SVS Prime Tower Review

Manufacturer & Model
SVS Prime Tower
MSRP
$599.99 each for Piano Gloss Black finish, $499.99 each for Premium Black Ash finish.
Link
https://www.svsound.com/collections/prime-series/products/prime-tower
Highlights
Great soundstage and imaging, easy setup, well-balanced tone, and clean, lively, accurate presentation.
Summary
The SVS Prime Tower is a 3.5-way design with a 1-inch tweeter, a 4.5-inch midrange, and dual 6.5-inch woofers. Dual rear tuning ports produce smooth bass. Frequency response extends from 30 Hz to 25 kHz. Low distortion and superb off-axis frequency response ensure clean delivery, a wonderful soundstage, and lifelike imaging. Compact for its output potential and beautifully finished, the Prime Tower will stand proud and sound grand in any system.
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Four First Impressions

They say you only get one chance to make a good first impression. The SVS Prime Tower has given me four such chances. After an introduction to the Prime Tower at AXPONA in 2016, I reviewed a pair, then reported on the Tower at the AV NIRVANA Speaker Evaluation Event last fall, then received a pair in my home for a full AV NIRVANA review. Each of these occasions has taught me more about the sonic delivery abilities of the SVS Prime Tower.

The Tower goes where few speakers can, into the realm where a great-sounding pair of speakers can cost under $1,000, can be successfully applied over a range of distances, spacings, and angles, and where, when it comes to soundstage and imaging (SS&I), the speakers almost do the setup work themselves. The Tower's setup flexibility can even mean better bass response.


Bad Sounding Speakers - Nature or Nurture? Or Lousy Setup?
While there are certainly bad sounding speakers in this world, many that are accused of being such are actually decent, hard-working speakers that have been set up badly. This problem is so widespread that we even run into it at audio shows from high-priced offerings that fall disappointingly short of their potential because of setup issues. Much of the setup advice dispensed by "experts" does little to help. The staff at AV NIRVANA consider it our mission to spread the good word about proper system setup and helpful room treatments, and are tickled when we receive grateful feedback from readers testifying about the rewards of a little setup TLC.

And now, to our delight, an occasional meticulously-designed, inexpensive speaker like the Prime Tower is shaking up that paragign, affording the AV hobbyist a wider range of setup possiblilties and managing to make the process easier than ever. And, in the case of the Tower, sounding far above its class without the expense or the sweat, tears, turmoil, and frustration many of us have dealt with once upon a time in putting a system together.

Putting the Tower to the "easy setup" challenge was my main goal for this review, with bonus points available for achieving outstanding sonic results with a modicum of additional effort. I will include details of the steps I took for getting "best in class and maybe even in the next class higher" type sound from the Prime Tower, as automatic a speaker as I have worked with in this regard. The engineers at SVS have achieved an uncanny design victory in producing a speaker with these characteristics. I have heard it done at $5,000 per pair, but never at anywhere near the Prime Tower price point.


Getting Started
Initial placement for the Towers was chosen for convenience. They were eyeballed into place and symmetry was briefly verified via a laser distance meter. For setup support, I have four GIK do-it-yourself sound absorbing panels available for use. Dirac Live LE is also available in the new NAD amplifier used for much of the review.

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(SVS)


No Fuss
King Crimson
"Eyes Wide Open"
"Elektrik"
"Facts Of Life: Intro"
"Facts Of LIfe"
CD Rip 16-44

Musicians, when commenting on speakers and sound reproduction, tend to zoom in on the details of the tone of their instrument of expertise in judging a speaker's sound. Two accomplished guitarists have pointed out to me how truthfully the Towers deliver guitar tones. Adrian Belew's and Robert Fripp's guitar tones and their percussive attack and the distinctness of synthesizer sounds were the first things to jump out at me on these tracks from Power To Believe.

On this fourth introduction to the Prime Towers, I would be surprised at anything less than a wonderful performance. And at the same time, I expect more each time I hear them. Great Soundstage and Imaging, No Fuss should be their middle name. Trey Gunn's Warr bass, with its smooth and distinctive sound, got a prominent place in the sound field.

Imaging was very good right from the start, partly an annoyance to the tweaker in me that wants to prove that there is an art to speaker setup, and partly a relief and delight to the part of me that gets tired of being a tweaker all the time.

