Eve Audio is fairly new to the ribbon tweeter monitor market, offering real competition for the established Adam Audio. However, the unit we have on the bench from the firm is a subwoofer and there's no ribbon tweeter in sight.
The TS108 is one of four Eve subwoofers available (with the TS112 being the largest) and is designed to complement its active nearfields (SC204 upwards). To this end it includes feed-through connectors for connecting your nearfields, and the idea is you connect your stereo monitor feed to the sub then onto the nearfield 'satellites'. To test the TS108 we also have a pair of Eve's SC205s, which are small nearfields with a 5-inch woofer.
"Like Eve's nearfields, the TS108 includes soft knob control and internal DSP for making adjustments"
The TS108 is what Eve calls a ThunderStorm subwoofer (hence the TS tag), and it uses a forward-facing 8-inch driver powered by a 150 Watt PWM amp. The main driver is complemented by a passive radiator. This is a circular, flat suspended plate on the underside, and it replaces the more traditional bass reflex, reducing air turbulence issues.
Like Eve's nearfields, the TS108 includes soft knob control and internal DSP for making adjustments. This ties in directly with the PWM amplification and is designed to be unobtrusive while aiding functionality.
The TS108 front panel has two multifunction front panel soft knobs (push and turn action), predominantly for subwoofer level and system level. The former's press action acts as subwoofer mute, while the latter's press action accesses further set-up options.
Here you can set the sub's low frequency filter (stepped from 60Hz to 140Hz with a 300Hz LFE setting), the sub phase (0 or 180 degrees), and adjust the behaviour of the LED ring that surrounds the knob.
The final option is a fixed high-pass filter (80Hz) for the feed-through to the satellites. Round the back the TS108 includes balanced inputs and feed-through for satellites, both on pairs of XLRs.
There's also a dedicated mono LFE input and pass-through on XLR. And finally, there's a bunch of dip switches that lock the volume levels based on the most recent settings.
Remote control
One key aspect of the TS108 is its remote control. This replicates all of the onboard settings, allowing you to make changes from your listening position.
It also adds the Pure Satellite option, which mutes the sub and removes the high-pass so you can listen just to the nearfields in full frequency mode. This, combined with the system volume and overall mute options, means the remote pretty much doubles as a control room monitor level controller. Nice!
The TS108 can produce oodles of low frequencies, and as seasoned 2.1 monitor users, we have to say this knocks the socks off our sub. The only thing we were left wanting was the option to mute the satellites remotely and keep the sub in play.
All told, the TS108 is a great sub, and the onboard DSP functionality makes it ideal for use not only with Eve Audio's own nearfields, but with any powered monitors.
