B&W ASW608 sub woofer

The B&W ASW-608 is every bit a sub you want, without the size!

Something so compact never sounded this good!

An elegant 8" woofer may seem a bit wimpy, but despite its small size, it makes a commanding pair even with my B&W 683's

This is a real gem of a speaker especially if you are hard pressed for cash,or space.
This little sub is very worthy of consideration for those who would buy the heavy weight ASW610 in the perfect world, but cant.

Its a sealed enclosure design.

I appreciate there are theories around how the right kind of baffle ports play a big role is bass, but in my experience, a good music oriented sub has almost always been a sealed unit.
The bass is crisp, clean & not hollow.

I dont like speakers that just vibrate under the pretext of deep bass.

Best for:

Hi-fi music is what this little baby was made for, & with the intention of pairing your 685 or 686 class bookshelf. It does that job better than you might imagine, please do audition it.
In my opinion, it suits the 684 & 683 just as well.

The sound between 50-80Hz is rich & deep.

I would highly recommend this sub even to those considering a velodyne sub or people who own a different brand of main speakers.

The B&W manual suggests placement on one side of the centre speaker, just before the front, for best music performance. But in my personal opinion, it sounds much better in the corner.
Given the fact that there is no bass port, it may be the reason the bass sounds better in the corner.

Some disadvantages, though minor:

As expected, the 8" cone is not designed to be delivering sub 30hz bass at its peek & will sometimes rumble a bit rather than being clean.

The mid bass is fast to a point that the enclosure creeks a bit. It gives the impression of being so tight that something is pulling it aggressively, sometimes this makes the bass sound like it ended abruptly.

This is a complaint I also have from the mid bass of my much loved B&W 683s.

The unit gets very hot rather fast even though I use it at only 30% volume. Not a safety issue as its within operating temperatures & wont burn you, but its something that could be improved.

2 of the readers have had their amps blown within unreasonable time, as per their comments below, which is not very good given the asw 608 though entry level is not a 'cheap & crappy' brand. One would expect it to last longer.

It is also not fair to warrant the electronics for lesser amount of time then the speaker driver.

B&W should look into this, & consumers should be aware of this before they buy an asw 608 sub woofer.

Do you own a ASW608? What are your thoughts on its performance, what do you pair it with?