Echo Sub, Powerful subwoofer for your Echo, Requires compatible Echo device

Amazon Echo Sub-Woofer Where do I start? At this point I am here to say this is a GREAT product, well worth the money. Five Stars for sure. But I digress... I started out with an Amazon Echo, first generation, paid nearly $100 for it, but was quite pleased with its performance. I was very pleased with the sound output of that small device. I liked it so much I bought another for another room. Being an Amazon Prime member, I started listening to music from Amazon. Again, pleased - and I decided to add the unlimited subscription to Amazon Music. I have a traditional stereo system - two speakers, an amplifier, and a CD player. I got to thinking I would like to feed the Amazon music into the stereo and researched the subject on the internet. Turned out to be stupidly simple. I bought a third generation Dot, now less than $50, and a simple adapter cable. The cable plugged into the output jack of the Dot and into the right and left stereo inputs on my amplifier. I had to do a little volume adjustments of the Dot and of the stereo amp to get the levels right - but that was a five minute exercise, and suddenly I had beautiful music in full stereo. But in researching the stereo bit, I discovered something else interesting on the internet - that it was simple to set up two identical Echo units to give full stereo. Well, I have two identical first generation Echos. So I tried it, setting up in a different room. A note here - it is unlikely that most of us could ever set a stereo pair up without some very simple instruction from the internet. You have to use the Amazon app on a smart phone. But with that instruction it is a very simple exercise. I did it. And it sounded great. And that’s also about when I discover the existence of the Amazon Echo Sub-Woofer. OK. I admit at first I was skeptical. How could a six inch diameter speaker generate significant base? But then how could a tiny Amazon Echo Dot sound so terrific? But they do. The gold standard for bass performance for many is the piece, “Thus Spake Zarathustra” by Richard Strauss. To quote Wikipedia, “The piece starts with a sustained double low C on the double basses, contrabassoon and church organ.” This corresponds to a tone of some duration at a frequency of 32 hertz. Only higher end classic stereo systems will deliver this tone. In most, it plays as a low level buzz that would be obnoxious were it any louder. So OK. I pulled up the specs on the unit. Hmm. Goes to 30 hertz at minus 6 db. You know, that ain’t bad! And you could goose up the low end a bit with the equalizer in the Amazon app. The built in 100 watt amplifier and cross over network built into the sub-woofer help a lot. Hmm. OK, I went ahead and ordered it. And immediately discovered that at the time there was a 4 week wait for delivery. The unit did show up as promised, and I was anxious to get it going. A comment here: normally I am rather contemptuous of “unpacking” videos on the internet. But, the packing and packaging of this unit is a performance art master class on how it should be done. I will say no more on that subject except that I was hugely impressed. Setting it up was mostly easy - but NOT as easy as the Amazon site suggests. The main issue is that if you integrating it into an existing stereo pair of Echo units, as I was, first you have to unpair the existing units, then rebuild with the addition of the sub-woofer. Very simple to do on the app - but NOT intuitive. Again, the internet is your friend. I easily found simple instructions and proceeded - and five minutes later had everything networked and playing. It sounded OK, but honestly not all that terrific. Certainly not what I was expecting. Playing “Thus Spake Zarathustra” was, frankly, disappointing. But, I have had experience with base woofers before, and had a suspicion it wold improve. It seems such speakers need to be used a bit to loosen up to reach their desired performance levels. I am very happy to report that this proved to be exactly the case. After a few hours, the speaker was clearly doing better. A few days and it was sounding great. And today, I was sitting in my chair listening to Hans Zimmer’s sound track for “The Dark Knight”, a piece I had played several times before. But this time, it seemed like the whole room was shaking from an outstanding base source. I was astounded - and hugely delighted! I am truly pleased. A closing note - truly serious audiophiles are guaranteed to turn up their noses at this system. I am talking about the people that only use virgin vinyl records for a music source, heavy oxygen free copper cables to the tube amplifier with heavy iron transformers, huge engineered bass reflex speakers or the like etc. etc. Good for them - and perfection has its price. But for us lesser mortals who love music, the Amazon system offers a quality system offering a lot of pleasure at a modest price.

