Brent Butterworth

There are times when prejudice is forgivable. One can hardly be blamed for assuming that store-brand whiskey, truck-stop coffee, or music by a lite-jazz artist who goes by a single-letter surname is going to suck. Likewise, one might reasonably presuppose that a little cube-shaped speaker isn’t going to please serious listeners.

I would never do what SVS did with its new subwoofer, the SB13-Plus. The company originally sent me a review sample last fall, but then asked me to hold the review. How come? Because the engineers tweaked the sub’s Sledge STA-1000D amplifier. It took months for the new amplifier to arrive. That’s months of revenue lost for the sake of slightly better sound.

TEST BENCH

Frequency response (at 1 meter)
• satellite 166 Hz to 20 kHz ±8.6 dB
• subwoofer 38 to 130 kHz ±3 dB

Sensitivity (SPL at 1 meter with 2.8 volts of pink-noise input)
• satellite 90 dB

Impedance (minimum/nominal)
• satellite 5.3/9 ohms

Bass output, subwoofer (CEA-2010 standard)
• Ultra-low bass (20-31.5 Hz): NA
• Low bass (40-63 Hz): 90.5 dB

Bass limits, satellite
• 100 Hz at 65.3 dB

While on a swing through Vancouver this week to check out the vintage audio scene, I stopped by to say hi to the guys at Vancouver Audio Speaker Clinic, an old-school speaker repair shop of the type I haven’t seen since I was a kid in the 1970s trying to resurrect the shredded speakers from my