SVS SB13-Plus Subwoofer - review discussion

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Reviewed by Russell Williams, 31st August 2011.To be honest, the SVS SB13-Plus would have been 'Highly Recommended' at it's original RRP of £1600... As it is, the price drop to £1200 makes it a moments work to upgrade the result to an easy 'Best Buy'.
Read the full review...
 
Nice review Russ, sounds like an impressive little beasty. It certainly makes the SB16 a tantalising proposition, I assume that is still on the cards?

Ad :)
 
Thanks Russ. Great review. Out of interest I was considering this when I decided on the Paradigm Seismic 110 with PBK! How would you compare the two? Be honest now!
 
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Excellent review Russ,

I've been searching around for reviews on this Sub, I found your read up very enjoyable, perfect timing:thumbsup:, I've been wanting to upgrade from my Monolith to a sealed Sub for a while now, but never wanted to shell out bucket loads of money, at this price, SB13 is the only Sealed Sub on my cash flow list...so far!:smashin:

REGHARDS...Roy.
 
Thanks Russ. Great review. Out of interest I was considering this when I decided on the Paradigm Seismic 110 with PBK! How would you compare the two? Be honest now!
As per usual with these things, it isn't that straight forward.

The Paradigm has it licked in terms of easy setup, the proviso being that to do it, you need to spend £300 on the PBK. The SVS, with a lot more user input can run the Paradigm close in this regard. But you need to know what you're doing and the PBK gets it right every time in my experience.

However, subwoofers are all about physics. The Paradigm is an incredible piece of integrated engineering that packs more punch and depth into a package of it's size and price ,than any other sub available. End of.

The SVS takes up four times the carpet space, is more than double the height and has nearly twice the driver area. It sounds and feels like a much larger sub, because it is.

If you have the carpet space, it is a no brainer in terms of raw performance, but the Paradigm is the pint sized king if that's all you've got room for.

Russell
 
Excellent review Russ,

I've been searching around for reviews on this Sub, I found your read up very enjoyable, perfect timing:thumbsup:, I've been wanting to upgrade from my Monolith to a sealed Sub for a while now, but never wanted to shell out bucket loads of money, at this price, SB13 is the only Sealed Sub on my cash flow list...so far!:smashin:

REGHARDS...Roy.
It would be an interesting shoot out to compare sheer bottom end output between a Monolith and the SB13, because a large ported box has a huge advantage in this regard and is inherently much cheaper to do. It's would also be interesting because the Monolith is one of the least 'ported' sounding, ported sub I've heard at any price.

My gut instinct is that the SVS would still feel like a significant upgrade, just because of the quality of its bass, plus it's epic 25Hz+ grunt and slam and I still think it would shade it at the bottom end. The Monolith is actually one of the more expensive subs to upgrade from, but my advice would be jump while the SB13 is on offer. It's a blinder.

Russell
 
It would be an interesting shoot out to compare sheer bottom end output between a Monolith and the SB13, because a large ported box has a huge advantage in this regard and is inherently much cheaper to do. It's would also be interesting because the Monolith is one of the least 'ported' sounding, ported sub I've heard at any price.

My gut instinct is that the SVS would still feel like a significant upgrade, just because of the quality of its bass, plus it's epic 25Hz+ grunt and slam and I still think it would shade it at the bottom end. The Monolith is actually one of the more expensive subs to upgrade from, but my advice would be jump while the SB13 is on offer. It's a blinder.

Russell

CHEERS! Russell.. ;)

REGARDS...Roy.
 
Nice review Russ, sounds like an impressive little beasty. It certainly makes the SB16 a tantalising proposition, I assume that is still on the cards?

Ad :)

hi ther...apparantly the sb16 ultra wont be an option in uk and may never be in usa either.found this out after speaking to sva usa..they reckon it would be to expensive.:(

regards d
 
It would be an interesting shoot out to compare sheer bottom end output between a Monolith and the SB13, because a large ported box has a huge advantage in this regard and is inherently much cheaper to do. It's would also be interesting because the Monolith is one of the least 'ported' sounding, ported sub I've heard at any price.

My gut instinct is that the SVS would still feel like a significant upgrade, just because of the quality of its bass, plus it's epic 25Hz+ grunt and slam and I still think it would shade it at the bottom end. The Monolith is actually one of the more expensive subs to upgrade from, but my advice would be jump while the SB13 is on offer. It's a blinder.

Russell

Great review Russell, I always liked the smaller SB12+ as that had plenty of grunt for something so small, although I can't help but wonder how one SB13+ would compare to two XXLS400's :rolleyes:

I know the '1 good sub is better than two lesser' rule, but in the brief amount of time owning the second 400 the balance of bass has considerably improved it's hard to imagine a single sub offering any significant improvement over these ?

But then again, LSound are offering 5% discounts on multiple subwoofer sales :devil:
 
Nice review Russ, sounds like an impressive little beasty. It certainly makes the SB16 a tantalising proposition, I assume that is still on the cards?

Ad :)

That is exactly what I was thinking. No doubt it will be expensive, but if it does what this little blinder sounds like its doing, then it could be very impressive indeed.
 
Dear Russell,
Thanks for the fantastic review. I'm considering the SVS SB13-Plus for a first serious subwoofer and have one question for you.

When you ran the signal from your source through the sub's high pass filter and then on to your amp, did you find that it degraded the signal quality that went out to the main speakers at all?

I once owned a less technologically sophisticated sub and found that the signal became absolute garbage when passed through the sub's filter before it went on to my amp. Unlistenable sound came out of my mains. However, running parallel signals to both my sub and my amp, i.e., passing the source signal untouched to both my amp and the sub at the same time, erased the problem. Don't know if this latter setup is possible with the SB13-Plus, but primarily curious about the "signal conditioning" effected by passing the signal through the sub.

Cheers,
JLM
 
Russell,

I am wondering how the SB13+ compares to the Paradigm Sub 12. I'd really like the sub 12 but I'm having a hard time swallowing the price plus the cost of the pbk. My system is comprised of: Yamaha RX-A1000, Anthem MCA 20, Paradigm Studio 100 v.5, CC-590 with Monitor 9 v.2 in the rear. I listen to a lot of two channel music with just the 100s, but also listen to a fair amount of multi-channel music (anxiously awaiting the new WYWH) and of course movies. My listening room is approximately 2300 cu ft. Thanks in advance.
 
Thanks for review, it helped me to consider this sub. Got it today and have played with it tonight....I won't pass too many comments at this stage suffice to say the speed and attack of the driver is nothIng short of breathtaking.

I have a small room so will no doubt be getting the benefit of room gain characteristics.
 
Thank you for the great review of this SVS sub and for all the detail you put into your analysis. Mr. Williams, what are the dimensions of your living room in which you made the review? My room is approx. 2500cf and I wanted to make sure that my room is not too big for this particular sub.

I currently have an SVS 20-39PCi that I have had since 2002 and I think the SB13 would certainly be an upgrade for me. Thanks for any input.
 
Thank you for the great review of this SVS sub and for all the detail you put into your analysis. Mr. Williams, what are the dimensions of your living room in which you made the review? My room is approx. 2500cf and I wanted to make sure that my room is not too big for this particular sub.

I currently have an SVS 20-39PCi that I have had since 2002 and I think the SB13 would certainly be an upgrade for me. Thanks for any input.

I don't know exactly how big the room has to be but my room is considerably smaller and it builds up the pressure nicely though. 2 would be even better in your room size :devil:
 

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