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3M views 37K replies 3K participants last post by  Deaf-Forever 
#1 ·

If this thread already exists, please disregard. I looked, but couldn't find it.


I recently purchased a PB Plus/2, and have been itching to share my experience so far. Here's my 5.1 set-up:


Denon AVR 5803 (Purchased Used)

Panasonic BD-55 Blu-ray Player (Analog 5.1 Outputs)

Samsung 5687 DLP

GR Research A/V3S x 3

GR Research A/V1RS x 2

SVS PB Plus/2

PURE AV Power conditioner


Listening area is 14x17x8 living room with one 8' opening to kitchen/dining area, and one opening to hallway, laminate floor with large area rug, SVS position is RF corner next to ent center (very limited in where I could put it), listening position is center of 14' wall across from TV, Not an ideal HT room, but could be worse.


Settings:


All speakers set to 75 db, with SVS running hot at about 82 db

SVS Gain at 1/4, 20 hz tune (one port plug), used the included 3M rubber feet

LFE pre-out on Denon is -2.0 db


Listening is 90/10 Movies to Music



After more research than I care to get into, I settled on the Velodyne HGS 15x and the SVS PB Plus/2. I actually ordered the Velodyne, but it was discontinued. I had decided on the Velodyne mostly because of the smaller size and the positive experience a relative of mine has had with his. The SVS and the Velodyne seemed to be close in performance based on what I had read, but

the size of the SVS was scaring me off. WAF. She's been very patient with my hobby. After the Velodyne fell through, I decided to order the SVS rather than looking elsewhere for the Velodyne. Got the size past the wife by telling her it was a lot cheaper than the Velo. I'VE NEVER LOOKED BACK!


Support from SVS before, during, and after the sale has been outstanding. It was shipped fast, and arrived on it's own pallet, very well packaged. The manual and set-up were a snap. I have since contacted SVS a couple times with questions and comments, and they always reply quickly and seem very interested in my impression of their product. Not to mention the money I saved by going with the SVS.


It's performance so far has been excellent. I had a Klipsch KSW 15 prior to the SVS, and let me tell you, this thing blows it away, and the Klipsch was no slouch. From the sock explosion in Monsters Inc. to the Tripods in WOTW, I'm lovin my new toy.


Sorry if this was a puff piece, and again, I hope an owners thread doesn't already exist. If so, let me have it, if not, lets hear about your SVS!
 
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#19,241 ·
Just bought a PC-2000 and curious whether SVS offers a discount if I decide to buy another PC-2000 in a coup,e years? Or if I buy a pair of their prime speakers and center within the next couple of months?


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk
 
#19,244 ·
Hello can't wait to be part of this club!!! Just ordered my pb1000 from a Canadian dealer , they offered a 10% discount and are giving a $50 gift card for a future purchase (a second pb1000!!!). The final total was $550cad. I was back and forth between the sb and pb but settled in the pb as my theatre will be 100% movies and heard the tighter bass was better for music.... I do love that compact size of the sb though. My room is 10ft wide by 22ft long. I have two sub placement options... One upfront next to my paradigm monitor 9's and the second spot is behind the mlp, about 13ft from the screen.

My goal is to buy a second pb1000 next year but Where do you think I should place this first sub?

Also, did I go with the right sub? Pb/sb

Thanks
 
#19,246 ·
Kurtz is correct, ideal/optimum sub placement is dependent on your main listening position (mlp) and how your room reacts to bass frequencies. Current conventional wisdom is to do the "sub crawl" as the YouTube video demonstrates. Of course other factors such as WAF, available space, and personal preferences may compromise the results. Relative to your choice of the SB or PB, the PB is the preferred sub for movies.
 
#19,247 ·
The sub crawl isn't a sure way to find the best placement for the sub. With the sub in MLP the sound will most likely encounter other issues than when it's placed in the best bass crawl place. It's better to Place the sub on different locations in the room and calibrate to find the best Place. Or put it where it must stay for various reasons and take the time to properly calibrate it. Placement is only a small part of setting up a sub.
 
#19,248 ·
My goal is to buy a second pb1000 next year but Where do you think I should place this first sub?

Also, did I go with the right sub? Pb/sb

Thanks
With a single sub I'm following the philosophy of Anthony Grimani which is to place it 25% from the walls.

