Fusion EN-AT1100

Product Details
Manufacturer: Fusion
Distributor: CEL Trade/Fusion UK
Website: link
Typical Selling price: £119.99
Fusion have been around a while now and this is a product so good that it has remained in a range that has changed around it. This is a classic amplified bass tube subwoofer. It has an Encounter green-coned ten inch woofer in one end and a normal looking 300w max amplifier in the other. At best this means it must be around 150w or possibly a 100w amplifier in there. It has both high level and RCA level connections (use only one) and you are supplied with a quality 5m RCA cord as well as a well made Molex-plugged loom for connecting via signals from speaker leads in the back. As this a bass device, this is a good option, although for the review I connected it from the line-out terminals of a four channel SPL Dynamics amplifier.
It was connected to the Odyssey battery by StreetWires power cables and a big StreetWires distribution block. The Voltmeter had its probes shoved into the supply wires to the bass device as the SPL D amplifier was by now a ‘known-good’ connection and I wanted to keep an eye on the voltage to the tube’s amplifier as I don’t like to drop below 12V when testing. It was used to underpin the specialist not-full-range Ground Zero Competition speakers.
The device has an oval port exiting at the opposite end to the driver next to the amp. The speaker sits behind a chromed plastic grille on the other end. You get a comprehensive set of installation accessories, right down to a length of heat shrink tubing and some cable ties, although there is no mention of these in the manual.
You get four rubbery feet to fit the four feet beneath the product’s plastic moulded end caps and you also get a set of four Velcro sticky-backed pads to use to hold it in one place if you’d rather. These are deemed a temporary measure in the manual, probably as a result of legalese I reckon they’d probably work, as it is a dense spud and well-based.
The remote gain knob lights up in green and the knob feels smooth in operation. The main enclosure is covered in tough black carpet that is very snugly fitted to the product. It looks very smart and as if it aught to cost lots more than the £80 asking price.
– Max Power: 300 Watts
– Frequency Response: 30Hz to 250Hz
– Bass Boost (Variable): Zero to +18dB
– Low Pass Filter (Variable): 40Hz to 250Hz
– Tuning: Bass Reflex
– Woofer size: 10 inch Encounter with green cone
– Fuse: 15 Amp
– Tube Dimensions: 306mm(w) x 306mm(d) x 550mm(l)
– Wired remote level control
– Finish: Embroidered Fusion logo to black carpet covering with integral chromed grille
– Complete with:
Sticker
Remote illuminated volume knob-in-a-box and cable with fixings
High level input harness
4ga Live and Earth assembled to loom with blue switching wire
Thick 5m RCA cord
Four Velcro paired anchors
Four rubber feet pads
Heat shrink tube and six cable ties
Review by Adam Rayner
Just literally a day or so ago, I was going to get my laundered shirts from Morrison’s after an early morning BBC TV thing and as it was a Sunday, I had time to kill before they opened. Starving and sinful, I visited the caff they used in the Ladbrokes adverts with Wrighty & co. (Only found out that it was famous afterwards!) and outside was this car thumping and grumbling. Grinning, I asked the driver what was in his boot. He showed me a small active Fusion subwoofer box. It had been shaking his number plate and I reckon this small but dense spud, the EN-AT1100, could do the same. It made final sense of the Ground Zero competition components I had been testing. The sound was rich and fat and heavy and far from onenote. It dropped and wobbled nicely with the bass line and I simply had to go get the lovely AudioControl SA-3055 Real Time Analyser out. (As supplied by Audio Control’s Tom Walker himself – I have never felt so privileged!)
I slapped the dB Drag CD in the Kenwood deck I used as a reference piece and let it ask me in music if I was ready for this. Great fat dropping bass lines and serious searing mids and highs meant I had one of the most kicking systems I’ve ever had rock my world from that same battery in my house! It was able to raise some 130dB right near the port and of the order of 128.5dB at the driver. This means that if you were to pressurise it right, you could be looking at well over 110dB of bass in your car, perhaps more of your transfer function is a good ‘un. (That’s the bass-amplifying effect of most car’s acoustics we LOVE that..)
It wasn’t going to beak windows or in these jaded days necessarily even turn heads, unless you are in Frinton or Eastbourne, but it was like sorting out a Pot Noodle and finding a half pounder burger in the thing! I really thought it’d be mediumly effective and only so powerful. I even doubted the max power rating. Now, however, I reckon that even if it is a one hundred watt building-block amplifier that has been used, the box and tuning of the port have been designed with true expertise and so work well.
Just a reference for those that don’t know, 130dB is about as loud as a handgun going off, so it’s quite a boom for your boot. Also, I flicked it to RTA and saw that while most output is in the 60Hz to 40Hz region, it was lighting the 31.5Hz lamps and even the 20Hz ones a bit from time to time as the material flowed.
Well impressive!
Like any bass tube it will benefit hugely from messing about putting the speaker closer in or farther away from a pressure-loading boundary i.e. sticking it in or further out of a corner. I would do this with the speaker end and let the port just breathe into the boot’s main cubic. You don’t want to impede air flow. If you have to tuck it in, make sure you are at least a port-width away from any boundary this is a simple rule and applies to ports inside boxes when making them as well as how you put port mouths in your car.
A smart and clever device that represents absurd VFM. Two would STONK!
Sound Quality 8.0
Build Quality 9.0
Power Handling 7.0
Efficiency 8.0
Value For Money 10.0
Overall rating 8.4