I like this album partly for the recording quality of cymbal tones, which are especially realistic and detailed. Two GIK 2x4x4in DIY panels were adjusted against the front wall to eliminate the early reflection points there, almost certainly imaging killers at their natural points on the wall in most rooms, and the first point of treatment for the Towers. The SS&I result is already better than with many speakers after painstaking adjustments. Individual voices and sounds are almost surprising in their way of taking ownership of an area of the sound field, the plane of which was mostly even with or somewhat in front of the speaker baffle plane.

Radiohead
"Burn The Witch"
"Daydreaming"
24x48 download

The picksacotto strings and the hi-hat sound really have a grab power early on "Burn The Witch." There is enough high frequency with the Primes that they like to announce themselves, "Here we are," but know not to announce themselves in too forward a way. As the reverberant tones build up and deepen during the chorus, the highs stay very clean.

I have been impressed by bass guitar clarity and tone and even precision of bass guitar tuning via these Prime Tower evaluation sessions. Clean bass is the explanation here. The 3.5-way design, with a separate LF rolloff point for each of the two woofers, helps deliver clean bass and aids the proper 360 degree LF dispersion for the Towers.

I made only a couple of minor moves of the Prime towers during these initial test tracks, then got serious with Radiohead's Hail to the Thief album.


Two Plus Two Equals Five
Radiohead
Hail To The Thief
via Tidal HiFi Streaming
"2+2=5"

Guitar tone rules on this track. Yorke's vocal mix has a slightly brighter and more forward tone than in the Moon Shaped Pool mix. The Primes seem to say give me more, insisting that they can handle it easily.

"Sit Down Stand Up"
After a few more minor moves and treatment adjustments. I pushed the volume on the later part of this track, listening for possible signs of any tweeter issues and finding none. The two panels on the front wall had been adjusted slightly. A third was added to the wall on the left, whose reflection had made the left channel seem slightly brighter. This helped, but was not the total solution.

"Sail To The Moon"
"Backdrafts"
"Go To Sleep"

All of this was accomplished with no EQ or room correction. The Prime Towers' smooth off-axis response allows a certain amount of tonal adjustment by changing the listening angle. This angle adjustment is necessary to find a given model's SS&I sweet spot, but with the SVS Prime Towers, the SS&I almost takes care of itself. The user is freed to focus on other setup matters, like the high-frequency vs. low-frequency balance, and smoother bass. Left/right setup symmetry is the only firm rule.

Not overly heavy - they easily weigh less than my back doctor's prescribed lift limit - some lighter speakers benefit from the additional mass - a couple of bricks and some poster putty - to absorb vibration and help settle the SS&I even more. Or spikes. I did not even attempt this with the Prime Towers, as no benefit was deemed likely.

Yorke's vocals take on a distinctive harmonic edge for parts of this track, partly because of a 4- to 7-kHz lift in the upper mids. Acoustic guitars jump out of the Towers.

"Where I End and You Begin"
"We Suck Young Blood"

There was still a hint of brightness coming from the left, calling for more absorptive treatment, this time with the help of impulse diagrams. One tends to go looking for big, bad reflections during one of these hunts, but in my experience the buggars can enjoy a game of hide-and-seek with the acoustician, where some serious seeking might be required to locate them. Measurement diagrams are included at the end of this review to show what it often takes to find those reflections.

A small surface that might have been contributing to that brightness got some absorptive material tossed on it and then all was well. The room's LF damping could be improved and would help tighten up the bass decay, opening up the soundstage for subtle track details. But the SS&I with current treatment were about as good as they would get without room EQ. The final speaker placement tweaks with the aid of the laser distance measurer brought the imaging to the very good realm, rivaling any under $1000 per pair speakers I have worked with yet, big and wide and cohesive, only wanting in depth acuity, a difficult SS&I area for most speakers.

"The Gloaming"
"There, There"

With the louder passages of "There, There" cranked up, the imaging loses a little of its distinctness and cohesiveness. Bass is strong on The Gloaming and remains clear at higher levels.

"I Will"
"A Punch Up At a Wedding"
"Myxomatosis"

Pushing the volume again, the highs stayed clear.

"Scatterbrain"
Thom Yorke's vocal took on a 3-D quality during this song, the beginnings of depth acuity.

