The Avantage Room fully equipped
We eagerly removed the five speakers and two subwoofers from their solid, strong packaging and after quite a bit of heavy lifting set them up in the Avantage Room.
SVS Ultra Tower Front speakers
The SVS Ultra Tower (front speaker) is an impressive 3-way speaker with a trapezoidal shape and is the flagship of the speaker manufacturer SVSound. From L-Sound, we were sent the Premium grade finish in piano gloss, which gives the whole thing a beautiful, high quality appearance. The Ultra Tower and indeed the entire Ultra series are also available in an Oak finish.
The Ultra Tower is equipped with five Ultra Sonic Drivers: a 1” aluminium dome tweeter, two 6.5” midrange drivers and two 8” woofers placed at the bottom of the sides, opposing each other horizontally. The Ultra Sonic tweeter is FEA optimized. Because of that, the vibration of the tweeter is thoroughly analysed and adjusted so that an open and neutral high is presented. The Ultra Sonic Midrange driver is made from a fibre optic cone with a superb stiffness/mass ratio. This gives the speaker an improved sensitivity and lower distortion. And the Ultra Sonic bass woofers deliver a powerful, accurate and deep low so typical of SVS bass response.
The striking Ultra Tower cabinet design in a trapezoidal shape delivers a number of sonic benefits. Because there are fewer parallel panels, standing waves in the cabinet are reduced and you naturally get less coloration from the speaker housing. Further, we find on the back, double speaker connections in order to make bi-wiring or bi-amping, and thus a top performance, possible.
SVS Ultra Center speaker
The Ultra Center, just like the Ultra Tower, has a 1” aluminium dome tweeter on board. In order to guarantee the listener a correct sound dialogue and an optimal cinema experience, it is further outfitted with an Ultra Sonic 4” midrange driver and two Ultra Sonic 6.5” woofers. The vertical alignment of the tweeter and the midrange driver improves the frequency response and the intelligibility from different listening positions. The Ultra Center is also equipped with double speaker connections in order to make even more improved realism, intelligibility and voice reproduction possible.
SVS Ultra Surround speakers
The two drivers in the Ultra Surround speakers are placed in a V-shape and look like classic bipole speakers. With bipole speakers, the drivers are arranged pointing outward and create a broader soundstage so that you get a more spacious feeling. Because these speakers sometimes have the disadvantage in the ability to be localized, SVS offers a flexible surround speaker. The Ultra Surround speaker is equipped with double speaker connections so that you can set it up in three different modes: Bipole mode, Dipole mode and Duet mode.
In the Bipole setting, both drivers are in phase (making the speaker somewhat localisable); in the Dipole setting, they’re out of phase (advisable when the surround sound speakers are placed close to the listening position), and in the Duet mode, each set of drivers receives a separate signal. In our setup, we made use of the Duet mode and the Ultra Surround speaker connected to both the surround and back surround channels of our Yamaha surround amplifier. The driver that is directed toward the screen plays the surround channel and the driver that is pointed backwards is the back surround channel. That’s how we actually tested this 5.2 set in a 7.2 mode.
SVS SB13-Ultra DSP Subwoofer
The SVS SB13 Ultra DSP Subwoofer is the smaller, but certainly not less powerful, little brother of the SVS PC13 Ultra (previously tested in 2012). Equipped with a 13” woofer with a stiff composite cone and a perforated metal grill, it looks sturdy and powerful. With the assistance of a 1000W Sledge amplifier with DSP compensation, the SB13 guarantees an ultra-tight and deep bass sound.
In order to compare easily the cleanliness of the bass response and the suppleness with which ‘special effects’ and dynamic sounds are reproduced, we used two SB13’s. As a listener, you certainly don’t expect that with two subs, everything is going to pop even more and be more impressive, but the use of two subs instead of one delivers a cleaner and extremely fast, short and powerful bass response. You might not need to hear a sub, but you certainly need to feel it at the right moment.
The built-in STA-1000 DSP amplifier brings quite a lot of capabilities. With variable tuning, space compensation and the 2-band parametric equalizer (PEQ), you can set the SB13 on every point perfectly. The blue LCD screen shows the settings of the subwoofer, and, via RCA and XLR inputs, you can connect the SB13 to a cinema processor or amplifier. Via the RCA and XLR outputs, you can connect another subwoofer in the system. In short, the SVS SB13-Ultra DSP is a subwoofer with a great deal of power and exceptionally high selection of options.
