SVS 3000 Micro Subwoofer (announced)

[mike70]

I have the SHD Studio, so 4 channels of Dirac. The SVS features are sort of wasted on me.

Well, the SHD Studio is a good dsp preamp ... that's true, and sure ... the SVS app can be useless in your case.
But you were talking about something cheap. For me, nothing beats a basic fanless PC with Dirac (half price of the SHD studio) ... the PC and the SVS can be very close in price to the SHD alone.

Then an integrated amplifier (i mean, analog pre with volume + remote control) and you're done.

 

[richard12511]

Not to mention waaaay more overal output, above 110dB SPL, according to SB-2000 Pro's measurments from Erin.

I'm still quite tempted by the formfactor, anyway.

Unfortunately, it seems there is something about Erin's measurements there that make them not comparable to any other subwoofer measurements. For example, they suggest the SV3000 has more output than the Rythmik FV18, and that the 2000 and 3000 models also have more output than SVS' own 4000 model and SB16 Ultra. We never got to the bottom of the cause of the discrepancy(Erin measured several times with multiple mics), so we really don't have any way to know how good they actually are. Maybe SVS has their own measurements?

 

[richard12511]

You might want to read this

"Myth: Bass Speed
Subwoofers are Fast / Slow
It is a common misconception that sound quality is related to the woofers speed or quickness, but in fact the woofer's speed is related to the frequency it is producing and the SPL...."

Read more:
https://data-bass.com/#/articles/5cbf5e7357f7140004d6d0ec?_k=lzxf4f

What's the name of the company that makes the 34" and 50" subs? They're whole marketing angle is that their subs are much "faster to start and stop" than smaller subs, because they have to move so much less(which is true). The smaller the sub, the more it has to move in and out to get the same output, which means more distortion and extra distance required to stop.

That said, I mostly agree the "speed" thing is BS. I do have some smaller subs that sound much slower, but I think may be a combo of distortion and because their port tuning frequency is up in the audible range(30Hz+). Higher port tuning means really high group delay in frequencies that are actually audible. Giant ported subs get around this by having that group delay spike below 20Hz(where we only feel it).

 

[jgiannakas]

So after a day of tinkering I've managed to set the 3000 Micro up with my KEF R300's and Denon X3700H using both the SVS EQ and Audyssey combined.

REW Moving Mic measurements at the MLP below:

Before any EQ

After flattening the peaks with the SVS app

After calibrating with Audyssey XT32 - (no smoothing)

With main speakers after audyssey but before doing the distance tweak (massive suck outs on the left speaker, clearly out of phase at the XO @ 80HZ)
Left:

Right:

After Distance Tweak & Ratbuddysey to sort out some spikes in the 200-600hz region. Some suck outs remain due to MLP being close to the rear wall. Audyssey is limited to ~600hz.
Left

Right:

Room:
The room really doesn't help with speaker placement. Its quite small (5 meters by 4 meters) with one wall being 90 degrees to the back and the other 45 degrees. Also behind the speakers there is a massive wall to wall built in bookcase that causes havoc with first reflections and bass cancellation. Unfortunately cannot do much as renting at the moment . All in all the SVS app and Auddysey managed to tame the room down as much as practically possible.

Impressions:
Bass is impressive from a cube this size. Previous sub (Dali E-9F) - 9 inch ported - was rolling off at 40hz with no output after 30hz. This one starts rolling off at 30hz and maintains a decent level of output down to 20hz. Plus its TINY - barely wider than the KEF's so it just vanishes in my small living room!

Bass quality wise, I find it much tighter than the Dali - the Dali would sound muddy and ill defined, maybe as a consequence of the down firing port, but this one is tight and agile.

SPL wise, I don't listen over 90-95db peaks as my neighbours would complain. The sub has no problem following along and feels like it can go quite a bit louder too.

Conclusion:
If you have a small room, this is a great sub. Maybe the KEF KC-62 would go lower but at half the cost, I can get 2 of these and optimise the bass response even more!

 

[mike70]

They're whole marketing angle is that their subs are much "faster to start and stop" than smaller subs, because they have to move so much less(which is true). The smaller the sub, the more it has to move in and out to get the same output, which means more distortion and extra distance required to stop.

I think you're using partial information and the part that makes your statement true. We can use that method to proof anything.
We're not doing a contest in bass reach and spl between a big and a small subwoofer, that's not the point.

If you use a big and a small sub in their "natural range" ... one will have more accuracy (fast sound) in that range at the same spl?
You can't answer that using 20hz and 110dB ... you need to check that in 30Hz, 35Hz ...

Talking about science, the hypothesis must be right to have a right thesis.
My opinion only.