"A Wolf At The Door"
A student of the Japanese shakuhachi once explained to me that their training often amounts to hours of practice to learn a new performance technique, followed by teacher's instruction to "Just barely do that." Less is more, Two Plus Two Equals Five, the performance of the Prime Towers defy the logic of common cost vs. performance matematics, sounding bigger and better than they look - and they look marvelous - and delivering it all with bold restraint.

When evaluating speakers that fall into this very good category, most of the differences are small, a little too much of this, a little too little of that, to a more pronounced degree with speakers in the price range we are discussing than with more expensive offerings, in the $5,000 to $10,000 per pair price range, for instance. This is assuming they sound better at all - I would pick the Towers over many models I have heard in higher price brackets. Even though the Prime Towers lean very slightly toward there being a little something extra, it is easy to say that they exhibit no major or even significant flaws in their performance, and compete easily with models costing far more than their modest sticker price.

Devin Townsend
"Disruptor"
via Tidal HiFi Streaming

Nice separation between images. At this point one starts to pay attention to the empty spaces between the sound images. This becomes possible as the SS&I are fine tuned, and a little treatment is applied to the room, and will be even BETTER with more bass damping for my room.

Voicing
The voicing on the Prime Tower is just forward enough around 5 kHz to help make it present for dialogue in movies and vocals in music, and make certain percussive sounds stand out to keep them from getting buried in a busy mix. This forwardness might be better applied at a slightly lower frequency, centered at 2- to 3-kHz, for movie dialogue, but serves well at the chosen design point.

The inequality between the fronts and the other speakers in my surround system stood out in 5.1 surround mode. In general, I don't get hung up on this point because the majority of listeners will use some form of auto eq on their surround system. In a system with no room EQ, matched speaker voicing is a worthwhile goal. Room EQ, with any but the most unruly of speakers or rooms, evens out the differences and allows for a broader mixture of speaker brands and types in a system, as might be desired by the end listener. There are home theater buffs cringing as I say this, no doubt, but it becomes a practical matter and many would never notice the difference in an equalized system.


Surround for Music and Cinema
King Crimson
In The Court Of The Crimson King
"21st Century Schizoid Man"
"In The Court Of The Crimson King"
5.1 FLAC

Porcupine Tree
Deadwing
"Deadwing"
"Shallow"
"Arriving Somewhere Not Here"
5.1 FLAC rip from DVD-A

I really enjoyed the lower frequency range (with Dirac Live LE active), especially on Porcupine Tree's Deadwing album. The bass guitar was full and solid yet knew its place and never became too strong. Surround imaging was very good, and extremely natural. It took no effort at all to enjoy this setup, no listener strain, in part because at this point I had resorted to impulse response diagrams to perfect the distance and symmetry of the Towers' setup locations.

"Shallow" simply blew me away. No Dirac. Just a killer track in full 5.1 surround that ROCKS!

Arriving Somewhere Not Here is a favorite track that only gets air time on the best of systems lest I get tired of hearing it. The Prime Towers qualified and the track provided a high point in the evaluation experience. The Towers are comfortable at any volume, with subtle nuances and with crunchy metal.

District 9
Blu-ray

This movie constantly morphs between documentary mode and live action, and gives the audience lots to keep track of, yet the dialogue was clear throughout with the Towers. I never hooked up a subwoofer with the Prime Towers, preferring to let them do their best to belt out the low-frequency range on their own. Although they were never stressed in doing this, nor pushed as hard as some might want for their cinema setup, I was pleased with their ability to handle deep music and effects at a reasonable volume level. The complement of an SVS subwoofer might be in order to satisfy the most bass-hungry cinema hound.

Prime Tower Super Power - Better Bass
I hinted earlier that the versatility of the towers for setup includes the possibility of better bass. An explanation is in order.

I normally recommend that users focus on soundstage and imaging first, and let the chips fall where they may for frequency response, which can easily be corrected for. This is a necessity for some speakers, even highly-rated expensive models.

The versatility with which the SVS Prime Towers may be located for good SS&I means that one can focus more on frequency response up front, knowing that just turning the towers to the proper listening angle will give good soundstage and imaging almost regardless of where they are in the room. To prove this point, I moved the speakers forward several feet in the room, spacing them somewhat closer together. As can be seen in the diagrams later, this made for a drastic improvement in the low bass frequency response. The move lowered the frequency of front wall boundary reflection interaction, making those interactions almost disappear - and I was still able to get great SS&I. This might not be possible with competing models, as SS&I is so critical a factor to master, and can be such a challenge, that it becomes the prime directive in their placement. Notice in the measurement diagrams at the end of this reveiew a marked improvement in LF response resulting from this adjustment.

