SVS Ultra Bookshelf Speaker Review

[Dennis Murphy]

I just finished modding the Ultra's to see if I could get at what was bothering Amir. There are two issues that may have contributed to the perceived brightness. One, which doesn't show up on Amir's measurements due, I think, to the protective device he uses on the mic, is that the tweeter takes off like a rocket above about 14 kHz. I don't think I can hear that, but maybe Amir's ears are less battered than mine. The other is that SVS kind of fudged the tweeter circuit. There is a big hump in the raw tweeter response at the low end (which is very common in baffles this size), and the crossover doesn't attempt to achieve an accurate 4th order acoustic roll-off. The tweeter response instead levels off on the way down, but still sums fairly flat with the woofer. Maybe it's the greater-than-normal tweeter contribution in the 2-3 kHz range that Amir is picking up on.

Frankly, I didn't find the Ultra's particularly bright. I was just bothered by a lack of focus in the mid-treble due to the U-shaped response and perhaps the less-than-precise roll-offs. Here are the before and after on-axis plots. I deliberately ramped the tweeter response down a little just to avoid any remaining brightness that people might hear.
View attachment 82200View attachment 82201

Advance alert. I'm selling the modded SVS Ultra's for $800/pr. If anyone's interested, PM me before I go to the trouble of taking pics and posting. They're in new condition.

 

[Jack B]

I can't find a way to PM you, and can't buy your modified bookshelves, but I have a couple of questions: (A) Have you considered offering a "kit" of the new crossover components (I am guessing that the 6.5" midrange and the 1" tweeter in my Ultra Towers are the same as the components in the Ultra Bookshelf)? and (B) Is there any easy way of narrowing the directivity of the 1" tweeter to more closely match the 6.5" driver, like shoehorn in a waveguide, replace the tweeter with one having more controlled directivity, or? Thanks.

 

[ribosradagast]

I can't find a way to PM you

Click on his name, click the "Start conversation" button that appears in the box

 

[Dennis Murphy]

I can't find a way to PM you, and can't buy your modified bookshelves, but I have a couple of questions: (A) Have you considered offering a "kit" of the new crossover components (I am guessing that the 6.5" midrange and the 1" tweeter in my Ultra Towers are the same as the components in the Ultra Bookshelf)? and (B) Is there any easy way of narrowing the directivity of the 1" tweeter to more closely match the 6.5" driver, like shoehorn in a waveguide, replace the tweeter with one having more controlled directivity, or? Thanks.

Kits are actually hard to pull off. Most people don't want to be bothered with them, and it's difficult to make them relatively fool-proof. That said, I will be offering my Affordable Accuracy + monitor as a kit, but only because I'm having the crossover boards factory built and there are finished, pre-routed cabinets available super cheap and no soldering is required for hook-up. Once you get into raw crossover parts and soldering irons, the cost-benefit ratio of a kit greatly increases. As for a waveguide, it's probably not practical and would almost certainly degrade performance even if you could wham and cram one in there. I personally don't think more even but narrower dispersion is superior to broader but less even dispersion, and unless you engineered the Ultra from the start with a waveguide approach and had the skills of the Revel engineers, you would probably end up with horn colorations and/or introduce directivity mismatches in a different place. What the Ultra really needs is a proper tweeter high pass filter, which I've attempted to provide. My pair of Stage I tune Ultras with backup camera and blind spot monitoring is still available.

 

[Jack B]

Click on his name, click the "Start conversation" button that appears in the box

Thank you for the information!