It's not even close to our $500 SRS ported 10" sub, but it's not even in the same echelon, to be honest, so it's not worth comparing. I do have an Energy ported 8" sub that I purchased about a decade ago, that it can be compared to. To ensure the Energy sub doesn't sound terrible, I have to set the Energy sub's cross-over to the minimum setting (there is no LFE for this sub, only component-level inputs). The Echo Sub, by comparison, seems to be set very well, mostly pumping out very low frequencies. From the Echo Sub I was honestly only expecting a modest upgrade; I was expecting to want to return it right away, actually. That's not the case. Even in the same room where we have our 10" SRS sub, it emits clear, accurate low-frequencies that fill both the room it's in and the adjacent dining room and kitchen (open floor plan). Our family-room group consists of our family room sound-bar (hooked up to a 2nd-gen Echo Dot, as well as SRS 10" sub and Energy 8" sub), kitchen Echo (which is actually situated right at the border of the family-room/dining-room, on the family-room side of the partition. I was expecting so many different devices to compete and not sound harmonious (at best) or cancel each other out (at worst). The subs had to be phased to prevent cancellation, but the rest of the speakers, playing together, allow for a very nice room-to-room experience! We listen to classical music during dinner and hear it in the dining from from all angles, which has a very nice affect. While cleaning, I don't have to turn up the family Echo Dot-to-sound-bar (and sound-bar/subs), because the other Echos (and Echo Sub) compliment the family-room speakers nicely, allowing for (again...) room-to-room transit with relatively consistent sound. The benefit to this: turning up the family room set (Echo Dot-to-sound-bar and Subs) causes some low-frequency reverberation in the kitchen and other areas of the house (e.g., the bathroom). With it at a lower volume and the Echo Sub providing the low-frequency response for the kitchen and dining room area, things sound much better. If we're solely hanging out in the dining room or kitchen area, I don't even feel the need to turn on the family room Echo Dot (and etc.). The output from the Echo and Echo Plus in the area, supplemented by the Echo Sub, sounds great. If you're expecting this to sound like a $500 sub, you're delusional. If you're looking to add a very nice upgrade to the low-frequency output of your Echos or Echo Plus' easily, then this is your sub. Installation: I've got very low patience and expect things (especially from Amazon) to be top-notch, and found myself only MILDLY frustrated setting this thing up - the Echo Sub took maybe four times longer than any other Echo (we have 7 total) to setup, but it really isn't that bad. The setup of this will DEFINITELY be revised to help out those who frustrate easily or who aren't savvy enough to figure things out on their own, but most people who have even a rudimentary set of tech skills shouldn't have a problem. Setup: 1. Mine did not go into pairing mode right away. I had to press and hold the single button on the Echo Sub for MORE THAN the instructed SIX (6) seconds for the dot to turn orange. Note: You can't SEE the color of the LED, because it's in the center of the button and obstructed by the finger you're pressing it with...while pressing. Kinda dumb ... 2. Once the sub was in pairing mode (orange light on the sub lit), things went swimmingly, using the app. This is the ONLY part that I had an issue with, since the included instructions were OVERLY simplistic and didn't cover it. If anyone wants a more detailed how-to, just comment below and, if someone hasn't already provided one online, I'll do so.

