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Ultra Speaker System
Performance
Build Quality
Value

SB12-NSD Subwoofer
Performance
Features
Build Quality
Value

The debut of the SVS Ultra speaker line prompts me to reconsider a question that’s been lurking at the back of my mind for years: Is SVS one of the great American speaker brands?

As a company founded in Ohio and initially operated out of a garage, SVS has all the right narrative elements of a great speaker brand. The company has built a reputation for making brilliantly unorthodox subwoofers and pretty good speakers—versus the scads of respectable brands that put most of their brilliance into speakers and treat subs as an afterthought. In the past few years, the story has added a few new chapters, with new heavy-hitter personnel in management and product design and a manufacturing move from Ohio to (where else?) China.

The seeds were planted at CES this past January in Las Vegas. I was ushered directly to the SSS, the Sweet Spot Seat (middle chair, second row) in GoldenEar Technology’s private suite at The Venetian. GoldenEar’s major audio domo, Sandy Gross, had been waiting patiently for my arrival so I could hear the company’s new speaker pair, the Triton Seven towers.