 

[mike70]

So after a day of tinkering I've managed to set the 3000 Micro up with my KEF R300's and Denon X3700H using both the SVS EQ and Audyssey combined.

REW Moving Mic measurements at the MLP below:

Before any EQ
View attachment 139883

After flattening the peaks with the SVS app
View attachment 139884

After calibrating with Audyssey XT32 - (no smoothing)
View attachment 139885

With main speakers before doing the distance tweak (massive suck outs on the left speaker, clearly out of phase at the XO @ 80HZ)
Left:
View attachment 139886
Right:
View attachment 139887

After Distance Tweak & Ratbuddysey to sort out some spikes in the 200-600hz region. Some suck outs remain due to MLP being close to the rear wall. Audyssey is limited to ~600hz.
Left
View attachment 139889

Right:
View attachment 139890

Room:
The room really doesn't help with speaker placement. Its quite small (5 meters by 4 meters) with one wall being 90 degrees to the back and the other 45 degrees. Also behind the speakers there is a massive wall to wall built in bookcase that causes havoc with first reflections and bass cancellation. Unfortunately cannot do much as renting at the moment . All in all the SVS app and Auddysey managed to tame the room down as much as practically possible.
View attachment 139891

Impressions:
Bass is impressive from a cube this size. Previous sub (Dali E-9F) - 9 inch ported - was rolling off at 40hz with no output after 30hz. This one starts rolling off at 30hz and maintains a decent level of output down to 20hz. Plus its TINY - barely wider than the KEF's so it just vanishes in my small living room!

Bass quality wise, I find it much tighter than the Dali - the Dali would sound muddy and ill defined, maybe as a consequence of the down firing port, but this one is tight and agile.

SPL wise, I don't listen over 90-95db peaks as my neighbours would complain. The sub has no problem following along and feels like it can go quite a bit louder too.

Conclusion:
If you have a small room, this is a great sub. Maybe the KEF KC-62 would go lower but at half the cost, I can get 2 of these and optimise the bass response even more!

Thanks for your time and to share this experience. I have the R3 (very close to your speakers) and the bass it's not shy in any way ... if the SVS worked for you, can work for me also. I tested some budget 8" subs before and they destroy the sound, you can't pair decent speakers with low quality subs.

 

[jgiannakas]

Thanks for your time and to share this experience. I have the R3 (very close to your speakers) and the bass it's not shy in any way ... if the SVS worked for you, can work for me also. I tested some budget 8" subs before and they destroy the sound, you can't pair decent speakers with low quality subs.

I know, the R300s reach quite nicely down to 40hz. But for me the biggest improvement came by phase aligning the base frequencies. The main speakers where out of alignment at the base because of reflections causing huge dips in the frequency response. So even though they could reach deep they never really could because of the specific room interactions.

Also the base is much much more punchy with the sub compared to the KEFs.

My advice? Get a Umik1 and do some measurements to see what is really going on in your room. I would have never been able to tweak mine without it. It’s impossible to do it by ear to this level of accuracy.

For reference these were the R300 plots without the sub and without Audyssey with a 40hz crossover filter
Left

Right:

With Audyssey On and crossed at 40HZ without the sub
Left

Right

The problem for me was the combined response. Even though the individual speaker responses seemed very flat down to the XO point, when running a MMM measurement with both L & R active the bass was cancelling each other out as I presume there are some phase issues due to the room asymmetry. This combined dip is what the sub has really fixed for me:
Combined response - Audyssey on - 40HZ XO without the Sub

Combined response - Audyssey on - 80HZ XO with the Sub on. See the reduced dip compared to without the sub above at the 50hz to 80hz mark. Speakers now sound MUCH fuller but I'll be trying out some more changes to check if that can be improved further. Have been really struggling with matching the sub XO with both speakers. When I align one the other develops a dip, so I just found one that both speakers have a middle ground in terms of dips and cancellations.

 

[bo_knows]

So after a day of tinkering I've managed to set the 3000 Micro up with my KEF R300's and Denon X3700H using both the SVS EQ and Audyssey combined.