This move locates the speakers much closer to the listener than most would care to have them. In this case, to make the point, I went ahead and made a couple of minor adjustments to get the best sound stage and imaging from that location. I was very pleased with the results, having used near-field monitoring in a number of rooms that were difficult to work with, I would have no hesitation working with them from that distance, if necessary. The soundstage hangs back away from the listener a bit, but remains open and cohesive with sharp imaging.

Dirac Live LE
Dirac Live is my room correction tool of choice. It provides lots of upside and little to no downside in any case in which I have tried it. The LE version which comes with the NAD receiver I have been using provides correction up to 500 Hz, covering the low frequency range most rooms benefit from, and providing correction through the range affecting soundstage and imaging the most. All this assumes tight high-frequency matching between Left and Right speakers. Measurements verified that to be the case with the SVS Prime Towers, and allows the Prime Towers to perform with their natural voicing preserved.

At this point in the evaluation, I had determined that the SS&I from the SVS Prime Towers was about as good as it could be without room EQ applied, and I was very pleased and satisfied. The first time that I activated Dirac Live LE, I was shocked at how much the imaging and the soundstage improved. This is often the case when one is working with Dirac Live. The example illustrates how much improvement can be garnered with the right tools. Starting with a speaker like the Prime Tower certainly helps.

Where Did The Speakers Go?
A good speaker disappearing act is hard to beat. Through much of the evaluation, the Towers almost completely disappeared, and with some of the adjustments I made they managed the feat altogether. The anti-diffraction design deserves much of the credit for this sonic trick.

Tweeters
On previous occasions, I had made measurements of the SVS Prime Tower, specifically the tweeter's impulse response. This time I felt the need to dig a little deeper.

Working with a 96 kHz bit rate in the measurement system audio interface yielded the diagrams that follow. A bit of ringing is apparent at about 25 kHz, well below the Nyquist frequency for the audio interface operating at that bit rate. This finding is supported by the slight increase in frequency response in the 20 kHz range and above. The ringing hints at the possibility of occasional congestion in the high frequencies for certain HF-heavy tracks, and broadening of images at high frequencies as a result. But I detected no such problem in this session with the Towers.

Tweeter fanatics who are looking for the best possible high-frequency performance might choose to look in another price bracket to find it, but I dare say that most will be perfectly satisfied with this aspect of Prime Tower performance.

Beauty That Runs Soul Deep
Build craftsmanship is excellent, but you would expect nothing less in this day and age. The gorgeous Piano Gloss Black finish is reflective enough to be potentially annoying in a home theater, where reflections around the big screen are a distration, but might also really dress up a two-channel room. Premium Black Ash is the other standard finish option.

The cabinet has separate sealed chambers for each woofer and for the midrange driver, rear tuned ports for smooth, extended bass, spikes for situations where the SS&I might benefit, five-way binding posts, chamfered front panel edges to eliminate diffraction, and grilles with pin/cup retention. The cabinet design had been optimized via Finite Element Analysis (FEA) to ensure resonances are eliminated.


Conclusions
Although $1,000 is a modest price for a pair of home theater reference speakers, the SVS engineering team cut no design corners to get there. The SVS Great Soundstage and Imaging, No Fuss Prime Tower has been fun to evaluate all four times I have done so, giving the gift of a great first impression all four times. Through the Prime Towers, I bear witness to a new paradigm of speaker design in which the old rules and limits of cost/performance/flexibility are shattered, and the bar is raised for others to follow and compete with. At the price of under $1,000 for a pair ($499 each, if you so desire), it is difficult to find many speaker designs that can compete, especially when it comes to the ease of getting a big, open, cohesive soundstage and sharp imaging in almost any system.

The Prime Towers will make a great pair of side- or rear-surround towers for a higher powered system. Or provide a big step up from a boom box for a college dorm room. Or stand front and center for 5.1 duty in a starter system - an all-SVS system will have you drooling on your shirt. The ultra-flexible Prime Towers will deliver natural, fun, accurate sound despite best efforts to the contraty (i.e. lack of setup experience, although SVS Customer Service and AV NIRVANA can help with that). The SVS Prime Tower is destined by design to be a crowd pleaser.

