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New SVS Ultra 16"


radulescu_paul_mircea

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8" coil... wow. My main concerns with big coils is they cut into overall spider displacement. going forma 3" to 8" coil, one would need to increase the spider by 5" OD to maintain that capability. So if you had a 10" spider, you would need a 15" spider. I don't see how that fits on a 16" speaker. Perhaps they have a special long throw spider that works more like a surround?

 

Very cool. Is this driver neo by chance? I know back before Steve left SVS he was working on the new 16" driver but it was radial neo I think. Not sure if this driver inherits any of that idea or not. With an 8" coil, I'm guessing not... it might be a good fit for a neo t-yoke disc magnet.

 

16-Ultra-Exploeded-v1.2.jpg?169523625599

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These do look like they'll be solid performers. I don't think the pricing is too bad either considering what you are getting. Sure they aren't cheap compared to DIY or the bang for the buck ID leaders but I also think they offer something a bit more upscale looking from the typical stuff as well.

 

The driver is certainly the highlight on these. Apparently one of them uses an underhung topology and the other uses an overhung arrangement so the two motors and coils are different between the SB and PB versions. I thought the same about the spiders. That is a big landing on those frames. Probably fit an 11" or maybe even a 12" spider. One of the few things they make no mention of is the spider system. I'd imagine they custom tooled something for them like everything else on them, but that was one of my first thoughts as well. The motors are not neo. Typical ferrite slugs internal inside the pole, which really is surprising to me. They have got to be heavy as hell. The old 13" was 55lbs so these have to be pushing 70 to 80lbs I'd imagine. The PB model is 175lbs and really not very big at 25x21.7x30.9". It's a chunk.

 

 It'll be interesting to see how they perform.

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I am now playing with these babies and I have a SVS fan client with 3 Ultras installed and we listened to both of them for days now. He will probably end up buying the speakers but also will probably be the first PB16 client.

As for the dimensions, could the 16" be in fact an 18" but measured only from the suspension edges?

post-3306-0-85308600-1475779668_thumb.jpg

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My ball park guess is that these will put up about 4dB on the 13.5" Ultras perhaps with a bit better extension to boot.

 

About the 8" coil. Kyle is right the first concern is getting a spider system that will support large excursion in a linear manner with so much of the area taken up by the huge 8" former. It's not impossible though. Why use an 8" coil? Well it does provide better centering with the spiders to prevent a long former from cantilevering during large excursions. Also you can get higher motor force with that much coil in the gap and larger heat dissipation surface area. Both can help improve power handling and reduce thermal compression and parameter drift at high power. Some downsides typically would be increased moving mass, cost and perhaps higher inductance. Just because the coil is a larger diameter doesn't necessarily mean that the coil is more massive though. For all we know it could be a relatively short winding height with a single layer edge-wind. Something like a 3" diameter, 3" tall winding height, 8 layer coil, could have more wire mass even though the diameter is much smaller. Those are fairly common in big car audio subs. We don't have enough info to tell for sure. I would assume that SVS's engineering team used the large diameter for centering, improved thermal dissipation, marketing purposes (hey why not?) and higher BL and weighed the tradeoffs versus more normal coil sizes. Their engineering has been quite good so I assume there are solid reasons for it that make sense as per their design goals.

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My ball park guess is that these will put up about 4dB on the 13.5" Ultras perhaps with a bit better extension to boot.

