Subwoofers Boston Acoustics

500 watt RMS, 23Hz – 180Hz Overview

"If you’re of the mindset that subwoofers are big, ugly and deserve to be hidden behind a chair, check out the VPS 210. It’s a looker and is the best example of the appealing design of the VS Series. This is a subwoofer you’ll want to show off.
“ - Electronic House, August 2008

One measure of the importance of bass in today’s most exciting movies is the fact that soundtracks now devote an entire audio channel to bass alone. Called the Low Frequency Effects (LFE) channel, its signal is intended to be sent directly to a theater system’s powered subwoofer. With a 10-inch front-firing OCCM woofer, a matching OCCM passive radiator and a proprietary 500-watt Class D amplifier, no bass note will go unfelt—whether from assorted cinematic cataclysms or from the percussion section of a symphony orchestra. Because deep bass is omni-directional, the VPS 210 can be placed virtually anywhere in your listening area. But because it shares the refined good looks of the entire VS Series, you’ll be likely to choose a place of prominence.

10” High-Powered Subwoofer 500-watt RMS 1800-watt Peak
Proprietary Class-D Amplifier
- 10" (254mm) long-throw OCCM woofer with 3" (76mm) voice coil
- 10" (254mm) OCCM passive radiator
- Proprietary Class-D Amplifier rated at 500 watts RMS (1,800 watts peak)
- Accessible top-mounted Volume, Crossover, Phase, and Power controls
- Elegant black lacquer piano finish cabinet
- High-gloss furniture-grade end panels in a choice of finishes
- Gold plated Line Level stereo inputs, LFE input, and Pass-thru connector
- Patented BassTrac® circuitry for tight, distortion-free bass at all output levels



Boston's Proprietary Class D 500-Watt Subwoofer Amplifier
Although there are many benefits to a Class D amplifier design,the main advantage is low power consumption and reduced heat generation. Because our Class D design is up to 93% efficient in the output stage, a large heat sink is simply not required to wick away the amount of heat that is typically generated by other amplifier designs. For example, Class AB amplifier designs are power hungry, create substantial heat, and may only achieve 70% efficiency at full power. And these are best-case conditions with test signals. At normal listening levels with music, a typical Class AB subwoofer amplifier is wasting more power than is even used by the speaker. This wasted power simply results in more heat being generated and higher energy consumption. At the same listening levels, our Class D amplifier is nearly 3 times as efficient and running cool.

Organic Composite Cone Material (OCCM)
When selecting a high performance loudspeaker cone material for VS Series, the engineering team at Boston Acoustics required the material’s performance qualities to meet our highest standards. In order to acheive maximum performance, the VS Series loudspeaker cone material needed to exhibit 3 principal qualities:

Lightweight - To achieve faster speed allowing for greater attack transient response while maintaining good sensitivity

Rigid - To remain pistonic and minimize cone break-up even during higher output

Highly-damped - To minimize resonances and provide un-colored accurate motion throughout it’s specified band

The Organic Composite Cone Material or OCCM chosen for VS is a new lightweight, strong, and well-damped cone material developed to have superior sound characteristics. Through the use of select natural fibers making the material less uniform, it virtually eliminates the inherent cone break up modes exhibited by many other common cone materials, and provides VS with a cone platform for inherently accurate motion and sound.

While OCCM cones are very light they are also very rigid because the random crossing natural fibers strengthen the paper base material much like carbon fiber, but at a lower weight. By using OCCM along with premium transducer components, such as aluminum cast baskets and rubber surrounds, VS Series loudspeakers are able to achieve increased output, improved accuracy, and a high level of reliabilty.

Cabinet Construction
The speaker enclosure plays a vital role in the sound reproduction chain. It provides a foundation for the woofers to generate of high-level bass while remaining neutral in acoustic color and adding none of its own character. The enclosure should not flex or resonate and it should not allow standing wave buildup which could influence the behavior of the speaker units. The enclosure should also be strong and stable, offering rock solid anchoring for the higher frequency drivers so an accurate acoustic image can result.

Most cabinets are made of man-made wood, which is inexpensive, relatively strong, well damped, and easily machined and finished. It’s well known in the aviation industry, that composite materials can benefit from their constituent components in a way that exceeds the performance of each of them separately. Typically, composite materials exhibit a much higher strength than any of the component materials, and they can benefit from enhanced damping characteristics as the layers work against each other. For this reason, we chose to make our VS Series loudspeaker cabinets from several layers of dissimilar wood materials, sandwiched together in a high pressure curved set of tools and cured with high frequency RF energy. The result is a stable curved composite wood board material that can be further machined and assembled into a loudspeaker enclosure

Top Mounted Controls
Accessible top-mounted Volume, Crossover, Phase, and Power controls for easy setup and adjustments. Control panel cover elegantly conceals and protects settings.