REW Moving Mic measurements at the MLP below:

Before any EQ
View attachment 139883

After flattening the peaks with the SVS app
View attachment 139884

After calibrating with Audyssey XT32 - (no smoothing)
View attachment 139885

With main speakers after audyssey but before doing the distance tweak (massive suck outs on the left speaker, clearly out of phase at the XO @ 80HZ)
Left:
View attachment 139886
Right:
View attachment 139887

After Distance Tweak & Ratbuddysey to sort out some spikes in the 200-600hz region. Some suck outs remain due to MLP being close to the rear wall. Audyssey is limited to ~600hz.
Left
View attachment 139889

Right:
View attachment 139890

Room:
The room really doesn't help with speaker placement. Its quite small (5 meters by 4 meters) with one wall being 90 degrees to the back and the other 45 degrees. Also behind the speakers there is a massive wall to wall built in bookcase that causes havoc with first reflections and bass cancellation. Unfortunately cannot do much as renting at the moment . All in all the SVS app and Auddysey managed to tame the room down as much as practically possible.
View attachment 139891

Impressions:
Bass is impressive from a cube this size. Previous sub (Dali E-9F) - 9 inch ported - was rolling off at 40hz with no output after 30hz. This one starts rolling off at 30hz and maintains a decent level of output down to 20hz. Plus its TINY - barely wider than the KEF's so it just vanishes in my small living room!

Bass quality wise, I find it much tighter than the Dali - the Dali would sound muddy and ill defined, maybe as a consequence of the down firing port, but this one is tight and agile.

SPL wise, I don't listen over 90-95db peaks as my neighbours would complain. The sub has no problem following along and feels like it can go quite a bit louder too.

Conclusion:
If you have a small room, this is a great sub. Maybe the KEF KC-62 would go lower but at half the cost, I can get 2 of these and optimise the bass response even more!

Your FR is almost flat! I would say you are done. Good job!

 

[Kachda]

So after a day of tinkering I've managed to set the 3000 Micro up with my KEF R300's and Denon X3700H using both the SVS EQ and Audyssey combined.

REW Moving Mic measurements at the MLP below:

Before any EQ
View attachment 139883

After flattening the peaks with the SVS app
View attachment 139884

After calibrating with Audyssey XT32 - (no smoothing)
View attachment 139885

With main speakers after audyssey but before doing the distance tweak (massive suck outs on the left speaker, clearly out of phase at the XO @ 80HZ)
Left:
View attachment 139886
Right:
View attachment 139887

After Distance Tweak & Ratbuddysey to sort out some spikes in the 200-600hz region. Some suck outs remain due to MLP being close to the rear wall. Audyssey is limited to ~600hz.
Left
View attachment 139889

Right:
View attachment 139890

Room:
The room really doesn't help with speaker placement. Its quite small (5 meters by 4 meters) with one wall being 90 degrees to the back and the other 45 degrees. Also behind the speakers there is a massive wall to wall built in bookcase that causes havoc with first reflections and bass cancellation. Unfortunately cannot do much as renting at the moment . All in all the SVS app and Auddysey managed to tame the room down as much as practically possible.
View attachment 139891

Impressions:
Bass is impressive from a cube this size. Previous sub (Dali E-9F) - 9 inch ported - was rolling off at 40hz with no output after 30hz. This one starts rolling off at 30hz and maintains a decent level of output down to 20hz. Plus its TINY - barely wider than the KEF's so it just vanishes in my small living room!

Bass quality wise, I find it much tighter than the Dali - the Dali would sound muddy and ill defined, maybe as a consequence of the down firing port, but this one is tight and agile.

SPL wise, I don't listen over 90-95db peaks as my neighbours would complain. The sub has no problem following along and feels like it can go quite a bit louder too.

Conclusion:
If you have a small room, this is a great sub. Maybe the KEF KC-62 would go lower but at half the cost, I can get 2 of these and optimise the bass response even more!

Very informative. Just curious, i see a big dip at 3k. Guess that’s a r300 thing?

 

[jgiannakas]

Very informative. Just curious, i see a big dip at 3k. Guess that’s a r300 thing?

Yeap, the R300s have that treble dip for some reason.

 

[BrokenEnglishGuy]

I know, the R300s reach quite nicely down to 40hz. But for me the biggest improvement came by phase aligning the base frequencies. The main speakers where out of alignment at the base because of reflections causing huge dips in the frequency response. So even though they could reach deep they never really could because of the specific room interactions.

Also the base is much much more punchy with the sub compared to the KEFs.

My advice? Get a Umik1 and do some measurements to see what is really going on in your room. I would have never been able to tweak mine without it. It’s impossible to do it by ear to this level of accuracy.

