SVS Ultra Evolution

[Sal1950]

The written review on the website in the comments section is where Gene spoke about SVS not being very happy with the review

Yes, it is a simple reply by SVS to what they Gene & James said in the video about the value of time alignment.
Those of us that have been around know this debate has been going on for decades.
Personally I tend to agree with Gene and James, that time alignment like done on these is of very minimal value.
Of course SVS didn't agree, it's a big marketing point for them. Still and all, it was no more than a sideline to an excellent, mostly rave review. And as the boys agreed at the end of the review, the time alignment as done here cost virtually nothing,
so why not do it?

SVS Ultra Evolution Pinnacle Floorstanding Loudspeaker Review

Our full review of the flagship of SVS's hotly anticipated new loudspeaker series is here; read our full review of the SVS Ultra Evolution Pinnacle loudspeaker to see if it lives up to the hype!

www.audioholics.com

I hate to have come off as a SVS fan boy here, that by far is not the case. OTOH I hate to see what looks to be, on balance, a great new product intro, unfairly slammed by a few here.

 

[Sal1950]

SVS is the one supposedly wanting to sever ties.

Link please. ?

 

[Oddball]

Yes, it is a simple reply by SVS to what they Gene & James said in the video about the value of time alignment.
Those of us that have been around know this debate has been going on for decades.
Personally I tend to agree with Gene and James, that time alignment like done on these is of very minimal value.
Of course SVS didn't agree, it's a big marketing point for them. Still and all, it was no more than a sideline to an excellent, mostly rave review. And as the boys agreed at the end of the review, the time alignment as done here cost virtually nothing,
so why not do it?

SVS Ultra Evolution Pinnacle Floorstanding Loudspeaker Review

Our full review of the flagship of SVS's hotly anticipated new loudspeaker series is here; read our full review of the SVS Ultra Evolution Pinnacle loudspeaker to see if it lives up to the hype!

www.audioholics.com

I hate to have come off as a SVS fan boy here, that by far is not the case. OTOH I hate to see what looks to be, on balance, a great new product intro, unfairly slammed by a few here.

I am all for getting out of the pure box tower design as I simply personally dislike it - but claiming that a curve will time align the drivers better is reaching out to the area where Marantz marketing claims that their components are designed by Japanese high elves that do in fact have golden ears. IMO they did it for the looks and rightfully so, but in essence this money should have been better spend on making the speaker better sounding. The curve makes it just marginally more WAF compliant - by like 1%?

Are there any graphs/studies that would support their time alignment claim? Also what about various listening distances to MLP or different hight angles? While I am entirely sceptical, I don't want to miss on the audio Nirvana they might be offering .

 

[Buckchester]

These are not great speakers and the spinorama clearly shows this. They are not "incredible" and do not deserve a 4.5/5 in performance as another review stated. For this price, the consumer should demand more. It only took an objective review for us to learn this.

 

[Ktacos]

Are there any graphs/studies that would support their time alignment claim?

Nothing off the top of my head but it's pretty noticeable on active speaker that you can control the filtering on. I was surprised to see 0.04ms creating audible differences in the sound. That's the delay that Vcad says my tweeter needs to get the phase aligned very well. I'd say it's really necessary to eek out the very last bit of a performance from a speaker. I would personally not bother trying to "align" the driver physically. It's 2024 DSP is everywhere and cheap and sometimes free, just do it there. Trying to slant part of the baffle or the whole baffle just seems like some 2004 style design principles.

 

[Oddball]

Could you really align drivers physically as angles will be different depending on the horizontal and vertical angle to MLP? Perhaps implement some mechanical way to adjust for different angles?

If they implemented DSP solution for that, that actually might have been worth few pennies for the select crowd. I have way too many speakers to care about 4 ms and stay sane.

 

[Buckchester]

Could you really align drivers physically as angles will be different depending on the horizontal and vertical angle to MLP? Perhaps implement some mechanical way to adjust for different angles?

If they implemented DSP solution for that, that actually might have been worth few pennies for the select crowd. I have way too many speakers to care about 4 ms and stay sane.

This time alignment stuff is all marketing.

 

[ryanosaur]

These are not great speakers and the spinorama clearly shows this.

Agree.
Doesn’t mean they are bad Speakers. But not great.
We see many more instances of designs which are more or less review-proofed now. To so choose to not smooth out the FR some, look at better matching Drivers and crossing them appropriately, and to choose such a low filter on the Bass so as to make Subwoofer integration a proble…
*shrugs
Those are the easy ones, at least!

