The sealed SVS SB-1000 (see image) obviously has no port, but sports a larger 30cm/12”driver. The PB, on the other hand, goes deeper and louder.
If you recognize the brand in this title straight away, you probably already know your subwoofers.
I expect you’ll also know that SVS have designed some of the most successful ranges of subs over the last few years. It’s fair to say that it’s their specialism.
Subs are listed first on their website (source at svsound.com). They are not shown as accessories, home theatre, or as extras in the way you’ll find on some speaker manufacturers pages.
You might say that SVS ‘R’ Subs, as I hope nobody ever actually wrote!
Guides you to their recommended sub: https://www.svsound.com/pages/system-builder
Countless awards, Best Buy badges, ‘sub of the year’ accolades, and dozens of glowing reviews attest to the phenomenon that is SVS’s entry level subwoofer duo.
It’s enough to make the competition green with envy! Handily, the labelling helps, because the PB series are ported, and the SB series are sealed, so you don’t need to delve into the spec list to understand which is which. https://www.svsound.com/collections/1000-series
Let’s take a look at four key points you need to think about when choosing between these two, or any subs for that matter…
How big is my room?
Let me tell you something right off the bat.
The sound quality performance you'll end up getting from a speaker will always depend on your room acoustics - particularly room dimensions and speaker positions.
The impact of the combination of these two is actually so strong that in most cases, it doesn't even make sense to utter a single word on sound quality without speaking of them.
This is also why it's not unusual to see completely different reviews of the same speaker.
In one case the speaker might be placed in a sweet spot inside the room and hence the user might be satisfied. In other cases the same speaker might be ill placed and hence user might even have returned it.
The point most people miss here is that it mostly isn't even about the engineering behind the speaker itself. It's about where you place the speaker inside which room.
So, in order to solve this problem, I've partnered with Acoustics and Audio Engineering PhD Andrea Cicero from AC Acustica and created Soundton - a simple, 2D, browser accessible online speaker placement calculator.
With Soundton, now there's a way to figure the sound quality of most speakers before you buy them.
Read more about its working principles at soundton.com/documentation/.
The end colormap provides you the locations with the best (green) and worst (red) acoustics.