I ordered the sub during the promo, bundled with two 2nd-gen Echos. Setting up the "trio" (can't call it a speaker "group", since that term has a very specific meaning in Echo-land), I had some difficulty during the initial setup, but realize in retrospect that I should have powered up the new Echos by themselves first, and let them perform the online software update. Once I did that, the second time I tried to create the 2.1 "trio", the process went almost flawlessly. As others have said elsewhere, the instructions accompanying the unit are severely lacking -- just shy of useless. If you've configured the full range of other Echo devices (we have over 30 just in our primary house), it's fairly easy to navigate the new setup features for creating and pairing the three devices into the "trio". Having had Echo devices since the very first early-order days nearly three years ago (I even have echo dots in all of my vehicles), the Alexa app and the configuration processes for new devices as they came to market have evolved dramatically. So in some way it's understandable that the setup instructions -- for any of the Echo devices -- has to be somewhat vague, since the setup processes are also constantly evolving, and specific setup instructions in the box of the device you buy today may be totally irrelevant and even more frustrating should you try setting up the same device 6 or 12 months later. The sub creates such a vast improvement in the sound experience that it's hard to describe it accurately. My biggest complaint is that the bass can be overpowering in some room environments. The room I chose to install the "trio' in is a 14ft x 14ft room with uncovered, polished hardwood floors, and otherwise sparsely furnished. With certain types of music (I like loud, bassy music, like vocal trance and EDM), the bass can be so intense that it actually vibrates the windows, and overpowers the mids and highs coming from the individual Echos. To compensate, the only option is to use the equalizer for the "trio" and dial down the bass, but this also reduces the bass coming from the Echos themselves. I'd like to hear more bass from the Echos, but can't because of having to dial down the low frequency equalizer slider in order to lower the drive to the sub, just to make the listening experience more balanced (and enjoyable). As a practicing audio and RF engineer, it seems to me that a very quick and easy fix to my specific problem (and I'm sure others) would be to have a configuration setting for the sub only that allows you to "dial in" a certain amount of attenuation to the bass drive. A simple set of selections in steps of 3 db (up or down, depending on your individual setting) would be a perfect quick fix for this In my case. The fact that the room is basically a flattened cube, it's easy for the sub to deliver sounds that match the natural resonant frequency of the room. The better (long-term?) fix for this kind of problem would be to have a separate equalizer function for only the sub, to configure the response of only the frequencies the sub is designed to produce. A 3- or 5-band equalizer would essentially allow me "dial down" the band of frequencies that tend to resonate in the room. A fantastic fix to this type of problem. Having watched Amazon's evolution of fixes and improvements to the individual Echo devices, as well as to the Echo-sphere overall, I have to believe that they'll eventually be able to configure a 2.1 "trio" to participate in a system group as though it was a single device entity. Seems like it should be a a basic software upgrade issue. The same with the ability to support audio inputs other than just streaming services (as I see it, if you want to bluetooth a stereo signal to your Echo(s) from your phone or other device, Amazon would have to develop the ability to allow you to make a bluetooth connection to an Echo stereo pair first. Once that feature works, it might then be possible to add the sub to the stereo pair for the 2.1 config (still not sure if the sub has to grab the audio stream via WiFi first for the "trio" to actually function). Regarding the disappointment that so many people are expressing regarding the limited Bluetooth functionality, it seems that their expectations were misplaced. When I read the early product release announcement, it was clear to me that the Sub was specifically intended to work with only a subset of Amazon-specific Echo devices. But after re-reading the promotional info on Amazon's web site regarding the Sub, there is definitely some ambiguity about it's intended configuration limitations. I would strongly recommend to Amazon that they re-write the capabilities and features sections regarding the Sub so that there are NO ambiguities regarding exactly what the Sub is and is not intended to do or capable of, or how it is intended to operate. Lastly, I wish Amazon would introduce a "big sister" version of the Echo with more power, making them a better match to the capabilities of the Sub. It seems that the Sub is definitely in a power/performance class that is a notch above the capabilities of the current Echos. AS a final comment, I would have gladly given the Echo Sub 5 stars if the drive level to the Sub could be controlled independently from the equalizer profile for the Echos.

