SVS Ultra Evolution Pinnacle Review

[jinjuku]

Started thread cleanup. If I have to clean up again I'll just Root Cause Analysis it and be done.

 

[StoopidMonkey]

@gene Will you be reviewing the Ultra Evolution Center channel as well? I'm really interested in seeing what the horizontal dispersion measurements look like on that thing.

 

[gene]

@gene Will you be reviewing the Ultra Evolution Center channel as well? I'm really interested in seeing what the horizontal dispersion measurements look like on that thing.

I think one of our reviewers has the center channel in for review along with the smaller towers.

 

[MrBoat]

Nope. Phantom works everywhere. Whether it's better or not seems to depend on the room.

Has Revel responded to you yet? Will they be changing their speaker design to get the weights to match since "No real need to get into graphs. It’s just about physics" - their speakers are obviously done wrong?

Phantom center is one of the things that has improved even more so with modern speakers that is not only noticeable, but inescapable. With the 12" SEOS horn speakers, it freaks me out how far off center I can move before it falls apart. I almost have to put my head right next to one speaker or the other.

I'm currently 2ft from a screen, 3ft away from each LR speaker. That complete phantom center image is what keeps me from needing to go beyond 2.1 channel systems, either for movies, music, or video games. Again most noticeable when there is a panned sound like a slow flying airplane that starts from behind, all the way across to the other side and off into the distance without any drop in the effect, even when moving one's head with it. In my case, a center speaker would be redundant.

 

[Bradbort]

I await your review with interest.

The speaker looks impressive, but the designers have made choices that I would have rejected flat out. This is a design that absolutely needs to be active. A passive crossover at 140 Hz, between woofers and mids just does not work. The audible difference between an active crossover and a passive one in these ranges is like night and day. Driving 5" mids down to 140 Hz is pushing your luck. There is a lot of power down there.
So this has led to a cross to the tweeter right in the middle of the speech discrimination band. That latter is not an insurmountable problem, but best avoided. This for one good reason alone, it puts a lot of power on the tweeter, and so that raises the prospect of tweeter burn out at power.
In addition that 140 Hz crossover makes sub integration problematic to say the least.
So, not the design choices I would have made, but to each his own.

I’m currently testing out the tower version of this line (smaller). I’m finding them quite a bit of fun. Definitely more lively than the PSB T2 I’m comparing against. They throw a really nice sound stage, and a bit more spice into the base without it being overwhelming. The tweaters are really smooth as well. For two channel listening, I’m not sure that a sub is necessary. I think the 30hz rating sounds pretty accurate in my space.

To paraphrase another reviewer, if you value strictly linear speakers, you won’t want these, but I’m finding them an awful lot of fun across a broad range of musical genres, ranging from rock, to pop, to classical. They are not THAT far from linear, but I find the departures more positive than negative.

Are they a massive step up from the PSB t2? No, but they do sound “different” in a way I find appealing. I’ll likely be keeping them and selling (or repurposing) the PSBs after my 45 day trial. At $3k for the pair, they are really competitive. I’d probably be trialing other things at $5k+, but that model of SVS would overwhelm my space and have a low WAF.

 

[Kvn_Walker]

Brought home a pair of these last night. They're keepers. To my shock, my wife actually said "you're free to sell the red speakers now." The reds being the McIntosh LS360s.

I haven't run Dirac on them yet but they do for sure pack a great punch down low.

Big thing for me was female spoken voice, and these sounded just as "real" as the PBN EPS2's in that category.

The PBNs just can't hang with the Ultras' bass though. Otherwise they'd be keepers. Maybe one day I'll luck across a pair of Montana EPX. One can dream.

The bass level and dynamics exceed the LS360s quite noticeably. Will be interesting to see how they measure in comparison. Maybe tomorrow...

Compared to the ML Motion F200's, these SVS towers are leagues ahead. I found the Martin Logans bright and sizzly, and female voices too bassy. Dirac couldn't even help that. The SVS by comparison has very laid back smooth highs and I am just so impressed with voice.

I think the price is easily justified for the UEPs. They'd exceed $10000 were they American made, especially with such non-standard cabinets.

My subjective time with the Motion F200's left me very underwhelmed.

 

[Kvn_Walker]

We got measurements! I ran Dirac calibration with the SVSUEP's (too many words) today, and also benched them against the McIntosh's, which I already had a saved calibration for. I did all the REW runs today so it was same speaker location, same system volume, to make it all fair and equal. Microphone was ear height, in the center of the living room couch.

First, comparison with no room correction applied:

SVS is on to something with the front and rear woofers. I've never had a speaker look that good with no room correction. The 4 woofers and their spread locations help tremendously with room modes. That one cancellation at 95Hz is the only bad one. But again, this is unadulterated out of the box and the bass region is as high as 12db above 1kHz! And overall, VERY smooth. This is literally as bad as these speakers can sound because I haven't done any correction, and that's DAMN good. The Big Macs' conventional 2x front woofers fall off a cliff below 35Hz and again from 60-80Hz while the SVS starts a more gradual rolloff at 40Hz. Every room is different but the Pinnacles would probably please most folks even without any DSP. It's better to have elevated bass naturally and tone it down to use less power from the amp if you choose.

