It has been a week and I decided to give my initial impression of the new
SVS subwoofer- PB12-NSD/2
It might be advisable to read my above comments, since I want to restate
this is not a truly objective review. Some will not find it useful at all, since I am not directly comparing the sub to earlier designs or units. This a casual review for average listeners.
I had some unexpected problems from the start which are not really any faults of the sub itself. The first of which is the size and weight of the subwoofer. It did fit into my Honda 2004 CRV, with the seats folded up.
I picked it up from the factory in Girard, Ohio and Greg was nice enough to help load it. I had a dolly at home, but unless you've got a strong friend willing to help you move it from room to room this is not the sub for you. It weighs around 125 lbs and measures 29.5 inches deep, by 26.5 inches tall and 19.25 inches wide. It is noticably bigger than a Paradigm PS 2200 I had used before. Getting it down the stairs and into my basement was...challenging.
Also the sub is not unobtrusive. Unless your living area is very, very large this sub is going to appear to take up much living room real estate. It probably will not have a good WAF at all. (Wife acceptance factor) If you have a dedicated home theater and can hide the sub behind a false wall, curtain or the like, that would be ideal. Other than that, you have a very big, very heavy, very black well built box to live with. It would probably hold about 30 beer cans or bottles.
I like to listen to music, more than I like watching movies. The split is about 80/20. So I wanted to cable the sub to my system with enough flexibiliy to
have it shine (if possible) with music, first and foremost. I read an article by Polk audio that makes a strong case for running the sub out of the front main line level jacks (rca) instead of the usual sub out jack (rca) of your receiver. This was an idea that should give good results if you do not have full bass management as a feature on your receiver. Since I do not, I cable the subwoofer this way.
The front main speaker line level jacks have a "y" cable that enable the signal to be split on the back of my Denon. The signal goes to my main front speakers and ALSO goes to the line level IN of the subwoofer. By choosing LARGE front speakers, and subwoofer OFF on my receivers setup menu I am bypassing the sub out jack altogether on the receiver. The subwoofer's crossover is now allowing me to control the GAIN and amount of low frequences I would like the subwoofer to reproduce, instead of the receiver. This setup also allows me to have the subwoofer play and integrate with stereo 2 channel listening, not just movies with surround soundtracks.
Now the subwoofer has four control knobs in the back. It has a gain control, a phase control, a crossover control (from 40hz to 120hz) and a subsonic filter contol. The last control basically works in conjunction with three ports. It is a subsonic filter set up for either 16hz, 20hz, 25hz or bypass. Each setting matches a port plug to be used to "tune" the sub to that lowest level.
You are supplied with two port plugs to allow just one port open, two, or three. I do not think this subwoofer would blend well with smaller satellite style speakers. If the speakers you have do not reproduce down to 120hz, than you would be missing sound in the middle frequency range, since the crossover range on the SVS stops at 120hz.
It also has both line level inputs and ouputs (2 pair), as well as speaker level inputs/ ouputs (4 pair).
After I picked a spot for the sub, and cabled it up, I used a SPL meter to dial in the levels. Once finished, it was time to play some bass heavy music.
I admit that I was initially disapponted with the subwoofer when I first hooked it up. I played a variety of music from Diana Krall to Seal. I used a great recording of Sting and also played a new music DVD of Peter Gabriel. The subwoofer sounded far to boomy for the tight bass music I was hoping for.
After corresponding with Ron of SVS, and playing with the subwoofer I arrived at these conclusions-
1. The placement of this sound is very crucial to the type of sound you will get, as well as the room acoustics and size of the room.
2. The subwoofer is loud and low (Two downfiring 12 inch woofers and a 600 watt amp), you HAVE TO fine tune it to get the best performance.
3. The subwoofer is very flexible, so you may have to experiment with hook-ups and levels to get good sound.
Once I moved the subwoofer about 15 times, I found a spot it did like. Once there, it really shined. It takes a while to do this, and also to find a GAIN and
crossover point that permits seamless integration with your speakers, but it certainly can be done. I found it best to use the subwoofers crossover and NOT bypass it. This really helped, in dialing it in to match my speakers.
With music, I keep just one port plug in. That reduces the boominess and it still goes low enough.
I will try to add another review every few days, as I expand into movies.