In my 12ft x 12ft room the inital placement of the PB-13 Ultra is 25% from the rear and right wall. I will se how that theory works out in the next few days as I get everything in the room connected up.
 
#19,249 ·
PC-2000 Mini Review..

Over the past couple of months I had been contemplating a subwoofer upgrade, I had two BK XXLS400 subwoofers which I was reasonably happy with and having owned a couple of the larger SVS subs before, the only thing I was missing was the deeper extension the larger subs offered. I really wanted to try the SB13 Ultra but I couldn't justify the expense and I didn't really want to go second hand and end up with another huge box as while they are fun.. they simply take up too much floorspace. So the PC-2000 seemed to fit the bill. The cylinder subwoofer stands 34" tall with a diameter of 16.5" and has been re-designed featuring a quite large rear-firing port with a nice solid gloss black lid (or black Ash) as opposed to the metal grill lid and top-firing ports of the previous NSD, Plus & Ultra cylinder models. It also has new isolation feet and no-longer has the base plate attached which will certainly please some people. And not forgetting the 500w DSP class D amp and 12" woofer all tuned to 16hz.

My experience with movies so far has been very good, I have been through the trusty DVD demo disk a couple of times and also the new Home Theater Demonstration Bluray V2 on my HDD and most of the favourite (voted by the people) bass scenes which have been putting a smile on my face. Having the demo material available makes testing so easy as the more you listen to it, the more you become accustomed to how it sounds. The Finding Nemo Darla tapping scene pressurized the room with ease, the footsteps of the T-Rex from Jurrasic Park created a similar pressure that just makes you sit there grinning to yourself. From Flight Of The Phoenix to War Of The Worlds, there were very few instances when I thought this PC-2000 didn't sound better than my dual XXLS400 setup, which leads me on to my next point.

I have found I prefer the XXLS400 for music, now this could be a sealed v ported effect, a FR anomaly or just the warmer tone of the 400's AB amp, or simply that the PC-2000 is just over a week old and has probably had about 10-15hrs use so is far from run-in, but as I'm about 80% Movies/20% Music bias this isn't really an issue for me. Things weren't all negative with Music though, play something like Chemical Brothers or System 7 and the SVS starts to shine, playing deeper and with more authority than the dual subs were capable of, and while I don't tend to listen to that type of music much anymore (getting old) the difference was clearly there.

I tested the PC-2000 in the two positions that the XXLS400's were originally placed (both corners) without enabling Audyssey and while weighing up the pros and cons of having the sub hidden or not, came to the conclusion that it sounded better in the right corner, so that's where it stayed. I will probably re-run Audyssey again at some point once it has had time to run-in more but overall I'm very happy with my purchase, I get much better performance with movies while only using half the floorspace and I would imagine considerably less power consumption which is something you can't complain about.

I have been told that I am the first person in the UK to get one of these (even before the UK SVS retailers) so thanks again to Lsound for their fantastic service, this was my first time ordering from them and I would highly recommend them to anyone considering a purchase.

Thanks for reading, Paul
 

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#19,250 · (Edited)
Bit of an update..

As I have a fairly thick pile carpet (about 14mm) I noticed that with a fair amount of driver excursion it was almost touching the carpet.. I know that it isn't a major concern as I'd say there was a good 1cm between the driver and carpet and it's not exactly a hard surface to impact, but it got me thinking anyways. I couldn't really get the camera low enough to show how close the driver was to the carpet but you get a rough idea from the first pic. The second pic is with the new 'bass' plate I made from MDF, then primered and glossed.. I haven't noticed any audible difference and it seems to have created more space for driver excursion. I'm not sure exactly how much of issue this would have been or exactly how much excursion the driver is actually capable of but other than get the flymo out and trim the carpet down, I thought this the safest solution :)


 
#19,252 ·
paulst

Congrats to your new sub. That is great you get it that fast in UK. I love your idea of piece of wood on carpet and sub on it. I really like on cylinder Plus and Ultra bottom wood stand/cover what protect driver. I know it is probably no big deal but looks to me like with it placement is just easier on any type of floor.
 
#19,253 ·
Hi guys, haven't posted in a while thanks to general Holiday busy-ness and influenza running in the family... I just decided to skip the last few pages of post :( But congrats to all new owners nonetheless :D And a Happy New Year to all.