 

[Ktacos]

Could you really align drivers physically as angles will be different depending on the horizontal and vertical angle to MLP? Perhaps implement some mechanical way to adjust for different angles?

If they implemented DSP solution for that, that actually might have been worth few pennies for the select crowd. I have way too many speakers to care about 4 ms and stay sane.

A speaker without any time alignment will also have changes in driver integration based off LP and angle, but one that is time aligned should will at least sound better at most angles.

FWIW, it wasn't 4ms, it was 0.04ms. 4ms would be compensating for a distance of over a meter. Like many speaker metrics, once you hear something done right, it's hard to go back. Of course I decided to build my own speakers despite there being an abundance of great performing cheap ones, so yeah probably for the crazy people like me. I'm fairly certain that a lot of active speakers are applying a delay to their tweeters or mids, it just sounds better.

 

[rynberg]

Measurements are out on the Mofi 888, I would get a pair of those before these easily.

Agreed, those Mofi's absolutely smoke the SVS at the same price...far better engineered in every aspect, including in the impedance load to drive them.

 

[rynberg]

It's a very difficult market with every speaker being the result of constant compromise decisions in a final product at X price points. If you examine this speaker based on it's construction and materials it's very hard to criticize when balanced against it's competition.

Yes the Ultra has slightly missed the mark in very flat linear frequency response. It will ultimately be left to the user and his personal preferences to decide if he can live with it's sound, or maybe somewhat correct it with DRC EQ. But when all the pros and cons are taken into consideration I still don't see much on the market offering equal or more bang for the bucks.

It isn't though, the engineering flaws here were avoidable and they are not as good as the competition in many key aspects. Those are simple facts, not opinion. Who cares if the speaker is put together incredibly well if the engineering isn't there? A waste of labor and materials at that point.

The Ultra doesn't "slightly" miss the mark in linear frequency response, the directivity is a nightmare and will preclude using EQ to fix the response flaws... the new Mofi 888 is dramatically better than this speaker in pretty much every aspect of performance for the same price. The Revel F208s, just discontinued, are better in almost every aspect. On top of the response, directivity, and multi-tone distortion problems, the Ultras present a very difficult impedance load to drive.

 

[Sal1950]

Man we got a bunch of marketing and design genius's here.
That have never brought a single one to the dance.

 

[Ktacos]

Man we got a bunch of marketing and design genius's here.
That have never brought a single one to the dance.

I genuinely will not understand your desire to defend this company and it's products, and to put down others on the forum at the same time. It's not our fault that you don't understand why this is a poor product, or that you don't believe those without audio related employment can deliver something better than this.

 

[MattHooper]

Yes, it is a simple reply by SVS to what they Gene & James said in the video about the value of time alignment.
Those of us that have been around know this debate has been going on for decades.
Personally I tend to agree with Gene and James, that time alignment like done on these is of very minimal value.
Of course SVS didn't agree, it's a big marketing point for them. Still and all, it was no more than a sideline to an excellent, mostly rave review. And as the boys agreed at the end of the review, the time alignment as done here cost virtually nothing,
so why not do it?

SVS Ultra Evolution Pinnacle Floorstanding Loudspeaker Review

Our full review of the flagship of SVS's hotly anticipated new loudspeaker series is here; read our full review of the SVS Ultra Evolution Pinnacle loudspeaker to see if it lives up to the hype!

www.audioholics.com

I hate to have come off as a SVS fan boy here, that by far is not the case. OTOH I hate to see what looks to be, on balance, a great new product intro, unfairly slammed by a few here.

I think they kissed me about companies like SVS (or Wilson or others) they promote their speakers as time aligned: they are only time aligned and not phase coherent. So really you are not actually getting fully aligned sound. So what are the advantages supposed to be of sound? This is only partially aligned, but I’m done somewhat by a lack of phase coherence?

 

[azzy_mazzy]

I hope they are a big hit for them, they deserve it IMHO.

Do you believe your a better/smarter engineer than the guys at SVS?

Man we got a bunch of marketing and design genius's here.
That have never brought a single one to the dance.

I hate to have come off as a SVS fan boy here, that by far is not the case.

but you are fanboying and getting defensive about these speakers, that's not helping your case.

 

[Sal1950]

I think they kissed me about companies like SVS (or Wilson or others) they promote their speakers as time aligned: they are only time aligned and not phase coherent.

