Best Home theater speakers

lovinthehd

lovinthehd

Audioholic Jedi
Power is not much of a problem now and maximum wattage ratings are irrelevent. The damage comes from low power which can destroy the speaker drivers. One has to know when the maximum volume of any given driver has reached it's xmax and if the voice coil bottom out, the driver will have to be replaced. The SVS is average at best. Medium quality drivers from peerless, the bass driver is bad, terrible components in the crossover (the cheapest that I've seen but the "new" normal for the get rich quick crowd) aluminum wiring inside (Copper, OFC Copper so a rewire would be needed). The bass goes thump thump thump but this is NOT BASS which if one listens to some comparably priced, well engineered systems has definition of the fundamentals and the overtones of which you can identify what is being played). I have an old REL Stadium III and Magnepan 3.6r and the new Magnepan 1.7i is excellent. Peerless makes much better drivers at a reasonable price, especially at the bass end but the bass units have 1.5" voice coils, are too heavy for accuracy and are bettered by Peerless https://tymphany-driver-files.s3.us-west-1.amazonaws.com/files/driver/pdfs/NE225W-08.Rev1.MP1 - Product Sheet.pdf. The crossover is throw away. There are components that are much faster in and accurate of capacitors and the use of electrolytics costs pennies, the resistors cost pennies also and are sand cast, the worst and cheapest one can install, and the Inductors are the cheapest available with a small gauge wire and used to often throughout the low pass filters and are a couple of bucks each. GR-Research can help but the upgrade in the crossover for the SVS Ultra Towers, including connections, direct wire to wire soldering and quality components are $700 a pair. Air core inductors help the midrange considerably as well as Film Caps for the Tweeter and definition is much better. The Mids and Tweeter are good and you will hear detail in movies that you didn't hear before. As far as subwoofers go, Rythmik Audio are the best, they are servo based and go low and accurately, better than most RELS.

Over all, when the sound can reproduce the movie score, action and dialog accurately, you will be turning the volume down, so rather than being rattled till your ears hurt, you will be listening to dialog and background sounds and dialog you never heard before.
Oh hell no to Rel, why would I bother with such a lame sub? Danny is too nutty to bother with IMO. Rythmik is overrated.
 
Pogre

Pogre

Audioholic Slumlord
I remember Dennis of Philharmonic saying the drivers SVS uses for the Ultras are pretty good, and the crossover components are not "terrible"... lol.
 
H

Hetfield

Audioholic Samurai
I remember Dennis of Philharmonic saying the drivers SVS uses for the Ultras are pretty good, and the crossover components are not "terrible"... lol.
Yeah I didn't want to get into that but that seemed just a tad ridiculous. Is it that clown from GR research? Because that's that way that idiot talks. If he uses the word "cheese" there would be no doubt.

Sent from my Pixel 4 XL using Tapatalk
 
Verdinut

Verdinut

Audioholic Spartan
I remember Dennis of Philharmonic saying the drivers SVS uses for the Ultras are pretty good, and the crossover components are not "terrible"... lol.
I am not surprised.
Many renowned brand companies cut costs on passive crossover components probably either to make more profit or be more competitive. They use cheap electrolytic capacitors which change values with time as opposed to the reliable polypropylene type. The result is that the filter frequency gets modified.
They often also use cheap iron core chokes instead of the more linear air core inductors that don't saturate with high power driving.
 
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lovinthehd

lovinthehd

Audioholic Jedi
I am not surprised.
Many renowned brand companies cut costs on passive crossover components probably either to make more profit or be more competitive. They use cheap electrolytic capacitors which change values with time as opposed to the reliable polypropylene type. The result is that the filter frequency gets modified.
They often also use cheap iron core chokes instead of the more linear air core inductors that don't saturate with high power driving.
Are you saying definitively that SVS uses such components in all their offerings? Is there a tear down/analysis you can point us at?
 
Verdinut

Verdinut

Audioholic Spartan
Are you saying definitively that SVS uses such components in all their offerings? Is there a tear down/analysis you can point us at?
No, I cannot say that SVS uses such components in all their offerings as I'm not very familiar with their products. My remark is based on @Pogre 's comments about one of their crossovers. In my experience, I've noticed several manufacturers using cheaper components, even on some flagship products. One of them, KEF, used electrolytic caps and iron core inductors in one product, on which I replaced several caps with Solen polypropylene ones . IMO, after the mod, the speakers sounded better to my ears and the owner was impressed with the new performance, which was most likely the same as when he purchased them.
 
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