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Measurement Diagrams
Frequency Response
with 12th-octave and 1-octave smoothing. The small area of treble lift at 5.6 kHz adds a nice air of liveliness to the presentation. The frequency response overall is admirably smooth and extended.
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Off-Axis Frequency Response is excellent, measured at a 1 m distance and at angles of 0 deg (orange) 15 deg (purple), 30 deg (green), 45 deg (blue). Plots are with 48th-oct smoothing. The anomaly at 1.5 kHz is a measurement artifact.
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Harmonic Distortion is very low, below 0.5% through most of the Towers' range with 1 Watt of power applied.
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Impulse Response indicates a tweeter resonance at 25 kHz. This would only be directly audible to bats and dogs, but might announce itself to humans by keeping the tweeter overly busy when lots of HF content is present. I heard no indication that this was the case during the evaluation.
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Step Rsponse indicates a well-damped low-frequency design.
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Averaged In-Room Frequency Response - Three measurements for the Left speaker (middle group), taken at the LP and 6 in left and right of it, were averaged for the LP response Left (middle group, blue, purple, dark green). The bottom group is three corresponding measurements taken for the Right speaker (green, orange, purple). L Averaged and R Averaged at LP are the top pair of plots (green, orange), and are extremely well matched. The plot groups are offset manually by 10 dB for readability.
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Dirac Live LE, aided by the new NAD T 758 v3, provides room correction up to 500 Hz, allowing the mids and highs to retain the natural voicing characteristics of the Prime Towers. This worked well for the Towers because of their exceptionally well-matched drivers.
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Distance Matching - Distances were carefully matched using impulse response plots for the 5.1 surround setup. Fronts mains are range & blue, surrounds are green and red. The idea was to get distances matched perfectly to aid in getting the sharpest imaging possible.
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Measurements taken at the 48 kHz sample rate show little detail of the HF characteristics in question, and are influenced by the interaction of signal and DAC at the DAC reconstruction filter's Nyquist frequency.
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Measurements taken at the 96 kHz sample rate capture the resonance's characteristics in detail, with no visible filter interaction.
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Hunting Reflections - Sometimes the impulse diagram makes offending relections easy to spot, and sometimes it does not. The plot below guide us to the front wall reflection.
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In this case, the Front Wall Reflection is obvious.
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Reflection Reduction - Adjustment of the absorptive panel leaning against the front wall made a significant difference in the amplitude of this reflection. Listening test verify that it dramatically helped the soundstage and imaging.
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Sometimes the reflection evidence likes to play Reflection Hide and Seek, and the best one can get out of the impulse diagram is confirmation of one's hunches after applying treatment, as shown in the following two zoomed-in views. In this case, there is no big influence on the impulse diagram to guide me to those physical reflection points, so calculations based on path length and the speed of sound helped me locate the offending reflection points on the impulse diagram that should correspond with the suspected physical reflection points in my room. The next plot shows the improvement. It was not huge, but it was notable, and helped tame the unbalanced brightness I was hearing. Depending on the direction and timing of its arrival at the LP, a given reflection might appear to be unobtrusive yet can be detrimental to imaging.

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Dimensions for main evaluation setup.
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Prime Tower's Secret Super Power - Super Bass Placement Flexibility - The following two diagrams show how much the bass response can change in a given room by moving the speakers a few feet. Wiith the Prime Towers, the SS&I were easily restored with a few fine position adjustments. In the diagrams below, the band between 50 Hz and 100 Hz shows huge improvement in bass response as a result of that move. Most speakers do not have the SS&I flexibility to allow such a move for bass improvement. As a listener, the difference was like night and day. The overall amplitude has increased for the second plot in each photo because the distance change was not compensated for.