 

[Docevil]

Wow! Really glad to have found this site, great work amirm! Totally subscribe to the premise of everything here. I was seriously considering the SVS Ultra line for my home theater build coming up. I am wondering though, the gem of the line is the Ultra tower which is a 3½ way design instead of the 2 way bookshelf and even on their website they seem to acknowledge these results when they talk about the Ultra Tower cabinet design:

"Separate sealed midrange enclosures minimize top-to-bottom wall dimensions and shift standing waves beyond the driver pass band, minimizing negative driver interaction and associated frequency response degradation"

So I am wondering a couple of things:
1. Do you guys think that a port plug would reduce some of the effects that @amirm heard in his listening sessions? The frequency response measurement done at the port starts getting pretty messy as the frequency increases which could be contributing? SVS themselves seem to be inadvertently admitting to some frequency response degradation in the bookshelf design in their description of the tower...

2. I was planning to use the ultra bookshelf as surrounds, and the ultra towers and center for the soundstage, do you think this defect in the bookshelf would be very noticeable in that duty?

Anyway, I DID have it narrowed down to the SVS Ultra line and the Wharfedale Evo line. Unfortunately, I still can't find a decent measurement of the Ultra Towers other than maybe a single on axis frequency response which is no spinorama and I can't find ANY measurements of the Wharfedale Evo line either.

 

[Steve Dallas]

Wow! Really glad to have found this site, great work amirm! Totally subscribe to the premise of everything here. I was seriously considering the SVS Ultra line for my home theater build coming up. I am wondering though, the gem of the line is the Ultra tower which is a 3½ way design instead of the 2 way bookshelf and even on their website they seem to acknowledge these results when they talk about the Ultra Tower cabinet design:

"Separate sealed midrange enclosures minimize top-to-bottom wall dimensions and shift standing waves beyond the driver pass band, minimizing negative driver interaction and associated frequency response degradation"

So I am wondering a couple of things:
1. Do you guys think that a port plug would reduce some of the effects that @amirm heard in his listening sessions? The frequency response measurement done at the port starts getting pretty messy as the frequency increases which could be contributing? SVS themselves seem to be inadvertently admitting to some frequency response degradation in the bookshelf design in their description of the tower...

2. I was planning to use the ultra bookshelf as surrounds, and the ultra towers and center for the soundstage, do you think this defect in the bookshelf would be very noticeable in that duty?

Anyway, I DID have it narrowed down to the SVS Ultra line and the Wharfedale Evo line. Unfortunately, I still can't find a decent measurement of the Ultra Towers other than maybe a single on axis frequency response which is no spinorama and I can't find ANY measurements of the Wharfedale Evo line either.

Welcome to the site.

I think you need a healthy amount of context to interpret Amir's subjective listening preferences. He has very specific tastes, and the Ultra bookshelf does not happen to meet them. That has no bearing on whether you will like them. I like plenty of speakers Amir does not, including those from KEF, for example.

A port plug may help with the warm upper bass, but it will pull down the lower bass as well.

As for the brightness, you can use less toe to adjust your off-axis experience.

In my experience, surround speaker quality almost does not matter--especially if you are using room correction. The Ultra bookshelves will be excellent in that role, massive overkill really.

In my home theater, I have nearly $6,000 invested in the front 3, and I run $99 Polk 65RT in-walls as my side and rear surrounds. Why so cheap? Because they are just noise makers for sound effects, and they are crossed at 90Hz and corrected to match the response of the fronts. They sound perfectly fine, and I have no impulse to upgrade them. Ninety percent of the movie experience happens on the front 3 speakers. The other 10% simply is not that important, and there is no reason to spend much $$ there.

Even in immersive audio formats, the surrounds do not much matter. I have recently been listening to concert BRDs and DVDs, and I make a point of selecting the immersive format and placing my ear against the side and rear surrounds to hear what is going on back there. It is mostly crowd noise and reverberations in the hall. You certainly do not need better than Polk back there doing that...

So, don't overthink the surrounds. Sales and Marketing have spent a couple decades now telling us they must be timbre matched and from the same line as the fronts. They were lying.

 

[Docevil]

Thanks for your feedback Steve.