For reference these were the R300 plots without the sub and without Audyssey with a 40hz crossover filter
Left
View attachment 140011
Right:
View attachment 140012

With Audyssey On and crossed at 40HZ without the sub
Left
View attachment 140013

Right
View attachment 140014

The problem for me was the combined response. Even though the individual speaker responses seemed very flat down to the XO point, when running a MMM measurement with both L & R active the bass was cancelling each other out as I presume there are some phase issues due to the room asymmetry. This combined dip is what the sub has really fixed for me:
Combined response - Audyssey on - 40HZ XO without the Sub
View attachment 140015

Combined response - Audyssey on - 80HZ XO with the Sub on. See the reduced dip compared to without the sub above at the 50hz to 80hz mark. Speakers now sound MUCH fuller but I'll be trying out some more changes to check if that can be improved further. Have been really struggling with matching the sub XO with both speakers. When I align one the other develops a dip, so I just found one that both speakers have a middle ground in terms of dips and cancellations.
View attachment 140016

I remember the R300 in my room also have that deep at 120hz~, that bookshelf is hard to place

 

[Kachda]

I remember the R300 in my room also have that deep at 120hz~, that bookshelf is hard to place
View attachment 140111

That's a cancellation due to your room. You can only fix that by moving the speakers around, but that will change the dip to another location. Pretty much everything below 500Hz is room dependent.

 

[mike70]

Kef it's one of the flat speakers available, pioneers of designing speakers based on measurements ... Raymond Cooke begin to use complex machines to do it, in association also with university teams, the first design based on Fourier transform in early 60s.

You can or not to like their sound, but kef speakers are ones that match very well with science forums

 

[BrokenEnglishGuy]

That's a cancellation due to your room. You can only fix that by moving the speakers around, but that will change the dip to another location. Pretty much everything below 500Hz is room dependent.

yep i moved the speakers and the deep improve a lot.

Kef it's one of the flat speakers available, pioneers of designing speakers based on measurements ... Raymond Cooke begin to use complex machines to do it, in association also with university teams, the first design based on Fourier transform in early 60s.

You can or not to like their sound, but kef speakers are ones that match very well with science forums

I love the sound from my R7's, that tower converted me in a fanboy from kef, xD

 

[jgiannakas]

I remember the R300 in my room also have that deep at 120hz~, that bookshelf is hard to place
View attachment 140111

This looks almost identical to mine before audyssey running! Indeed I’ve found placing them in this room to be particularly tricky because of all it’s asymmetries.

 

[jgiannakas]

Update: Turns out Audyssey was rolling off the sub at 30hz as it had detected incorrectly that it couldn't support lower frequencies between 20-30hz. An audussey re-run resulted in the below. Stretches all the way to 20hz, clearly supported by the small room modes.

Sub post SVS EQ to flatten room modes and Audyssey

Integrated with the speakers post Audyssey and distance tweak:
Left

Right

For context these were the measurements with the Dali E-9F. Same approximate size but a world of difference between the two!

 

[BrokenEnglishGuy]

there is something canceling the 120hz in the left
hmm more play with the position of the speakers? or it sounds fine?

 

[jgiannakas]

It’s the proximity to the side wall that’s causing some early reflections and cancellations. The right wall is at 45 degree angle vs the left being 90 degrees hence the variance. Also there’s a sofa on the right hand side of the room vs a sliding door on the left, hence the asymmetry.

Can’t do much about that as the room layout is fixed . The sub is also having the same cancellation at the same frequency.

It’s not really audible as it’s a very narrow dip at least. I may try to flatten out some of the bass peaks using ratbuddysey but even like this I think it’s done

 

[tecnogadget]

jgiannakas Your 20Hz update is very much appreciated. So now that we know this little thing is more than capable to reach that low (with the help of room gain obviously), what about the volume or power handling. Have you ever had the opportunity for very loud listening session, or stress test. I'm mostly interested to know if you found any kind of limitation for music or movies, like if you feel its getting into limiter/compression territory, of if its getting out of juice. I've got the R3 and want to pair them with a Sub, I'm contemplating SB1000 Pro (of course higher CEA 2010 output) and 3000
Micro, since both have small footprint.

 

[tecnogadget]

Thanks a lot! This is exactly what I was looking for!

A print from his video:

View attachment 137911

The top purple curve is the SVS 3000 Micro, while the curves below are various playback levels of the KEF KC62. The dynamic EQ limiter kicks in hard in the 30 to 80 Hz range where bass is more needed and noticeable in my experience.

Just this weekend I was testing adding an SVS SB-3000 low passed very low at 32 Hz to fill the sub bass from my main speakers. Testing with sine waves it was extending alright below 30Hz to 20 somethings. Then I played lots of bass heavy EDM and acoustic jazz bass, and when I turned off the amplifiers of my main speakers, I could barely hear the sub, even with my ears next to it! The result was kind of surprising and very disappointing: it makes virtually no difference for music!

My testing showed that the most important range is 30 to 80 Hz, which is exactly where the 3000 Micro wins over the KC62.

I don't get it, on real world the 3000 Micro is on 105dB territory like a champ, should I trust Brent Butterworth measurements ? They are least to say very unoptimistic, even being CEA-2010-A standard