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Beauty That Runs Soul Deep
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(SVS)


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(SVS)

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(SVS)

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(SVS)

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(SVS)

SVS Prime Tower Specifications
General

  • Rated bandwidth: 30 Hz-25 kHz (+/-3 dB)
  • Nominal impedance: 8 ohms
  • Sensitivity: 87 dB (2.83V @ 1 meter full-space, 300-3kHz)
  • Recommended amplifier power:20-250 watts
  • Floor Standing Tower Loudspeaker
  • Black ash and piano gloss black finish options
  • 5-way binding posts
  • Dual 1.7' wide-flared rear-firing ports
  • Cloth grille with pin/cup retention system
  • Elastomer stick-on bumper feet (adds 3mm to height)
  • Spiked metal screw-in feet included - adjustable for level
  • Cabinet Dimensions: 36" (H) X 8" (W) X 11.1" (D)
  • Overall Dimensions: 36.6" (H) X 8" (W) X 11.6" (D) (includes grille and feet)
  • Shipped Dimensions: 41.3" (H) X 14.1" (W) X 17.3" (D)
  • Weight: 40.1 pounds
  • Shipped Weight: 46.3 pounds
Tweeter
  • 1-inch Aluminum Dome Tweeter
  • FEA-optimized diffuser for airy and unveiled presentation
  • Aluminum dome for exceptional transient response
Midrange Driver
  • 4.5-inch Midrange Driver
  • Polypropylene cone for excellent stiffness/mass ratio and pistonic behavior
  • Aluminum shorting ring to reduce gap inductance, lower distortion, and enhance high frequency response
  • Cast ABS-fiberglass composite basket ensures precision component alignment and excellent thermal transfer
  • Vented voice coil former minimizes air compression artifacts
Woofer
  • Dual 6.5-inch Woofers
  • Long stroke motor and suspension for high output
  • Polypropylene cone for excellent stiffness/mass ratio and pistonic behavior
  • Aluminum shorting ring to reduce gap inductance, lower distortion, and enhance high frequency response
  • Cast ABS-fiberglass composite basket ensures precision component alignment and excellent thermal transfer
  • Vented voice coil former minimizes air compression artifacts[/B]
Crossover
  • 3.5-way crossover with premium-grade capacitors, air-core inductors and heavy-trace printed circuit boards.
  • Tapered woofer array optimizes the transition to the midrange driver and reduces vertical axis lobing
  • Midrange-to-tweeter crossover: 2.1 kHz (12 dB/octave slopes)
  • Top woofer (Combined Woofer) to midrange crossover frequency: 350 Hz (12 dB/octave slopes).
  • Bottom woofer low pass frequency: 165 Hz (customized filter Q and slope)
Cabinet
  • Separate sealed midrange enclosure shifts standing waves beyond the driver pass band, improving sound quality
  • Separate woofer enclosures with optimized port tuning frequencies for smooth and accurate bass response
  • Acoustically transparent and FEA optimized grilles minimize diffraction
  • Chamfered front baffle and flush-mounted drivers reduce edge diffraction and improved on-axis high frequency response
  • FEA-optimized cabinet and bracing eliminates resonances
 
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JStewart

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A meticulous, detailed, & educational review of a great product from a company known for outstanding products, value, and customer service. I'll be re-reading it. More than once.
Thank you.
 

tripplej

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Thanks for an awesome review. Great detail and has everything one would want. Thanks.
 

Asere

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Thank you for such fine explanation and review. I own these speakers and love the clarity and imaging. They are pretty impresive too in the bass department when listening to 2 CH.
 

Tony V.

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Well written review! SVS has never let us down in any way when designing a speaker or sub. Their price point for each range is second to none in my opinion.
 

AudiocRaver

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As a company, if they have a product that is even CLOSE to what you are looking for, you are almost crazy to not give it a try.
 

Matthew J Poes

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Great Review Wayne! Lots of useful information, especially on how best to optimize this speakers performance.
 

Todd Anderson

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Behringer 1124p; Aura Bass Shaker Pros; SuperSub X
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JVC NX7
Screen
Seymour Screen Excellence, Enlightor NEO AT Screen
Streaming Equipment
iFi Audio Zen Blue
Streaming Subscriptions
Qobuz, TIDAL, Spotify, ROON
Other Equipment
LG Electronics 65-inch B6 OLED, Sony 65-inch X900F, ZeroSurge 8R15W x 2, ZeroSurge 2R15W x 2
Wayne, really enjoyed reading this gem! It's the best Prime Tower eval I've read to date!

