SVS Ultra Series Speaker Overview

Soon after the current team had taken over SVS in 2011, they realized they had an opportunity to do the same thing for speakers that their subwoofers had done in the marketplace. They wanted to offer better sound than you might expect to get for the investment you put into them. It was with this idea the Ultra series was released to almost instant acclaim.

If you are not familiar with SVS as a company, they are based in Ohio and have an overarching company goal of providing sound that will surprise and delight anyone who wants great sound but does not have the means to buy the most expensive equipment available. They have had great success with this mantra creating one of the most loyal customer followings in the home audio industry. 

SVS has two series of speakers, the Ultra Series and Prime Series. What is pretty neat about the way they are done is the drivers are matched across both series. This offers up a lot of options for full-blown home theater enthusiasts or an audio lover who wants to dabble in home theater. You could have your ultimate two-channel system with the Ultra Towers, then save some money on the rest of your theater using the Prime speakers. 

Today’s overview is on the Ultra series which consists of 4 different models. We will go over what they have in common then go into detail on each individual model. Hopefully, we can provide some good insight as to which models might work best for your music or home theater system.

Technology Shared By All SVS Ultra Series Loudspeakers

When SVS created the Ultra series they used technology that was well known in the speaker world to offer better performance if properly deployed. What makes the Ultra and even their Prime series so unique is the fact they were able to use so much of this high-performance technology in products that cost so little.

Well Braced Cabinets

While a great internal cabinet design is not something that is visible when you inspect a product, it is critical to great sound. There are many things that can go wrong with a speaker cabinet that could negatively impact sound quality. You could have a cabinet that flexes, not allowing the speakers to perform as they should. The cabinet could add resonances to the sound, coloring the actual sound coming from the speaker drivers. Finally, they might not be designed in such a way as to allow the drivers to operate efficiently.

In the speaker world, it is well-known practice to use internal bracing to produce a great speaker cabinet. Getting this properly designed requires access to an anechoic chamber where you can test how different models react. SVS uses just this method to produce their prototypes which are optimized to come up with the production version.

When you pick up even the smallest SVS Ultra bookshelf, you can just feel that it is made well. One single small bookshelf speaker weighs almost 20 pounds which comes from the dense MDF they use. Another common trait of all SVS speakers including their subwoofers is how they mount the drivers to the front of the cabinet. The front baffle is made of an even denser piece of MDF. By having the interaction of two different thicknesses in a speaker cabinet, chances of unwanted resonances are greatly reduced.

The cabinets also have chamfered edges that are designed to help minimize diffraction. This high level of build quality not only gives the speaker a cool look but also improves imaging, presenting you with a better soundstage.

Separate Cabinet Enclosure

Obviously building a cabinet inside another cabinet is not inexpensive and the user never sees it, but it does greatly contribute to better performance. We were very impressed with the fact that on all of the Ultra series except the bookshelf, the midrange or midbass drivers get their own separate enclosures to reduce any chance of interference. The bookshelf is a two way design which would not need a separate enclosure. Interestingly, the surround speaker is a dual two way and even on this one the two midbass drivers are in separate internal enclosures.

Matched Speaker Drivers

You really can’t get much better than the way SVS matched up the drivers in the Ultra series. For two-channel only listening, this is no big deal, but when you set up a home theater speaker system, you get far more natural front to back and side to side panning of effects if your speaker drivers can be as close as possible to the same. 

All Ultra speakers use the same 1-inch aluminum dome tweeter with a custom-designed diffuser. The midbass and/or bass drivers for the two way models are all made of an identical composite glass-fiber cone and in all but the surround, they use the 6 ½” version to cover the midbass or midrange. The deep bass woofers in the Ultra Towers use a different material for the extreme low octaves. 

What is kind of neat too, is the fact the Prime series uses the same tweeter. To our Audio Advice ears, matching the tweeters up is one of the most important parts in getting that fully integrated surround effect. There are a couple more choices for surround or height speakers in the Prime series you can mix with confidence with the Ultra series for a seamless blend to the Ultra speakers in your system.

Very High-Quality Crossovers

Another part of the speaker not visible to the eye is the crossover. The crossover serves a very important role in great sound from a speaker. Each speaker driver is only able to cover a limited range of frequencies. The designer figures out where those should be, then, uses a crossover to send just the desired frequencies to each driver. This may sound simple, but in fact, it is quite difficult to accomplish without impacting the sound. You are effectively choking off the unwanted frequencies for a driver and letting others through. Doing this without adding shifts in the phase or distortion is not easy and requires very high-quality parts to get it right.

This is another example of SVS doing something that is known to produce great outcomes but doing it better than you might expect for the price of the speaker.

SVS uses heavy-trace printed circuit boards, very high-grade capacitors, and air-core inductors in their crossovers. While some speaker vendors spend as little as possible on the crossover since you never see it, SVS builds it like something you would find in a $10,000+ speaker. It's pretty impressive!

Biwire Option

Bi-wiring gives you a separate connection on the back of the speaker for the tweeter and another for the other drivers. Many audiophiles feel this can result in improved performance especially as it relates to very subtle dynamic changes and imaging. All of the Ultra speakers give you the option of biwiring should you wish to give it a try. If not, you just leave in the gold plated biwire jumper that connects to banana jacks, which by the way are quite stout on the Ultra series.

Premium Finishes

All Ultra models have the same two very nice finish options. You have a choice of a beautiful high gloss black or an oak veneer with a black stain. Both of these are very well done and should give you an option for any environment.

We do have an opinion on gloss black speakers in general though for home theater use. Gloss black is very reflective. We suggest you use the black satin finish for the center channel and any of the other speakers your image might reflect off in your home theater.

