What is the forums opinion of SVS subs?

I have had one SVS subwoofer long ago and didn’t have a good experience with the company. The unit needed service and they really didn’t want to do it. They wanted me to buy another subwoofer from them. Years later a local store in Ohio was selling SVS and stopped carrying the brand because SVS was selling direct, which meant the company could not make money??? I have Rythmik now and if I were to buy another subwoofer it would be Rythmik or Rel.

I had a total of around a half dozen SVS subs in succession with each one failing and being replaced under warrantee. One actually caught on fire internally and filled my room with acrid smoke which was choking. With each new sub, I tried a different offering paying the difference if needed so that I could see if there were better options to rounding out a muddy sound I kept hearing. Nothing I tried was satisfactory to me. I then brought home a monster Paradyme 15 inch power house sub which cost a small fortune and was lent to evaluate by a HiFi store. It was even worse! It was like SVS muddy sound on steroids and the dishes would fall out of the shelves in the kitchen due to excessive power.

I got my money back on the SVS subs, sent the Paradyme packing homebound and bought a couple of subs from Axiom who makes the Bryston speakers which I love. Voila! Perfectly balanced bass, musical, no nodes as they can easily be phased with the controls and best of all, no distortion at all with their DSP protection! I now have a total of 4 of their subs in my large room and the music is second to none. Keep in mind that I am all about music, not HT stuff; but if I do play a film, they are still fabulous. I actually opened up the subs to view the internals and they sport Bryston power amps inside :) massive linear power supplies with a huge toroid transformer. And very robust drivers all made in Canada.

I suppose this is all consistent as Axiom owns Bryston. The secret to great musical subs I found is to set the crossover frequency up high. I use the 150hz. setting and I cut off the lows at my main speakers (Bryston Model T Signature series) at around 80 hertz. I let the subs do the heavy lifting yet migrate up into upper bass/lower mids and have the big main speakers roll off below 80. It works very well. I find the most pleasing bass is in the upper ranges and this way the subs support it and the mains contribute.

I went to a commercial audio seminar in the mid 70's where Altec was demonstrating their new line array (stacked subs) for commercial installations.
To this day I get goose bumps when I think of the sound I heard during the several days of that meeting. It was set up in a ballroom of the hotel and I swear it rocked the entire building. It was a four channel system with 33,000 watts of power into very efficient Altec drivers. They were using a four channel mix down from the original tracks for Neil Diamond's "Love At The Greek" live concert album.

Unfortunately, I was never able to incorporate what I learned there in any of the commercial systems that I built, but the concept has stayed with me all of these years.

Being retired, I now have a house with a good sized room for listening to music (15'x46'x8').  I wanted to try the concept of the stacked subs that I heard so many years ago, but I had to stick to a budget. I started with two of the SVS SB1000-Pro subs in order to check them out. I was happy with the basic construction, the sound, and the easy set-up via the SVS app, (and the cost). So I added a second pair and started my stack of subs. After a few months I added the third pair to the stack.
Each pair I added gave my system an expanded sound stage, better imaging and a a more rich, fuller and detailed sound. I've been listening to this set-up for the last couple of years with no issues with the subs.

While the SB1000-Pro subs from SVS have both high level (speaker level inputs) and single ended low level inputs, I decided to use the SE inputs to feed them.

I feed the mains through the balanced output of my DAC. From the single ended output of the DAC I feed a separate pre-amp which in turn feeds the subs.

I'm sure the sound of the music I'm listening to wouldn't satisfy the most discriminating audiophile out there. But WOW, it has certainly has increased my listening enjoyment way beyond my expectations. (All for less than the price of one of the top rated subs.)

I have been using a 1/3rd octave RTA left over from my commercial audio days to set levels and to check overall FR of the system as I have it set-up and am pretty happy with the response at the LP in my room. I had a peak at about 100hz but have been able to even that out using the PEQ built in to the DAC.
I'm currently learning REW so that I can see the response more accurately.
The experimentation has been fun, and the learning continues...
But there is always the question... what would a fourth pair on the stack do???

I’ve had a used SB2000 in my home theater for 7 years or so and have never had a hiccup or problem. This is the first I’ve heard of SVS products having problems or any criticism of their customer service. You could also look at the Rhytmic F12 that’s just a little more expensive than the SB3000 but is by all accounts excellent and probably even a bit better than the SB3000 overall — they’re about the same size but the F12 goes down to 14Hz (-3dB) and weighs about 10 lbs. more FWIW. The downside is that they don’t offer convenient integration software like SVS so it’d take more work on your part to optimize them for your system, room, and tastes. Always trade offs.
https://www.rythmikaudio.com/F12.html

@jac616 Interesting setup.  Have you tried just using four subs in the four corners of the room as like in a swarm array?  Would be interesting to hear if there are any any improvements (or not) through any added room node cancellation, evenness, etc.