Looking at Beale Street Audio’s first in-room subwoofers

Going from a simple home theater receiver with a couple of speakers to either a surround sound or adding bass is a big decision. The size and shape of your space comes into play as does the power of your bass unit. Bringing the new Beale Street Audio subwoofers into our living room was an education in warmth and overpowering.

First the setup. Our living room is shallow and wide. Measuring at 14 foot by 10 foot (roughly 4×3 meters), it’s an odd setup. Technically we could turn the system to where it would be longer, but then the TV would be backed up by a patio door and that would just be weird. So, here we are; 14×10. Ok.

The unit I have powering our system is a Sony 7.1 receiver, but I currently am only using them for stereo. Again, 14×10 space and not sure I want to mess with the work to tweak a surround sound or ATMOS system. But adding a subwoofer to the space would be a nice addition. The two subs we tested were the Beale Street BPS-65 and BPS-80.

First the connections. The last few receivers I’ve had only provided passive bass outputs. This Sony is no different. Regardless of what sub we put in this space, it had to be active. Thankfully this line of Beale Street subs are indeed active speakers. The connection points are incredibly versatile. You have the option of connecting mono or stereo RCA or speaker-level in from an existing amplifier unit. The speaker-level input also gives you a passthrough option.

The subs give you the ability to adjust the crossover for the system and control the phase. The phase adjustment would make sure the subs were in alignment with the main speakers of the system.

Audio Performance

So this is where we get into how these Beale Street subwoofers sound. In general I am a fan of Beale Street Audio. Their patented Sonic Vortex technology produces incredible sound from small form factors. I should have thought of this before I powered on the BPS-80. See, the “80” stands for 8-inch woofer. In our 14×10-foot space, it was a lot of bass. It wasn’t overpowering, but it was close. Once I got the sub in the right position and system tuned, the 80 sounded great but I was only running it at about a 3-4 on a scale of 10. It’s clear this model is capable of taking on larger spaces.

The BPS-65 (6.5” woofer) was a much better fit for our space. It had an immediate smoothness and authority to it in our room right out of the box, and all from a tiny 6.5” driver – awesome. Once I got the BPS-80 tuned in right, the performance of the low end was noticeably the same as the BPS-65. Both subs were able to fill the room with deep, tight bass without being overbearing. No one was home at the time of this demonstration so I was able to make it “thump” and that was fun for a few minutes… until my wife’s curio cabinet started to shake and I stopped.

Wrap-em Up

As we get into the holiday season and your customers, and you, start looking at ways to outfit your home theater giving the Beale Street BPS-80 and BPS-65 a try would do you good. The form factors are shockingly small for the power they provide. The professional adjustments give integrators the freedom to tweak and adjust them for any size space. Overall, these are a great set of subwoofers that you’d do well to put in just about any theater, living room, or home office, regardless of size.