Customer Reviews

Polk Audio AA3084-A MM840 8-Inch Subwoofer

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I drive a Honda Civic and wanted to upgrade the factory audio system without blowing my budget. After replacing the factory 6" door and rear deck panel speakers with Kenwood co-axial speakers, the sound I heard still wasn't as good as I wanted. The Honda factory option "Bass Kit" wasn't working well and was actually making things worse. I knew I needed a powered sub-woofer for the trunk. With a Civic, you also have to consider the amount of available space.

I decided to make my own sub-woofer package with components from Amazon. I started with this Polk Audio AA3084-A MM840 8-inch subwoofer. This one has a single voice coil design, and I paired it with a Sony mono XM1S amplifier at 290W RMS. Like most sub-woofers, this Polk Audio unit requires a sealed enclosure for performance (and warranty) requirements. I chose a small box, of about 0.46 ft3 volume, covered in charcoal gray carpet. The whole sub package takes up a portion of the trunk, but still leaves room for the things I normally store there.

The bass emitted by this setup is deep and accurate. Since I'm still using the factory head unit, I had the installer use the rear speaker high-level inputs to drive the amp. Now I can finally hear the bass player and the drum kit when I play my favorite rock music. The hip-hop/rap music my son favors sounds great as well, and the amount of bass can be adjusted simply by using the audio tone controls on the head unit. It all helps to drown out the road noise the Civic lets inside. The only distortion I have noticed occurs on particularly loud songs (e.g. Daughtry) when the volume control is set above 95% max. This is probably due to the amp, or the fact that I'm using speaker level inputs, not the Polk Audio woofer. But, at those volumes, my ears are ringing anyway, so I usually don't go there.

I'm loving it!

My 2-seater 2001 Toyota convertible coupe has only two 6.5" speakers+1" tweeters in the doors and no rear speakers. My son and I both noticed the lack of the deeper notes, and all the after-market 6.5" speakers we listened to at the stores put out even less bass than the OEM speakers! I needed an 8" sub to fit in a shallow under-dash fiberglass box, since that was the only semi-free unused space inside the passenger compartment that I could find. The up under-dash install also keeps the speaker hidden for security. Since the box and speaker is almost face-down right above the clutch foot, the speaker had to be sturdy. The Polk MM is built sturdy enough that an errant toe shouldn't hurt it, nor did all my poking or shoving while trying to get the enclosure and speaker up in there during installation. It survived better than my hands did; so this speaker should last a long time. The speaker itself was easy to install into the enclosure, is well made, has many screws and so a good tight seal around the enclosure opening.

I have a 720W 3ch Kenwood amp powering it and the 2 door speakers, with the Left Rear bridged audio B channel feeding the mono sub, for 180W average and 360W peak power, while the Sub is rated to handle up to 250W avg/500W peak. They make the subwoofer shallower by using a thinner but higher-quality magnet, not by just giving it shallow movement and a smaller basket, like some other manufacturers.

The subwoofer sounds great with both rock'n'roll or my son's favorite hip-hop music, even with the convertible top down and all that extra road and wind noise. It's sound carries throughout the car, so we no longer feel like all the sound is 'up front', even though it actually is.

So if you are looking for a small-but-powerful-and-efficient 8" sub that will last longer than your car or truck, this is a good choice.