Сабвуферы — GoldenEar ForceField 30

The ForceField 30 is a compact powered subwoofer from GoldenEar Technology that took over from the ForceField 3 and arrived together with the larger ForceField 40. Its availability was announced for August 2022 at USD 899, and the UK price was GBP 799. Within the catalogue it occupies the middle of the ForceField family, which sits below the SuperSub range.

Key specs that matter

A single 8 inch ultra-long-throw, high-output woofer fires forward, and a quadratic planar radiator of about 23 by 28 cm with 447.5 cm2 of area faces the floor. The ForceField amplifier is specified at 1,000 W peak and 500 W RMS, measured into a 50 ohm load, and uses a MOSFET output stage under DSP control. Anechoic output is quoted from 26 Hz to 170 Hz at -6 dB on axis, with an overall range of 25 Hz to 200 Hz. Including its feet, the enclosure is 28.9 cm wide, 40.6 cm deep and 32.2 cm tall, and the unit weighs 14.3 kg, rising to about 16.6 kg packed. Versions exist for 100 to 120 V and 220 to 240 V mains, with a rated consumption of 1,400 W.

Engineering and use context

Compared with the model it replaced, the cabinet gained a curved top panel adopted from the BRX bookshelf speakers, intended to reduce panel resonance, and its walls were made thicker so the box absorbs less of the energy in bass transients. A perforated metal grille protects the woofer, and the finish is satin black. Signal processing comes from an Analog Devices DSP chip, which GoldenEar uses to flatten and extend the response while lowering distortion. The downward radiator is set in motion by air pressure within the cabinet, so the design is neither a conventional ported nor a conventional sealed enclosure.

Pairing

All connections are at line level. An unfiltered, direct-coupled LFE jack takes the subwoofer feed from an AV receiver or surround processor, while the stereo left and right inputs pass through a low-pass filter with a 12 dB per octave slope that can be set anywhere from 40 Hz to 150 Hz for a two-channel system fed via preamp outputs of whichever control unit is in use. Rear dials handle level and crossover, and a switch selects auto, on or off. There is no phase control, no speaker-level terminal, no app and no wireless link, so amplifiers lacking a line output are not a direct match.

Alternatives

The GoldenEar ForceField 40 moves up to a 10 inch driver with a radiator of about 28 by 33 cm and reaches 24 Hz at -6 dB in a 33.7 x 46.5 x 37.3 cm cabinet.