 

About the 8" coil. Kyle is right the first concern is getting a spider system that will support large excursion in a linear manner with so much of the area taken up by the huge 8" former. It's not impossible though. Why use an 8" coil? Well it does provide better centering with the spiders to prevent a long former from cantilevering during large excursions. Also you can get higher motor force with that much coil in the gap and larger heat dissipation surface area. Both can help improve power handling and reduce thermal compression and parameter drift at high power. Some downsides typically would be increased moving mass, cost and perhaps higher inductance. Just because the coil is a larger diameter doesn't necessarily mean that the coil is more massive though. For all we know it could be a relatively short winding height with a single layer edge-wind. Something like a 3" diameter, 3" tall winding height, 8 layer coil, could have more wire mass even though the diameter is much smaller. Those are fairly common in big car audio subs. We don't have enough info to tell for sure. I would assume that SVS's engineering team used the large diameter for centering, improved thermal dissipation, marketing purposes (hey why not?) and higher BL and weighed the tradeoffs versus more normal coil sizes. Their engineering has been quite good so I assume there are solid reasons for it that make sense as per their design goals.

 

exactly correct. I would also add one more interesting feature. A disc magnet like this generally yields a 2x fold advantage in B captured in the motor compared to an outside ring. Typically you would jump on that, but because of the surface area limitations of the coil ID, disc magnets need to be neo. And even then they have very quick limits with 4" or even 5" coil constraints. An 8" coil opens up that diameter quite a bit and seems to even allow an ordinary ceramic magnet to be useful. This magnet stack may only be ~7.9"" or so in diam., but it might be similar to a 10 or 11" ring magnet. something similar to the LMS Ultra in terms of B. Its just a rough guess...

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Agreed.

 

I gotta say how much I love this place, btw. We are all bass driver nerds. Nobody gives a shit about the subwoofer as a whole. We're just interested in the important bits. Awesome. :)

 

lol, you mean to tell me you're not caught up in how you like or dislike the front LCD panel like they are over on avs?

 

:P

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Did you guys notice the PB16U driver has 41mm of Xmax when the SB16U's driver is only 32mm? 

 

Why is the sealed version getting the lower Xmax and lower motor force driver? The ported one should be the one getting the lower excursion driver with the port managing the excursion levels down low. It doesn't need as much motor force either since the enclosure is so much bigger. The sealed version should be getting the ported driver. It needs that extra excursion and motor force in that little sealed enclosure. 

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The ported probably needs more motor because its driving a port. You typically want a lower Q driver in a ported box to keep things flat or tilted downward. What you want to avoid is a high Q hump. Sealed drivers on the other hand can sound thin if the Q is too low and thus would require extra EQ to boost the low end. Having a little less motor force is a natural way to deal with that and keep the response flat. I believe one of these drivers is under hung and the other is overhung. Different variants for different systems.

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Did you guys notice the PB16U driver has 41mm of Xmax when the SB16U's driver is only 32mm? 

 

Why is the sealed version getting the lower Xmax and lower motor force driver? The ported one should be the one getting the lower excursion driver with the port managing the excursion levels down low. It doesn't need as much motor force either since the enclosure is so much bigger. The sealed version should be getting the ported driver. It needs that extra excursion and motor force in that little sealed enclosure. 

Where did you get those Xmax numbers? I don't see them. All I can find is peak to peak.

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Where did you get those Xmax numbers? I don't see them. All I can find is peak to peak.

 

It's in the owner's manual. It says overhung for both. 

 

SB16U: https://system.na1.netsuite.com/core/media/media.nl?id=129769&c=3634088&h=883c60d7de9cf244fe4a&_xt=.pdf

 

PB16U: https://system.na1.netsuite.com/core/media/media.nl?id=130247&c=3634088&h=b3bcb98d34afec35feaf&_xt=.pdf

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The ported probably needs more motor because its driving a port. You typically want a lower Q driver in a ported box to keep things flat or tilted downward. What you want to avoid is a high Q hump. Sealed drivers on the other hand can sound thin if the Q is too low and thus would require extra EQ to boost the low end. Having a little less motor force is a natural way to deal with that and keep the response flat. I believe one of these drivers is under hung and the other is overhung. Different variants for different systems.

 

I agree with what you say when designing without DSP signal shaping. But what if DSP shaping is used, like in SVS's case? Wouldn't a higher motor force woofer perform better for a sealed enclosure?

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