Had to add something after reading some recent reviews - My Dots knew The Echo Sub was coming and once it arrived and was plugged in, it took maybe 30 seconds for it be recognized and another minute to pair everything up. Your experience may differ, but that's how it went for me. The Echo Sub, it turns out, is vital to your Alexa Echo Dot setup if you want to actually enjoy the music you are streaming. It turns what is a pretty decent little set up for quiet music or background sound into a full blown system that can rock your world. Or jazz it or rap it or country it. Whatever it is you like. The sound produced by the Echo Sub is full, rich and room filling. I absolutely love it. It is rather hefty. Your dog probably won't be knocking it around. It is large and round. If your sofa is against a wall, this won't fit back there. (my original intention) Allow me to share with you a few thoughts and tips concerning the Echo Sub matched with the Echo Dots. Let me describe the environment first - Smaller home (1000 sqft) with wood floors. I believe the wood floors play a major role in the sound I'm able get from this set up. 3br, living room with dining area, bath and galley type kitchen. The LR and dining area are really just one large room. The setup (so far) - 3 Echo Dots (3rd gen) and the Echo Sub. 4th Dot is on its way as well as an Echo. So I've paired 2 of the Dots with the Sub for the living room and 1 Dot in the master BR. By creating 2 groups (LR and Master) and making the wake word for the LR 'Computer' and leaving the Master as the default Alexa, I can control them separately. I can talk to one set or the other without messing with the other. By enabling the multi-room music function, and creating a 3rd group (placing the first two groups into it) named Everywhere, I can fill my entire house with music just by saying "Alexa, play smooth jazz Everywhere." for example. Now the good stuff. Alexa tip #1. Your Dots are not anything close to being "dynamic" right out of the box, but you can help them a bit. Try to set them on something hollow. I've got one sitting on a small table which has a drawer and the other on an end table which is a cabinet. In the bedroom the Dot sits atop a dresser. That makes a huge difference right off the bat. Tip #2 Make sure the Dots are opposite each other and the Echo Sub as near to center between them as possible. Tip #3 Use these three songs and adjust the equalizer by voice commands by saying "Alexa, set bass (or midrange, treble) to..." and chose a value from -6 to +6. Lazy by Deep Purple. This song is nothing but bass. Next, Bohemian Rhapsody by Queen. This song gives you an incredible range of notes and sound. Lastly, Mozart's Symphony No. 41 Jupiter. This is for the fine tuning. You can always tell Alexa to reset the equalizer at anytime and start over if need be. Once you have your EQ set, you're ready to go. And the sound is incredible. I've got a set of old school speakers I've had for over 30 years that are top notch paired with a Sony receiver and this Echo setup can rival them. Not in total volume level, but certainly in quality. It truly is amazing. And while they won't peel paint off your walls, they are more than capable of providing music for a party. Loud enough that you can't talk over them comfortably and given the right time of night and music, get the cops to show up. If you're into that sort of thing. I can't wait for my fourth Dot to arrive so I can group 4 Dots with the Echo Sub (with an Echo replacing the Dot in the bedroom) and create a pseudo-surround environment throughout the house. I wouldn't hesitate to recommend the Echo Sub (and Dots) to anyone looking to add great sound and flexibility to their home audio system. I'd give the Echo Sub a 6th star of I could.

** I honestly do not know what all of the negative reviewers are doing that makes this so hard to set up???? When I originally purchased this, I had it paired with my Echo Show, which was ok, but decided I wanted to see what it sounded like when it was paired with two echos. I unpaired it from the show, paired it to the first echo, at which time it asked me what was the second device. I picked the 2nd echo, and then it asked me to choose left side and right side. I named my echos left and right just to make life easier to figure out which was which. The two echos are on an upper shelf in my tv cabinet (a little above head level when sitting). The sub sits on the floor directly in front of the cabinet, so I guess I am getting two walls worth of revurb off of it. We run the volume between 3 and 5 most of the time. I am amazed that even when I have it cranked up, a normal voice request to Alexa kicks on the listening mode and mutes the music temporarily, something that never worked with the Echo Show without yelling if I had the music loud. I guess my only advice is follow the prompts, dont try to work ahead. It should take you less than 5 minutes to plug in, power on, and pair everything. I have had ZERO issues with it. I found setup easy, performance was actually surprisingly good, and any questions I had Amazon was very responsive too! Funny, reading comments and I am glad I bought mine before a lot of the negative reviews came up, or I might not have even tried it. I love it! MOST of the negative complaints are about things that were in the ORIGINAL AD for this product, and yet people are surprised. Amazon was very clear that at release, it was music only (not tv), that it was designed to work with the std echo gen 2 or echo plus, NOT dots and shows (although I do have mine working on the Show), no bluetooth (again, read the ad)... It is a great sub to use for music. It has enough kick sitting on the floor in the corner of the living room to get a nice bass reflex throughout the room. Took me about 15 minutes to set it up following the guide. I did wind up buying a pair of echo's that will be in later this weekend, and the Show will get moved somewhere else if the sound is worth the change! For the price, and if you have at least an Echo or Echo Plus (or Show, in my opinion), you will like it. Update 11/25... This thing is crazy... people can't believe its an echo setup :) We listen to music, a LOT. I have the two echos in the entertainment center up on opposite corners, and the sub is on the floor in the corner of the unit. The responsiveness of the echos even when the music is cranked is amazing, I loved this thing from the get go, and its only getting better!!!