You make a good point about the finish of the speaker: beautiful to the eye, potentially reflective for theater rooms. I have SVS's black ash finish speakers in my HT and have zero issue with the finish in terms of reflections, so that makes a great option of theater enthusiasts. The hand-rubbed gloss finish, though, has a bit more presence for living/listening room situations.
 

ddude003

AV Addict
Joined
Aug 13, 2017
Messages
1,403
Location
Somewhere Northeast of Kansas City Missouri
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Preamp, Processor or Receiver
PrimaLuna Dialogue Premium TubePre (2 channel+sub)
Main Amp
McIntosh MC152 SS Amp (2 channel)
Additional Amp
Yamaha RX-A850 Pro (the other 5 channels lol)
Computer Audio
MacBook Pro, Custom i7 7700k De-lid 2xAsus1080ti GFX Audirvana Studio, Hang Loose Convolver, Pulsar Massive & 8200, LiquidSonics, SoX
DAC
Chord Electronics Ltd. Qutest
Universal / Blu-ray / CD Player
Sony UBP-X700 /M Ultra HD 4K HDR & PS5
Front Speakers
Martin Logan ElectroMotion ESL
Center Channel Speaker
Martin Logan Motion C2
Surround Speakers
Martin Logan Motion 4
Surround Back Speakers
Martin Logan Motion 4 (yes, another set of these)
Subwoofers
Martin Logan Dynamo 700
Other Speakers or Equipment
Cifte 12AU7 NOS & Genalex Gold Lion Tubes in Pre
Video Display Device
Samsung The Premiere LSP7T UST Laser Projector
Screen
Elite Screens Aeon CLR3 0.8 Gain 103-inch
Remote Control
PrimaLuna, Lumin iApp, Samsung & Yamaha
Streaming Equipment
Netgear Nighthawk S8000 Streaming Switch, Lumin U1 Mini Streamer Transport
Streaming Subscriptions
QoBuz Studio Premier, Amazon Prime & Netflix
Other Equipment
ThrowRug, SaddleBlankets, WideBand & Bass Traps...
That is one very impressive review Wayne!!! Specs, benchmarks and performance adjustments and more benchmarks... Nice work!!!
 

tesseract

Senior Admin
Joined
Nov 12, 2016
Messages
1,266
Location
Lincoln, NE
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Preamp, Processor or Receiver
Emotiva XMC-1
Main Amp
Emotiva XPA-2 Gen 2
Additional Amp
Emotiva XPA-3 Gen 2
Other Amp
Dayton SA1000
Universal / Blu-ray / CD Player
Sony BDP S590 & Pioneer DV-610AV
Front Speakers
JTR NOESIS 210 RT - L/R mains
Center Channel Speaker
Chase SHO-10 - Center
Surround Speakers
Chase PRO-10 - Surrounds
Subwoofers
Chase VS-18.1 x 2 - Subwoofers
Video Display Device
Vizio E550VL
Streaming Subscriptions
h/k TC35C/Ortofon Super OM10/Pro-Ject Phono Box S
Very good, Wayne, thank you for this. Having accompanied you on the first three Prime Tower auditions, I can say that your assessment of its sound is spot on.
 

Deuce

Registered
Joined
May 3, 2018
Messages
10
Great review, and as alwasy SVS offering a very competitive product (not a cuirrent owner, but have heard great things about their customer service) I have owned REL, M&K, JL subwoofers in the past but have always auditioned an SVS product at the same time and they have always been in the running, and much easier to audition critically IN HOME. If you are in the market for any fo their products, you’d be crazy NOT to take a Free audition IMO. Not an SVS fan boy per se, just appreciating a company that does right by even for newbies.
Wayne, as an aside, your experience re bass and positioning just undermines my conviction that a sub satellite combo, ceteris parabis, will always have advantages over a full range speaker. The compromises that need to be made in design and or positioning are palpable;that said, integrating a standalone subwoofer is not always straightforward, but with advanced EQ programs like DL and ARC, maybe Audyssey 32, great subwoofers being made today, esp by internet sales companies like SVS with free retunes, more enthusiasts need to try this approach .
 

w_sizer

Member
Joined
Jul 14, 2020
Messages
50
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Preamp, Processor or Receiver
miniDSP DDRC-24
Main Amp
NAD c375BEE integrated amp
Universal / Blu-ray / CD Player
Yamaha BDP-1000
Front Speakers
PSB Synchrony Ones
Subwoofers
Hsu ULS-15 Mk 2
Thanks for the excellent, informative review! I’m going to be settling up a home theater system within a year or two, and these speakers are right in my price range. They have now been moved to the top of my short list.
 
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