Vibe OptiSound TV5D Digitial TV Subwoofer

I received this and set it up in 2 mins very easy to do with optical cable. The bass is terrible.... Very strange and just sounds muffled and when it is set too high it just sounds horrendous. I was hoping this would be a great purchase but its going straight back. When there is talking in a film or music all you can hear is an echo and muffled speech. Not good at all which is a real shame.

This is a great little subwoofer. I was pleasently surprised by how much bass this sub actually outputs.I am surprised that it can actually rattle the door of my bedroom on some notes. Sound quality is very good and clear. Can easily attach it two a TV using the two rca connections on the back of the subwoofer. I used it a lot for watching movies and listening to music. Only problem I find is that if the dial for the bass or volume on the back of the sub is turned up to high it can have a negative impact on the sound quality. You may have to place this sub in different areas of the room to find out which position best suits the sub. This is easily done as the sub is so small and can easily fit in any area of the room. Overall a high quality, durable long lasting product at a bargain price. Another benefit was the fast free delivery. I have had this subwoofer for several months and have used it a lot and it had never let me down. 5 stars well done. Highly recommended.

For the price it produces a great bass, it goes really low; I plugged it to the sky hd box and after changing the setting (look on the audio menu for sync setting) it really changed the whole experience, unbelievable, so deep that my wife was complaining. I used both optical and RCA but prefer the optical/digital output as this is an obvious plus; the optical cable is included and it is very long (believe 2m); Also is small and fits anywhere. Just make sure you place it in the right spot (i put it behind the TV, maybe for you a different place will give you more bass, this applies with all subs, their performance depends from the size and shape of the room). Pros: - price - goes very low, good bass - excellent for a thinny TV (all new ones) - small and well built Cons: - not even close to a eg yamaha sub if you need quality bass, can't really use this if you have a good amp and speakers, for whatever reasons when I plugged it to my boston speakers and AV amp, it sounded flat, however when plugged to my sky hd box and sammy tv, it sounded big and deep. - switch should have been at the front (just being picky really) Remember for this price nothing even comes close (however I have seen a 5.1 set for £20 and my yamaha sub was £20 secondhand). RECCOMENDED!

Full marks for attacking the laws of physics with such good intentions, but with a subwoofer, however cheap, if there's nothing much below 100Hz, then it's not a subwoofer. I'm glad others are so pleased with theirs, but, as a professional sound engineer, I should have known better than to expect a hyper-miracle at the price when I got this for my daughter's TV. Perhaps if your TV speakers deliver nothing much below 150Hz, that extra half octave is better than nothing. And I'm glad the makers of this did not descend to the despicable cheat practiced by many rubbish-car-boot woofers of designing it as a 'one-note' resonator, as the response of this one is commendably lacking in lumps around the port resonance. Hopefully their bigger version goes a bit lower, but I'm not taking the risk. I'll be looking on eBay for a decent used sub.

Nice little sub, esp if your budget is small, decent soundbars or surround sound systems can be costly. This adds a little extra bass to your TV, for those low end sounds, not good at high volume, as it starts to distort, but if kept at the right volume, and you adjust your TV settings accordingly, sounds half decent. I mainly use it this with my TV for extra sound for my PS4, PS3, Xbox 360. The sub connects to the TV via rca cables or optical, which is good, as it has both analogue & digital output, overall, nice little product! I have connected a multimedia speaker to my TV also via the headphone out, that my Panasonic vierra smart 3D tv has, just to add more sound for treble & midrange, as the sub alone wasn't the sound I was expecting or wanted. With both my logitech multimedia speakers & the vibe optisound 5 sub, my gaming experience is much better!

Ordered 2 of these, returned both and reordered. Same result. I have been disappointed with the cosmetic finish of all. All sounded fine for the money and actually very good. So in principle not a bad unit, but when a unit is brand new and there is damage something is clearly wrong. In assembly I think each part one painted must be thrown into and out of a big holding box where edges are worn, scratches etc are all picked up. Once assembled faults I've picked up on are: a gap between the speaker cone and the front face where the 2 are not concentric, lots of scratches on the front face (of all places?!), deep parallel scratches on the top face of one unit and three had the same 'join' line where the control panel on the back is found. If you are at all bothered by receiving 'seconds' (an item of poor finish) then avoid, but I've found the same issue with Logitech speakers where at least something is wrong with every one. You could like me buy 4 and one of them might be good. I'm reordering for a third time and will keep 1 if 1 of them is any good. Don't get me wrong I'm not looking for perfection, but its not a cheap and cheerful unit even though it isn't an expensive unit, and well.... there is no need for it to be deliberately scratched and dropped and dented fresh out of the box. The unit wouldn't receive as much damage in a lifetime of use under a TV stand!

For the money, this is incredible! Provides plenty of powerful, deep bass in a small room. I use the Optisound TV5D in a way that it's not recommended for - as a sub for my office hifi, which uses an SMSL amp and JBL Control One speakers. The JBLs are great, but being small, lack any kind of deep bass. I didn't have the budget to buy an expensive sub, but having seen the Optisound TV5D on sale for about £20, I thought it would be worth a go. It's not perfect - you have to be a bit patient when setting the volume on the sub so that it gives the right amount of bass. Anything over about 20% sounds ridiculously bass-heavy - and the Optisound can go surprisingly loud. But when set up correctly, it can really extend your hifi's frequency range and fill in those deep notes that are otherwise lost to small speakers (the JBLs's range ends at about 100Hz I think). Bear in mind that if you change your amp's volume, you'll be wanting to adjust the Optisound too, so ideally it needs to be somewhere that you can reach the rear-mounted volume control. Don't know what it sounds like with a TV, I'd imagine that it would transform the sound of most flatscreen TVs, but again you'd have to be careful to adjust the Optisound's volume to avoid being totally swamped in bass. As the Optisound reaches up to 500Hz, you could end up with an ugly bulge in your lower end (I am speaking sonically here!) if you set the Optisound's output too high. Bear in mind that to use it the way I'm doing in a hifi setup, you'll need some RCA Y-splitter cables to feed the stereo signal from your music source to your amp and sub (if you're using RCA, the Optisound needs a stereo feed, you can't use the mono sub-out from your amp if it has one). It's never going to beat an expensive sub and it probably sounds less impressive in a large room, but in a small room this a brilliant way to add extra bass at a bargain price!

*Update: Now have it attached to remote switching power socket so can switch on/off from couch. And have found suitable (very low) setting which does integrate well with Samsung TV's excellent sound. When used with HDMI media player as a source, player volume DOES control both TV and sub loudness in unison. Star rating upped to 4.* Yes, this is a powerful sub for the money. And it has an optical input. However, the digital input means that volume is independant to the TV, so volume can only be controlled manually with the knob on the unit -there is no remote. Also, I find a big gap in frequencies between the telly and the sub, which makes the sub a bit conspicuous when really one shouldn't be concious it is there as it should blend-in to the existing sound. It would be better if there was some control over the bandpass filter cutoff frequency to enable users to better integrate it with the existing sound from their TV speakers.. As such, I have it set very, very low so that it enhances the sound a bit but doesn't stick out like a sore thump(!).