HiHo,
Woofer technology can be maddeningly difficult to peg just looking at a basket or magnet. If I look at stuff and make statements like that around the factory in Ohio (and I have), there are three people correcting me and pulling parts out and data sets and studies and explaining geometry and heat and adhesives and ductility and resistance for the next 30 minutes.
It's not to say you can't tell a lot by various visual cues, but a surround can be vastly different from one that to the lay person (if you are one) wouldn't look that different. Same for cones, magnets, glue, spiders, voice coils, t-yokes, back plates etc etc. You can't see much of that and even what you CAN see can vary in major ways simply with minor changes that are hard to spot.
In the end it all comes down to the final design and how it integrates with the amp and enclosure.
Steve42. Yeah, imagine if we made a woofer that cost us more, or even one that "only" cost as much as an older woofer, but worked better because its a better design, or uses better stuff, or whatever (even if the old piece was good to start with). Then imagine if you were determined to remain on top of a given price point by simply taking every chance to improve performance but hold the line on price (because your profits were at least acceptable already). Hard for some people to imagine and frankly I can't blame them. Most of the audio industry simply does not think like this. But some OEMs have different (not necessarily worse, or certainly not ill conceived) motivations for their strategic goals. Ours are simple and stated more times than I can count. We aim to provide validated objective performance that no other brand can match for the money. So far I'm not aware of any instances we've failed to achieve our goals, though that's not to say there aren't some tough competitors out there, doubly so where our supply lines are more extended (say in some export market in some price point you might examine) than say a local brand that's basically got home field position.
Haywood, Cave,
Your input means a lot to us. The Plus 12.3 represents a lot of blood (literally in some cases, those things are heavy), sweat (ditto) and tears (you ever see a woofer engineer get handed a sheet of data that essentially says "nice try... now, start all over again on that last modification"???)
Here's a dirty little secret for you (and any of the 4 trolls who take up residence wherever issues about SVS are discussed): Supplies on the Plus 12.3 are very very tight for the next few weeks (this happens whenever you spin up some new production item in my experience, be it cars, the latest Ipod, or X-Box). SO tight that I don't even rate the full production units till we're fat on stock. I got the photo sample (left out so I can show it to people in my new Colorado Springs office) and get to hear various configurations in extended listening sessions during my time at the factory in Ohio. But customers trump owners during intros like this (I finally get another full 7.1 SBS-01 set at my location after only having one office demo system during our now ended backorder situation with the SBS-01 product line).
That's a long way of saying relish having some of the first units (which I believe shipped O/A 15 March). There haven't been enough even to spare for photo samples of the bottom of full subs in my location (which is the reason we still show the 12.2 in product on the site) but that will change in the next two weeks when we're up to full production on the Plus 12.3
Zono,
I think we announced on our News page (it's something you have to read very closely, going back quite a ways, to pick up on all the hints we'll drop... at the risk of hyping vaporware... which we HATE.) I'm pretty sure we talked about the SB12-Plus due out in in mid-2006. If not, well consider me to be talking out of turn right damn now. It's slotted to be our first truly mini-sub, though I'm sure one of the aforementioned trolls will be the first to point out that it's a BIG mini-sub. Hey, it's still SVS and we're still following the laws of physics over here, not sprinkling magic bass pixie dust in your drink. Big rules, even if it's small. So yes, it'll be small-ish, it'll be sealed and it'll launch if it hits our expected goals of making it the best performing small-ish sub in this large-ish niche market of small-ish subs (just don't expect it to outgun the large-ish subs in our large (no-ish) model lineup. We know there are lots of folks with smaller rooms, or saddled with even smaller room to maneuver when it comes to how large a sub they can sneak by the Mrs, Mr. SO, GF or PFL (partner for life, a new one I heard the other day).
Small subs can be a big compromise in performance, but that doesn't mean you should toss money down the drain on something that costs too much or doesn't at least fulfil the promise of decent performance in a small package.
We aim to do that with that first small-ish SVS sub (again, to be called the SB12-Plus). Some will tell you a micro-sub will rock your world, etc etc, blah blah, be "fast" be "musical" be something that only pixie dust can explain (certainly physics fails the proponents of some product out there). We won't be among those OEMs (and certainly we know others that are prone to telling the truth about small, sealed subs). Instead, expect the genius marketing mantra to go something like this: that "small and sealed" are typically compromises in subwoofer performance from an objective standpoint, as long as you consider a broad array of performance criteria like depth, bandwidth linearity, linear output with limited distortion etc). Still, we are applying our resources to making compromises in the mini-sub genre ones that people can live with... at prices they should find attractive... with performance that's more than adequate (at least given the proviso that the sub be small-ish, first and foremost).
There, bet you didn't think you were asking a question requiring an answer like that, but well, there you go.
Mike C,
I'd like nothing better than a nice juicy rationalization I can use to travel to PI and work over nuts and bolts issues involving world-wide export and import. We've learned a lot expanding into Europe (I don't recommend traveling to 5 countries in 10 days to anyone though)... namely that you can expect to work twice as hard first to set it all up, and then are so rich you just sit back and count your money after that (we're at least half successful on that concept so far, though only on the first phase... working twice as hard).
Anyway, drop me an e-mail some time again and we'll chat. This is how our current efforts expanding into South America got started actually. The Far East is not far off I hope but like with new woofers, you can't do everything at one time.
Or can you?
Ron
SVS