I agree, the upper bass should flatten out a bit, I have 4 SVS PB-2000's that I would use to integrate into the lower bass so I think I am good there. I really feel like there are some weird interactions between the woofer and port in the region between about 1000-2500hz. I also agree, toe-in(out) would also help with the brightness. Perhaps ceiling treatment and thick carpets to address the v-notches in the early reflections...

I somewhat agree about the timbre matching, as long as the speakers are producing a similar sound ie you aren't matching a narrow bright speaker with a wide warm speaker. It's mostly my OCD that keeps me inside the same speaker series. I did consider dropping down to the prime bookshelves for the surrounds and haven't entirely ruled it out yet either... it is mostly about building the dream package for myself inside a certain price envelope and going up to the ultras is about pleasing myself more than anything. lol

I am hoping to see some measurements on the Wharfedale Evo's too. I take possession of a new build home later this month and plan to start construction of the theater (home theater version 2.0 in fact!) in the spring. I should mention that I haven't ruled out the Monoprice Monolith line yet either... some measurements of those are on audioholics, I would like to see a 3 way bookshelf without the atmos driver in that line though and again would like to see something on their towers.

 

[escott82]

Anybody have any measurement of the center?

 

[Docevil]

The only measurements I am aware of are by Sound and Vision. The pic below shows the center as the green trace which looks like they shift down so they aren't overlapping since they claim the sensitivity is 88.5db in the quotes from the link below:

"Center Sensitivity: 88.5 dB from 500 Hz to 2 kHz "

"The Ultra Center’s listening-window response measures +1.93/–2.97 dB from 200 Hz to 10 kHz. An average of axial and +/–15-degree horizontal responses measures +2.05/–3.04 dB from 200 Hz to 10 kHz. The –3-dB point is at 60 Hz, and the –6-dB point is at 51 Hz. Impedance reaches a minimum of 4.03 ohms at 93 Hz and a phase angle of +28.96 degrees at 1.4 kHz."

https://www.soundandvision.com/content/svs-ultra-speaker-system-ht-labs-measures

 

[BN1]

Anybody have any measurement of the center?

It's a bit late but Danny Richie at GR Research just did a mod on the SVS Ultra Center and a mod for the bookshelf is coming soon.

 

[Dennis Murphy]

It's a bit late but Danny Richie at GR Research just did a mod on the SVS Ultra Center and a mod for the bookshelf is coming soon.

Guess it's time for me to put my SVS bookshelf mod in the public domain. I'll be sure to specify sand cast resistors and cheap terminal plates.

 

[Wolf]

It's a bit late but Danny Richie at GR Research just did a mod on the SVS Ultra Center and a mod for the bookshelf is coming soon.

They were probably better performing before he touched them...

 

[richard12511]

Guess it's time for me to put my SVS bookshelf mod in the public domain. I'll be sure to specify sand cast resistors and cheap terminal plates.

Then he can make another mod that mods your mod with expensive resistors !

 

[escott82]

New Aperion flagship released yesterday, $4000/pair - https://www.aperionaudio.com/collec...t-tower-speaker-single?variant=37874365104328

I have the current flagship, the V6T and they are awesome. The highs are a bit rolled off, but the soundstage is huge with a very lush/organic sound due to a smooth crossover. Amazing finish.

What’s that have to do with the svs speaker?

 

[whazzup]

Interesting / suspicious influx of comments on Aperion products.

 

[Billy Budapest]

Interesting / suspicious influx of comments on Aperion products.

Guerrilla marketing? Uncool.

 

[Steve Dallas]

Aperion is not far from Amir. Seems like this could be sorted quickly and easily. Anyway, Aperion stuff does not belong in this thread. Let's keep it clean around here!

 

[a_p]

What’s that have to do with the svs speaker?

Because someone else pulled in Aperion into the thread, so just throwing news out there, and made a reference to my experience on the Aperion V6T, which is what this thread is partially talking about.

 

[Jack B]

Well, Aperion and Amir both begin with the letter A. Coincidence? Well....