Five speakers and one subwoofer, that is the minimum setup needed to create a surround sound experience. A lot of films and music are recorded in 5.1 (audio channels), and you get the best result if you use five speakers and a subwoofer that are perfectly matched.
Having a surround sound installation sound like a whole has for years been the challenge for the home theatre industry. George Lucas began as early as 1982 with the THX sound standard, and later even digital balancing systems, such as Audyssey, were invented to correct the acoustics in a listening space. However, if the basis of the presentation, the speaker, is not OK, then these systems can add little benefit to the film experience.
Therefore, a considerable financial investment is necessary and justified in order to get a sound system that sounds perfect. The only thing is that finding the right system for the right price is, given the vast array of different speaker manufacturers, a very difficult task.
With the Ultra Tower, Ultra Surround, Ultra Center and the SB13 Ultra DSP subwoofer, SVS provides an answer to this question. L-Sound provided us with an SVS Ultra 5.2 surround set (two subwoofers instead of one) in order to test the quality of it thoroughly in the Avantage Room.
Here’s the summary: Two SVS Ultra Tower Piano Gloss Black front speakers (valued at €1,999.-), two SVS Ultra Surround Piano Gloss Black bipole speakers (valued at €1,199.-), one SVS Ultra Center Piano Gloss Black center speaker (valued at €699.-) and two SVS SB13-Ultra DSP Piano Gloss Black subwoofers (valued at €1,699.-each) were neatly delivered to the Avantage Room. We put this speaker set, with a total retail value of €6,565.- of which almost half of the budget represents the subwoofers, through its paces—or, more accurately, we put it through hell.
SVS
SVS was established in 1998 by a group of audio enthusiasts who wanted a better alternative for the, in their eyes, mostly too expensive and sub-performing subwoofers available at the time. They thus began to produce a lot of subwoofers and speakers themselves, and these exceeded, given the rave reviews in much of the media, all expectations. In addition, the prices were kept very low because the consumer could purchase online directly from the manufacturer.
Today, SVS is a household name in the home cinema world and has for years been famous for the research, optimization and production of speakers.
Thus, the SVS Ultra-series speakers are designed by an SVS team of audio enthusiasts who have more than fifty years of experience in the high-end audio world. While SVS has still further expanded their team, their philosophy after all these years still has not changed: ‘passion for building the best consumer-direct audio products in the industry’.
