at low levels, and tortured sound at higher levels, including rattling and other sins against sound. To hear the bass, the sound level had to be screeching. It was most unpleasant and my entire system sounded horrible and music playback was dismal. I spent a lot of money on THX rated in ceiling speakers, and a nice receiver and I thought maybe I had wasted all my money.

What to do? I went shopping for a sub at Best buy which had the units on a plastic rack so they all rattled so I took some names and went online and read the reviews. All horrible.

I poked around and then started seeing reviews for the bigger outlaw and HSU subs,got excited about the down firing outlaws (again a design thing, not wanting the speaker covers showing into the room) , took the specs and told the wife, who promptly hit the roof about the size of the unit. She was right, they are too big for anything other than a dedicated movie/sound room or a single guy's house. Onto plan C.

I found this sub, which is roughly the size A klipsch sw-450 but comes from a much better pedigree. I called Outlaw customer service and they said "excellent sound goes real low but it won't pressurize the room, for that you need one of our bigger subs". I took a chance anyway and am very glad I did.

Let me just say that immediately upon hooking this thing up (with the wireless kit sold by Outlaw), my system settled down and sounded like it should have all along. Movie special affects do indeed shake the couch and make you jump, the rest of the speakers are able to do their jobs without trying to handle the bass, which makes the system unbelievable for movies.

Then I put on my digital smooth jazz channel and was blown away. I can now hear individual bass notes and easily pick out what instrument is playing them. The entire system now sounds for lack of a better word "thrilling". This, all at low enough levels to entertain in the house and keep everyone happy.

I am very happy with my purchase. The price I paid, including the wireless receiver and tramsitter (a great item!) is far below what you can buy for a subwoofer of this quality or magnitude at any stereo store.

I think my initial confusion about whether or not I needed the bigger Outlaw unit has been answered. The answer is no, this is perfect for my room, for movies, for my listening style, my decor, and my stereo system. Perfection for me. Kudos to Outlaw's design team.

Did you actually mean 3800 CUBIC feet for your room size? Otherwise your rooms are bigger than my whole house. What type of amp were you driving the in ceiling sub with? I have the LFM-1EX in my HT which is in a living room which opens at the top to the family room and kitchen. Total volume is about 13000 cubic feet and the sub has to be throttled or it rattle stuff off the walls.

Sorry, of course 3800 CF. My house btw is about 3800 sq ft living area. lol. Sorry about any confusion my mistake may have caused.

I have a denon avr-1912 which seems to be powering the system really well for what it is. I also like the Denon app which allows me to control my reciever via my iphone. Nice.

Right now I am listening to some music with sweet string bass jazz licks and drinking a glass of wine. LIfe is good. This 'little' sub really reproduces music astonishingly well.

To be more clear, I was attempting to drive the passive sub with my denon avr-1912. It wasn't working at all, either underpowering it at low volume or overpowering it at increased volume. It just plain sucked at any volume. I guess I probably could have purchased a seperate amp to drive the sub, but I didnt' for several reasons. First, at high volume the sub was bottoming out and I couldnt' see that situation improving with more power. Second, since the passive sub has the left and right channels connected to it, powering the sub would also power the right and left channel, and I again couldn't see this as a solution. As for now, purchasing the compact subwoofer has solved all of my system issues. I can still switch back to the passsive subwoofer whenever I want by just changing settings on my amp, but as of now I cannot see any reason to do so for now or in the future.

I can understand your need to turn down your sub. I have been tinkering with my 'little" compact sub and have settled on total volume for now. With the increase power and size of the EX, I think the amount of bass generated by the EX at full throttle would run me out of my living room.

It sounds like you were trying to drive the passive sub with too little power from the AVR. Denon says power is 90 watts per channel times 7 channels but even with 90 watts it probably wouldn't drive the sub very well and it could have been clipping from that channel that you heard. Try getting an outboard amp to drive the passive sub.

A passive sub is typically driven by both front channels, so I would have been driving it with 180 watts.

Still, a passive subwoofer output is intrinsically tied to the front speaker output and at low levels we were getting almost no bass and certainly no special affect 'hit' in movies, and at high levels it was overtaxing the receiver and ruining the total output. One solution could have been an additional amp, but I don't think the results would have been as good as adding the compact subwoofer.I still have the passive subwoofer in the system but since I have changed the front speaker output to "small", it isn't being driven right now. The sound is night and day between the old setup and the new setup. In fact all channels sound better with the compact in the system.

Since it was being driven by the AVR the passive sub probably received little of the 180 watts since that would be controlled by the volume knob. The big advantage of the powered sub it that its amp can put out all of its power even at low volumes if need be based only on the content and the signal driving it. Most reciever spec out their power ratings using only a two channels driven condition and when they are really taxed they hit the wall and can't drive bass speakers hard. Even if the receiver spec says 90 X 7 it may be smokin rope.

This seems right, especially the last part about reciever specs. I am old school and remember the post digital receivers from the 70s that would drive huge speakers with large subwoofers, mid range drivers and complicated tweeter arrangements with zero issues. The modern day receivers seem to have a huge fudge factor as to how much useable power they really have. Even tiny packaged systems with itty bitty speaker wires and tiny tinny speakers make outrageous output claims.

I know I could have spent a lot more money on a better receiver, but actually putting the powered sub in the system solved my issues so...

Unfortunately, the old FTC power ratings of x wpc rms into y ohms all channels driven at z% distortion (or similar), seem to have gone the way of the dodo bird in published specifications.