On a scale of 1 to 10, with 10 describing the recording studio professional or serious sound connoisseur, I would probably rate myself a 3 or 2. I’m not proud to admit it, but I have as much musical taste as a sorbetero hawking his new macapuno flavor (that is to say, Häagen-Dazs versus dirty ice cream, like YouTube audio versus 192 kHz/24-bit DVD-audio seems to be the same to both my ears and to my palate). Fortunately, the Ozaki WoW WR580 does not require copious amounts of listening talent, as this product, from its marketing, specifications and its appearance, scream “bass” loudly and without consideration to whether you prefer macapuno to ube.

You have to wonder if there's a little bit of cross-genre marketing going on here.

I call this “fortunate” because the WR580 is aimed squarely at the gamer or at people who I like to call “thump-lovers” who care not so much for the audio quality emanating from his rig (be it a computer rig, living room console, Hi-Fi, or plain radio) as to how well they can shake the ceiling. Ozaki’s “WoW” stands for “Woofer of Woofer” (or perhaps it should be more correctly named “Woofer of Woofers – must be some Taiwanese Engrish at work here--) so right then and there we can see where their marketing is heading. It’s not just the naming though, Ozaki saw fit to cram in two bass drivers into one large enclosure, which when combined with the standard stereo components form what they call 2.2 Double Power design.

A golden badge underlines the WR580's most eye-catching feature.

That is not to say that Ozaki left all tasteful sound reproduction behind – but the WR580 is definitely not meant for faithful reproduction of content meant to be played over high-end monitor speakers, nor is it flexible enough to be able to handle the wide range of music types we threw at it. I attribute this evaluation to the curious subjective opinion expressed by almost everyone who dropped in while I was testing the beast: the set seems to be missing something like the “meat” of the sound, other than the bass. If I had to put a finger to it, I would hazard to say that this set is missing the mid-range, in anything from movies to music to games. The high range is handled fine by the set’s alloy tweeters, but the mid-range drivers don’t seem to emit any sound in many instances of testing the unit.

Triple dials for bass, treble, and volume line the upper right corner of the subwoofer.

A rear view of the WR580's subwoofer show the dual air-ports.

Music with heavy bass, as well as games with lots of explosions in it, fared well on the WR580, but music with lots of vocals, especially acapella, seemed muddled – even to this music-heathen’s ears. Normally, this shouldn’t be much of a problem, as long as the listener adheres to two basic rules: one, stay within the “sound sphere” of the WR580 – generally 2 to 4 feet away, as the WR580 quickly loses its power outside of this area. Two, stick to the mid to three-fourths of the volume range and to a certain extent, the treble and bass. This second rule is applicable due to the three prominent dials at the top right corner of the subwoofer component – corresponding to bass, treble, and volume controls. Following these two guidelines should net the listener a good listening experience, if said listener falls within the 2 to 5 range of listening fidelity, as described in the first paragraph.

A closer look at the design detail on one of the satellites.

The bass performance is also somewhat lacking when it comes to hard-hitting “thump” that shakes your bones and makes your stomach squirm when it’s full of ice cream, and this is perhaps understandable due to the inherent design of the woofer(s). Theorizing on the cause of the less-than-impressive bass, (since this is a subjective review), the two subwoofers, with their separate cavities for pushing or pulling air in or out, makes the resulting oomph quite convincing when you're close to the speaker set, but anything farther and the dual subs quickly lose the ability to make the typical "shake your insides", low-frequency sound you get from higher-end sets. It simply can’t push as much air as a single large subwoofer, thus limiting its area of effect to a relatively small area. On the plus side, the dual subwoofer arrangement makes for smoother output with the help of Ozaki’s “Bass Phase Synchronization” – a system that ensures synchronized outputs from both bass drivers, eliminating delays and conflicts.

Two images from the promotional webpage devoted to Ozaki's WoW 2.2 technology.

The subwoofer arrangement also offers much faster response than a single large subwoofer, similar to how a smaller turbo in a car is able to spool up and create power much quicker than a big one due to that much less air to move when it is working. The two smaller subwoofers react quicker and moves air faster, enabling the use of higher-sensitivity bass drivers while maintaining low distortion.
The set is priced at around P3700 according to the latest (Jan 2009) pricelist from the distributor, and for this price you get the two satellites with integrated alloy tweeters and the dual-driver subwoofer, along with polished looks (both literally and figuratively) inlaid with a unique tribal/spiral pattern that sets off the set’s black gloss quite nicely. The Ozaki WoW WR580 may not be quite so exclamation-inducing as its name, but it is still without a doubt the perfect solution for those looking to fill up a portion of their sound-space with compelling bass performance and are ready to take advantage of the sorbetero-level price and won’t miss the Häagen-level features and performance. More pictures to follow.

Input ports connect to the included red/white to 3.5mm jack cable.

The box is of basic cardboard construction, giving no hint to the delicious-looking speaker within.