Britain’s B&W Loudspeakers has been creating active subwoofers almost since the powered-sub concept has existed. The UK company has a long history of designing for powerful levels of genuine deep bass. The latest models to advance this tradition are B&W’s new 15-inch ASW-850 and 12-inch ASW-800. These new powered subs, technically identical but for driver and cabinet sizes, combine massive, 1,000-watt (continuous) audio power with newly developed transducers to produce more intense, dynamic, ultra-deep bass than any preceding B&W subwoofer. “We’re locked in an arms race with the purveyors of music and, especially, movie-soundtrack productions,” says B&W Loudspeakers Executive Vice President Chris Browder, “And I’m only half joking. Big-production filmsound’s ability to incorporate awesome bass effects has grown steadily throughout the home-theater boom, and sound-designers have raised the low-end ante considerably over just the past few years. Not to worry: These new subs give us the upper hand with headroom, slam, and bottom-octaves extension to spare.”

B&W has just announced the release of their new $1,600 ASW-CDM subwoofer. The ASW-CDM features an ultra-high-output 12-inch long-throw driver, a compact size of 15 x 15 x 20 inches and a 1000 watt dedicated amplifier co-designed by Philips of the Netherlands.

The SIZMIK 12.45 is a very efficient, high performance Bass Reinforcement Loudspeaker designed for the discerning music and movie enthusiast. The attractive but discrete looking SIZMIK 12.45 loudspeaker can deliver clean and powerful, pitch accurate extended low frequencies, enhancing the performance of any high quality loudspeaker system. Based on the successful SIZMIK 10.25 model, the compact new SIZMIK 12.45 features a 12 inch drive unit and larger cabinet and is suited to more powerful and accurate systems.

At the CEDIA 2002 Expo MartinLogan announced the introduction of the Depth—a reference, powered subwoofer system. According to MartinLogan, the Depth delivers dramatic bass detail and attack using proprietary low-mass, high-resolution aluminum drivers, advanced servo monitoring and control, TriLinear™ configuration, BalancedForce™ bass alignment, a low distortion amp and highly evolved enclosure technology.

B&W has released two new subwoofers to round out their popular CM and 600 series speaker lines. The ASW-675 is the least expensive of the new subs and replaces the ASW-2500. It is one inch larger than its predecessor and uses an improved driver for even lower lows. The ASW-675 is priced at $1,100. The ASW-CM, priced at $1,300, matches the more swanky looks of the CM series speakers. This new sub uses an all new 10 inch Kevlar-pulp composite driver. The result is reportedly more stiffness in the driver along with a longer throw distance. Both new subs use a highly powerful class D power amplifier to elicit extreme volumes when needed.