Is it going to win SPL competitions? No way.
Is it going to make a halfway decent, but lacking in bass stereo sound massively better? Yes.
Setup was pretty straightforward, and led to an interesting experience. When my Pioneer head unit (DEH-80PRS) ran it’s auto-equalizer / auto-time function, it started out normally enough. If you’re not familiar with it, what the function does is run pink noise (static, basically) through each speaker connected, listens to it using a microphone strategically placed on the driver’s headrest, and makes adjustments to make the system sound as good as possible.
I’d run this before, and it’s fun to watch. You turn it on, get out of the car, close the door, and listen to static run at different levels through your speakers. After about 10 minutes, it finishes, and you can jump in and begin the fine-tuning.
When I reran this with the sub, I thought it was a little strange that I didn’t hear any pink noise when it said it was measuring the subwoofer. Then I realized – I don’t really hear anything outside the car, but I can sure as shootin’ *feel* it.
It took me a couple of days of tweaking EQs to get this exactly where I like it (and, really, I have to run two different configs, one for music sources with lots of bass, and one without, to keep this from hitting harder than I like), but the subwoofer itself handled it beautifully and was easy to setup.