Now Wilson, they do it really right. They use micrometers to adjust tilt angles to within 0.0001". I'll bet they can focus out time smear so well the OL hears the veils removed from the kitchen. Just image that combined with an MQA deblurshitted file, you'll see God.

 

[Ktacos]

Lots of doubt from a certain someone that diyers can't match commercial stuff. Here's a bookshelf I'm working on, cheapo drivers but huge round overs. Paired with subs and a hipass, gets plenty loud, can't hear any distortion, imaging is superb and there no objectionable tonalityissues, they simply sound "correct". The tweeters cost 14 bucks each at the time of purchase. 5 inch woofers.

This is just some in room quick measurements, 0 to whoever knows, maybe 60 degrees. No room correction filters applied in this one, this was fresh data after bringing them inside and seeing what vcad tells me is good filter wise. Knocked it just after fireworks. So like an hour of effort? You can scale this concept up to match the spl capabilities of the svs. they currently look terrible but it is a prototype, but a good one at that.

 

[Sal1950]

Lots of doubt from a certain someone that diyers can't match commercial stuff. Here's a bookshelf I'm working on, cheapo drivers but huge round overs. Paired with subs and a hipass, gets plenty loud, can't hear any distortion, imaging is superb and there no objectionable tonalityissues, they simply sound "correct". The tweeters cost 14 bucks each at the time of purchase. 5 inch woofers.

This is just some in room quick measurements, 0 to whoever knows, maybe 60 degrees. No room correction filters applied in this one, this was fresh data after bringing them inside and seeing what vcad tells me is good filter wise. Knocked it just after fireworks. So like an hour of effort? You can scale this concept up to match the spl capabilities of the svs. they currently look terrible but it is a prototype, but a good one at that.

View attachment 379099

Nice job !
Now do that in a floor standing MTM arrangement with quality tweeter, 2 mids, 4 8" woofers, crossovers, and in a 100lb massively braced, well finished cabinet, produce it in mass numbers and bring it to market at $2,500 each.
Then you'll be able to make a lot of money and show the world how you can do things better.
You can't just focus in on one small aspect of a commercial product and say "see, I'm smarter than they are".

 

[danzilla31]

Yes, it is a simple reply by SVS to what they Gene & James said in the video about the value of time alignment.
Those of us that have been around know this debate has been going on for decades.
Personally I tend to agree with Gene and James, that time alignment like done on these is of very minimal value.
Of course SVS didn't agree, it's a big marketing point for them. Still and all, it was no more than a sideline to an excellent, mostly rave review. And as the boys agreed at the end of the review, the time alignment as done here cost virtually nothing,
so why not do it?

SVS Ultra Evolution Pinnacle Floorstanding Loudspeaker Review

Our full review of the flagship of SVS's hotly anticipated new loudspeaker series is here; read our full review of the SVS Ultra Evolution Pinnacle loudspeaker to see if it lives up to the hype!

www.audioholics.com

I hate to have come off as a SVS fan boy here, that by far is not the case. OTOH I hate to see what looks to be, on balance, a great new product intro, unfairly slammed by a few here.

What I meant was in the comments section on the forum about the review. Not the review itself

IMO I don't think it's that great of a product when you combine both Erin's Audio Corner and Shady's review

First you have the issue with the woofers being crossed so low. Which makes integration with subs an issue. That means you need to run them full range.

But then the issue comes they aren't bad with sensitivity but they aren't great either and they are a true 4ohm speaker not 6 as they advertise. Plus they need a lot of power to drive them your not going to be able to do it with a AVR but you need to run them full range

Then combine that with the tweeter being crossed over so low. Who cares if the distortion on the speaker is the lowest ever heard with the woofers if the tweeter can't keep up and it's in an area highly audible? Plus the low crossover gives these a very tight vertical window on that tweeter. For speakers that need to be driven full range that tweeter can't be your weak link and it is.

Then they are not voiced to be accurate

Placement issues with 3 feet out especially sometimes in AT setups with 3 of them.

They aren't bad but that are not great and in this price point JBL HDI Mofi Arendal Revel Kef hell even the Studio 6 because the studio 698 actually undercuts the HDI 3800 due to being so close to performance. And some of these brands are doing good sales recently

There are lots of options around this price that do better

I applaud SVS for being innovative. But it looks like they went after innovation at the expense of engineering which they didn't have to do

 

[MarkS]

Measurements are out on the Mofi 888

Where?