Here's Dirac active and each speaker pair in my "Preferred" (+7, +0) filter setting:

Like I've mentioned before, the LS360 has amazing bass extension, and is flat to around 22Hz. But, it's still more susceptible to the room than the SVS, which steals the show. The 95Hz cancellation is improved by 9dB, and outside of it the response is almost ruler flat from 25-120Hz. If you compare just the SVS to the first unprocessed chart, the bass output is lower but also deeper. In other words, setting a +7 bass shelf in Dirac Live is lower than the speakers' natural output! I have headroom to spare if I want to make these things hit even harder. Next time I hook up the laptop I'm going to make a +10 bass filter just for the hell of it. Also of note, the infamous dip/bump between 1800 and 2500kHz is completely smoothed out.

Finally, the non-DSP response vs a Flat (0,0) Dirac filter:

Nothing new, just again puts into perspective the low end extension potential, and how much bass headroom these speakers have. These speakers are the real deal. I don't consider 97 pounds at all heavy for a true full-range tower. I have 3 other pairs of speakers in the house right now that all weight at least 30 pounds more per speaker. There's no replacement for displacement, but you can work around it by doubling the amount of woofers instead of making the cabinet huger! I hope other brands take note of this for their future flagship designs. Even without room correction these are the least likely speakers to disappoint you when you get them into your room. DSP only makes them even better.

 

[Trell]

We got measurements! I ran Dirac calibration with the SVSUEP's (too many words) today, and also benched them against the McIntosh's, which I already had a saved calibration for. I did all the REW runs today so it was same speaker location, same system volume, to make it all fair and equal. Microphone was ear height, in the center of the living room couch.

First, comparison with no room correction applied:

View attachment 71007

SVS is on to something with the front and rear woofers. I've never had a speaker look that good with no room correction. The 4 woofers and their spread locations help tremendously with room modes. That one cancellation at 95Hz is the only bad one. But again, this is unadulterated out of the box and the bass region is as high as 12db above 1kHz! And overall, VERY smooth. This is literally as bad as these speakers can sound because I haven't done any correction, and that's DAMN good. The Big Macs' conventional 2x front woofers fall off a cliff below 35Hz and again from 60-80Hz while the SVS starts a more gradual rolloff at 40Hz. Every room is different but the Pinnacles would probably please most folks even without any DSP. It's better to have elevated bass naturally and tone it down to use less power from the amp if you choose.

Here's Dirac active and each speaker pair in my "Preferred" (+7, +0) filter setting:

View attachment 71008

Like I've mentioned before, the LS360 has amazing bass extension, and is flat to around 22Hz. But, it's still more susceptible to the room than the SVS, which steals the show. The 95Hz cancellation is improved by 9dB, and outside of it the response is almost ruler flat from 25-120Hz. If you compare just the SVS to the first unprocessed chart, the bass output is lower but also deeper. In other words, setting a +7 bass shelf in Dirac Live is lower than the speakers' natural output! I have headroom to spare if I want to make these things hit even harder. Next time I hook up the laptop I'm going to make a +10 bass filter just for the hell of it. Also of note, the infamous dip/bump between 1800 and 2500kHz is completely smoothed out.

Finally, the non-DSP response vs a Flat (0,0) Dirac filter:

View attachment 71009

Nothing new, just again puts into perspective the low end extension potential, and how much bass headroom these speakers have. These speakers are the real deal. I don't consider 97 pounds at all heavy for a true full-range tower. I have 3 other pairs of speakers in the house right now that all weight at least 30 pounds more per speaker. There's no replacement for displacement, but you can work around it by doubling the amount of woofers instead of making the cabinet huger! I hope other brands take note of this for their future flagship designs. Even without room correction these are the least likely speakers to disappoint you when you get them into your room. DSP only makes them even better.

That's an amazingly good result if Dirac did not level down the peaks to the null. I for sure would buy anything that fills nulls.

My guess is, from your graphs, that Dirac levelled down the peaks at the expense of headroom.

 

[everettT]

Brought home a pair of these last night. They're keepers. To my shock, my wife actually said "you're free to sell the red speakers now." The reds being the McIntosh LS360s.

I haven't run Dirac on them yet but they do for sure pack a great punch down low.

Big thing for me was female spoken voice, and these sounded just as "real" as the PBN EPS2's in that category.
View attachment 70977

The PBNs just can't hang with the Ultras' bass though. Otherwise they'd be keepers. Maybe one day I'll luck across a pair of Montana EPX. One can dream.

The bass level and dynamics exceed the LS360s quite noticeably. Will be interesting to see how they measure in comparison. Maybe tomorrow...

Compared to the ML Motion F200's, these SVS towers are leagues ahead. I found the Martin Logans bright and sizzly, and female voices too bassy. Dirac couldn't even help that. The SVS by comparison has very laid back smooth highs and I am just so impressed with voice.

I think the price is easily justified for the UEPs. They'd exceed $10000 were they American made, especially with such non-standard cabinets.

My subjective time with the Motion F200's left me very underwhelmed.

I can't believe the PBN's midrange and lower treble wasn't enough of a winner to keep them, those drivers were very good.