Last year, I recorded the scores of nearly 20 subwoofers in the first DVD ETC. "Subwoofer Shakedown." There were a few surprises in the group for both high performance and lack of performance. We mistakenly included the Athena P5 eight-inch subwoofer rather than the AS-P300 eight-inch.

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The Athena P5 subwoofer is not available separately and is designed to work with another Athena package ensemble. Regardless, Athena was quick to shoot an AS-P300 over to us as they felt confident that it would meet our expectations.

Athena is the newest brand under the Audio Products International (A.P.I.) corporate umbrella, which also includes Mirage and Energy some pretty serious contenders in the home theater speaker business.

Athena takes advantage of "trickle engineering" from its parent brands at price points that won't make your wallet squeal. The end result delivers products like the AS-P300 subwoofer that redefine the word "value."

Unique Features
What's perhaps most unique about the AS-P300 is that both the volume and crossover controls are conveniently located on the front baffle of the enclosure. While this certainly makes the AS-P300 one of the easiest woofers I've ever melded into a system for review, I can't help but wonder how many poor fathers have to put tape over the controls to keep their young'uns from playing radio with the knobs. Since I don't have to worry about this, I'll scratch up a couple of points in the convenience category.

There is a single, frontward firing, eight-inch, polypropylene woofer directly above a large, frontward firing port--both covered by a removable grille. This relatively large enclosure with black ash veneer makes good use of an efficient design with its 100-watt RMS (300-wattpeak) internal amplifier.

The back panel features high and low level ins and outs for seamless integration with virtually any speaker system.