SVS Ultra Series Speakers

Ultra Tower Speaker

The top of the line Ultra speaker sure has a lot of tech in it for its modest price of just under $2000 a pair. This is not your ordinary cabinet design as it uses an angled cabinet to help reduce internal reflections from the dual bass drivers. Not only is it angled to the back, but the front of the cabinet is also tapered, getting smaller at the top than the bottom. We do highly recommend you have a friend help you move these around as they weigh 75 pounds each!

SVS uses a 3 ½ way design for the Ultra Tower with an interesting configuration of the dual midrange drivers. Looking at it from the front, it looks more like a center channel turned on its side with the single aluminum dome tweeter sitting in between the two midrange/midbass drivers. SVS uses a pretty unique crossover method for the dual 6 ½” glass-fiber cones. The top one crosses over to the tweeter at a much higher frequency than the lower one which allows them to present a super stable 3-dimensional image. 

You might think at first glance there are no woofers, but once you look closer, you’ll see there is one on each side at the bottom of the cabinet. We like the idea of using two smaller 8” drivers as this can give you faster bass response in a tower speaker. SVS even uses a 1 ½” thick panel to mount them to the cabinet! This design allows the Ultra Tower to have a very impressive 3 dB down point of 28 Hz. That is pretty darn deep for a modest-sized tower speaker.

You’ll want to take the money you saved on the Ultra Towers and make sure you have a good amp if you want to bring out the best performance of the Ultra. At a sensitivity of 88 dB, they can use some solid power if you are looking to produce big, room-filling sound.

And while we give SVS credit for the dual woofer design, we have to say, it sure makes them a challenge to set up in most rooms. Normally we like to position a tower speaker out from the back wall and a bit off the side walls but we found these challenging in the small room we tested to not have bass issues, as in too much at some frequencies. The Prime Pinnacle might be a better choice for a small to medium-sized room as it uses the same tweeter and glass-fiber design for the midrange, but with a more conventional woofer array. On the other hand, if you have a large space that allows you to get the speakers away from the walls, you’ll love the impact the SVS Ultra Towers can provide.

Ultra Bookshelf Speakers

Ok, we’ll cut to the chase with these. While we found some issues with the Ultra Tower, we really like the Ultra Bookshelf. Put these guys on a nice speaker stand out in the room and for under $1000 a pair, they are one heck of an almost full range bookshelf speaker! Heck, their 3 dB down point on the lower end is 45 Hz which is lower than a lot of towers out there. Of course, they are a pretty large bookshelf at 15” tall and almost 11” deep. 

The Ultra Bookshelf is a two-way design with the SVS 1-inch aluminum dome and their 6 ½” glass-fiber midrange/bass driver. They are in one heck of a solid cabinet with the SVS chamfered, thicker front baffle. 

Like the Tower, you want a good amplifier for these as they are not super sensitive at 87 dB. But couple them with a nice little integrated amp and you will have a great two-channel system that is warm, and a lot of fun to listen to.

Ultra Center Channel Speaker

This is another model where the SVS mantra of providing a lot of value stands out again. The Ultra Center is a three-way design with dual 6 ½” midbass/bass glass-fiber drivers, a 4” glass-fiber midrange, and their 1-inch aluminum dome tweeter. 

Each of the 6 ½” drivers is in its own independent cabinet with an individual port so there is no way they will interfere with each other or the midrange driver.

SVS has also done a good job of not letting the size of the cabinet run wild for something with so many drivers. It is about 8” tall by around 11” deep and only 22” wide, so it should fit in most environments. Like we mentioned above, if your TV or projection screen has a chance of reflecting on it, get the matte black oak finish.

We feel the center channel is one of the most, if not the most, important speakers in a home theater system and its good to see SVS threw all of their tech into the Ultra Center!

Ultra Surround Speakers

The Ultra Surround rounds out the Ultra lineup with, what after diving into it, is a pretty flexible surround speaker. The Ultra Surround has a tapered cabinet housing two sets of tweeters and 5 1’/4’ woofers on each side of the angled cabinet. 

This is the only sealed cabinet design in the Ultra series. The non-parallel cabinet walls help reduce internal reflections giving these a very pure sound. They come with a nice on-wall mounting bracket that makes getting them in the right spot very easy.

We have to admit, when we first saw these, we thought, wow, these are an old school bipole/dipole speaker. Before Dolby Atmos and its object-based surround arrived on the scene, this type of design was ideal for giving you a more immersive experience. And if you are not going with Dolby Atmos, it still could work well.

However, most new home theaters today are going the route of Dolby Atmos where you want very directional speakers and not something throwing the sound out to the sides. In looking more closely though, we discovered these have what SVS calls a Duet design. 

The SVS Ultra Surround is basically two speakers in one box. This means you can put them just a little bit behind your couch to aim the front-firing drivers right at your ears. You can then wire them to send the main surround track that way and wire your rear surround channels to the backfiring drivers. While this is not totally ideal from the rear standpoint, it solves a problem many people have. They just do not have space for 4 surround speakers and you get 2 in 1 with the SVS Ultra Surround. You could then add a pair or two of the SVS Prime Elevation to your sidewalls for a full Dolby Atmos experience. If you do this, we suggest you position the Ultra Surround closer to your ear level.

Summary

We hope this brief overview has given you some ideas on which Ultra speakers might be best for your system. Should you have any questions please feel free to reach out to us via phone, email, or online chat and if you are in the Raleigh or Charlotte NC area, feel free to drop by one of our stores to experience the sound of SVS.

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