When it and the speakers it pairs with work, this sub works overtime and is surprisingly good for its size. Unfortunately you pair this sub with echo studio speakers and here is my review of those, including this subwoofer. I really want to love these. Quite simply, if they worked consistently, I would, but it has been almost a day to day effort to keep 2 studios and the sub working as either a music player and or as a home theater set up paired with firestick 4k max. Music played from Amazon music (the only way to enjoy atmos and 3d music, a major selling point of these) often stops for no reason when it never has on any other device, even the lesser model echos. (My WiFi signal is extremely strong throughout the house.) sometimes it says ok, it will play “xyz” and then doesn’t. Often the left speaker has almost no sound coming from it. I have to unplug it for a minute to fix it. The sub sometimes fails and produces no sound. Same fix. When they cooperate, they play well from the firestick and are surprisingly effective as entry theater speakers, but getting other devices such as Xbox or regular tv to play through the echoes is spotty at best and an absolute nightmare. When I’ve called tech support I know more than them just from my own research, so it’s zero help. I have spent an INSANE amount of time trying to find the problems, certainly more than any casual customer ever would. If you look these issues up on forums, well, that’s just the way it is. There is no fix for these problems which means an incomplete, inconsistent product was put out and at this price point that’s just criminal. I am so disappointed in Amazon. I have had almost every other echo and accepted their limitations but always enjoyed what they could do. We all read negative reviews and wonder if that particular person is just unhinged or has a chip on their shoulder. This isn’t that. I’ve been tinkering with home theater and sound all my life. I can typically figure out what’s wrong, but not here. You probly want to know about the sound? I’ve also been around good sound my whole life. I knew this was a downgrade but was fine with it for space and aesthetic reasons as well as multi room sound. They sound fine if not good. Won’t blow you away but they sound nice. They have gimmicks like poor man’s atmos and spatial enhancement and I found these to be fun additions if not universally effective or noticeable. In short, if they worked consistently, I would adore these little things for what they are. I almost didn’t post this. Then I turned on the firestick to a black screen. After I fixed that, the remote wouldn’t adjust the volume on the echo studios and I’m so fed up I decided to let others know. I gave up a hardwired theater system for these and it was a complete mistake. Having friends over for a game or a movie and stressing about whether or not your system will work or you’ll have to trouble shoot is unacceptable.

For its cost and use with Echo devices, this is a good subwoofer. I considered giving it a 4 out of 5 but only because of how long it took for my Fire TV Stick 4K Max took to recognize the device. Despite how long it took, I was patient and it eventually recognized it hours after the sub was connected to my wifi. This was the only issue. I was also familiar with this issue since I have two of these subs, so I knew what I was getting into - it's not at all a deal breaker. Once the device is setup, you're mostly all set. My first Echo Sub is connected with two 1st Gen Echo Studios using a gen 3 Fire TV Cube. The sound is very good on this system. The 2nd Echo Sub was added to 5 2nd Gen Echo Studios connected to the 4k Fire TV Max Stick for the maximum new theater setup. Overkill? No. The added bass works very well and doesn't over do it on the low end. When listening to music, it's easy to adjust the bass in the Alexa app if there is too much bass. As mentioned before, this isn't usually an issue, but the option is there. Music sounds great with the sub. For movies, the bass adds a very nice dynamic that im glad is part of the theater system. The two generations of Echo Studios DO have good bass, but the added sub brings a noticeable difference that makes the addition worth it. Echo speakers with an Echo Sub isn't a top of the line sound system. However, it's really good for the price you pay. I've read many reviews of Sonos speakers having connection issues and I already have the Amazon music unlimited subscription and prime membership, so it was a no brainer. This isn't to knick on Sonos as I've also heard great things, but with everything considered, I went with Echo devices. My Echos sound great and adding the sub makes a positive difference.