Just ordered my pb1000 from a Canadian dealer , they offered a 10% discount and are giving a $50 gift card for a future purchase (a second pb1000!!!). The final total was $550cad.
I guess you bought the sub on ElectronicsForLess? Just so you know, EFL is SonicBoomAudio's sister company (same owner -- Mason, same location, and they just happen to sell SVS subs there as well now). SBA once was SVS's sole distributor for SVS subs in Canada, but now that SVS also sells directly to Canadian, they (I think) serve as a warehouse. Anywhow, all Canadian customers get their subs from there whether they order from svsound.com, SBA or EFL.

Free shipping, discount and gift cart, it's pretty nice, and the total is not that far from the US total ;)

Bit of an update..
Nice work with the base plate.

I wanted to tell you, with respect to music, that it's pretty hard to make comparisons. Case in point: I'm just getting out of my annual Subfest (where we listen to my subs and eat sub sandwiches) and one of the guys brought a CD full of MP3s he wanted to listen to on my setup. (Yeah, an MP3-filled CD, I told him 1998 is over, but that's how he rolls).

Well, playing the CD on my Sony BD player, which decoded the MP3s using DTS Neo:6 Music and sent the stuff as LPCM to my AVR, bass was really disappointing. The same CD, played on my HTPC using XBMC/Kodi (decoded as stereo I guess?) sounded *much* better with at least twice the bass, for the same content.

I have no idea where in the source / AVR / sub chain lies the problem but before judging a sub, make sure you try a few sources before making the call.

In paulst's case, it's probably not the problem since presumably the source stayed the same and only the subs changed. Sometimes, listening to a setup with a flatter frequency response is a bit of a letdown at first. For example, in my car, FR is all over the place with *huge* peaks around 80 Hz. Listening to the same content on my HT setup, I don't have the same punch but at the same time I can hear other parts of the music much better.
 
#19,254 ·
OK... loving my SB-2000. Made some adjustments, per the sound advice here and loving my new sound. Thanks!
 
#19,255 ·
#19,256 ·
I have both the PB-1000 and PB-2000 I've been auditioning in my home for a couple weeks now. Anyone who has auditioned both and decided on the PB-2000 - can you tell me why you found it to be superior? I know spec-wise it is superior, but why specifically did you decide on it over the PB-1000? I am finding the 1000 to be as good, if not BETTER sounding, with most content that I throw at it. I have calibrated each independently with Audyssey so many times it makes my head spin, and have lugged them around the room to different spots after using the "crawl" method. I'll calibrate, listen, replace with the other, calibrate listen...repeat infinite amount of times. Definitely at ear splitting volume, which I don't typically listen, movies have a bit more impact on the BIG bass scenes with the 2000 - but it seems like a lot of the higher frequency bass is lost on the 2000 at "normal" listening levels, and there is more impact with the 1000....I'm using a Denon X4000, room is approx 2700cu ft. Any input is appreciated.
 
#19,258 ·
OK... loving my SB-2000. Made some adjustments, per the sound advice here and loving my new sound. Thanks!
My pair of SB-2000s arrive tomorrow. What exactly did you do as far as adjustments? Thanks in advance!
 
#19,259 ·
My pair of SB-2000s arrive tomorrow. What exactly did you do as far as adjustments? Thanks in advance!
1. I changed the position of my SB-2000. I had it elevated(on top of SubDude, which stood on top of an 18" stand.)
2. I increased the LFE output from -15dB to 0dB on my Pioneer Elite SC-65 AVR.

It could be just me, but after I constantly kept running bass sweeps, via YouTube, (for literally ), I felt like the sub performed even better. I could hear it kick in at 10Hz! Now, whether or not that was a true 10Hz signal, I don't know. I just thought it was cool because my BP8060ST towers DO NOT go that low. Heck, they don't go any lower than 40Hz.
 
#19,260 · (Edited)
I spoke with SVS some today about the idea of running an ultra along side my plus. Figured that there may be some others here with the same thought so I figured I would share. Basically the Ultra and the Plus would play well together considering that they both have similar frequency responses. Even in my small theater I feel like the punch is missing on my plus when running in sealed mode. According to SVS I would be able to go a long ways towards getting that back by adding an Ultra and running them both sealed. As for the question, why not just get the SB13, I would want to run sealed right now, but considering that my theater room is likely to change in the not too distant future, I like the flexibility of having variable tuning frequencies.

I'm in no real hurry to do this, likely later this year, but I'm thinking that an Ultra will in fact be my next major upgrade.
 
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