Conceptually, this does a nice job of taking your existing echos and making them sound better. It's smart in that when this is paired, your Echo automatically applies an appropriate high-pass filter, meaning it'll leave most of the bass for the subwoofer. The result is a noticeably cleaner sound both high and low, now that the smaller Echo can focus on mids/highs rather than trying to do it all. In multiple rooms/setups, the sub always integrated impressively into the sound. It does a nice job of blending in and not drawing attention to itself, which is the sign of a proper calibration. I was also pleased with the low-end extension and the lack of boxiness/boominess. If not for other issues, I'd be quite happy with this and recommend it. It's a genuinely good upgrade from your Echo speaker alone (less so if you already have a Studio). First the small problem: there is delay when you start playing and stop playing. Fraction of a second, but noticeable, and mildly annoying. Initiate a voice command and your speaker attenuates or stops, but the sub will keep playing at volume for a bit before it gets the hint. Not a deal breaker, but not ideal. The bigger problem is that it only functions as another Echo device. That is to say, if you ever want to use your Echo as a bluetooth speaker, the sub will not work with it. The sub is only interested in doing Alexa-sanctioned work. This is especially problematic because for whatever reason, pairing this Echo Sub with the Echo Dot in my master bathroom made Spotify even less reliable than the imperfect reliability it had before adding the sub. It used to be only occasionally that my Dot wouldn't play well with Spotify--after pairing the sub, it almost never works. Then, out of frustration, I tell my Echo to pair to my phone to play as a bluetooth speaker... unfortunately, doing so disables the sub. Back to square one. Now this fancy subwoofer is useless. Works great when Alexa and Spotify play well together--but for whatever reason, they're even less likely to work after pairing the sub. One step forward, two steps back. This sub costs as much as a comparable 'conventional' sub, but it's inherently limited by design. It'll only ever work with Echo devices, and questionably at that. If you just want better sound quality from an Echo device, I'd probably recommend going with the Echo Studio. They're a satisfyingly bassy speaker by themselves. If you're looking for an even fuller, more articulate sound with room-shaking bass, you're much better off connecting an Echo to an external amplifier and speaker setup. Unfortunately, since the last couple generations of Echos have removed the 3.5mm output, that means either using bluetooth pairing (an imperfect solution in its own regard), or buying an older Echo (which is what I did in my garage). I know some self-absorbed "audiophiles" out there will scoff at the idea of using an Echo as essentially a pre-amp, but you make the best with what you can do (without buying those overpriced Echo Links). The output on an older Echo will do a perfectly fine job for 99% of people in 99% of listening environments. In summation, the idea of an Echo "theater" was kind of appealing to me at first. Echos tend to be pretty good sounding speakers for the money. Unfortunately, operation just isn't as smooth as you'd hope. Even when they work as intended (certainly not a guarantee), you'll still have to get used to these little odd delays etc. that remind you that the speakers are communicating with each other over the network/internet rather than being orchestrated by one device for perfect cooperation. Plus, they'll only ever work in this one very-specific environment, whereas a set of passive speakers and an amplifier/receiver will work with pretty much anything you can throw at it. The Echo Sub/Echo Theater idea was fun to play around with, but I just can't recommend it. Too many rough edges. But, like I mentioned earlier, if you like the way your single Echo works but just want it to sound bigger and louder, I'd recommend looking at the Echo Studio instead of adding this.