How Things Got Started

As Audio Advice approached our 4th decade of business, we started thinking about how we could bring the full Audio Advice experience to a wider range of music and home theater lovers. Sadly, we were seeing stores like Audio Advice disappearing across the country, leaving a complete void of trusted local audio/video stores where you can get great advice on how to best improve your system.

In 2015 we decided to add a national ecommerce side to our business and invested heavily into completely redoing our website, hiring a world class ecommerce team, and expanding our warehouse space to prepare for more business. Our goal was to give everyone in the country the same great advice and experience they could get in our local showrooms.

We initially decided to start with great audio systems focused on turntables and high-resolution digital systems. We quickly sensed that there was a huge void of knowledgeable analog dealers across the country, and it turned out to be true. As customers discovered the new Audio Advice site and interacted with our people, we quickly became the choice of many putting together a great vinyl playback system. Of course, just like the store experience, we wind up talking on the phone with almost all of these customers to learn more about their systems.

In 2019, we made the decision to take the next step and dive into home theater, adding a huge selection of home theater brands and products to our site. The same thing happened as with vinyl, and we started having tons of conversations with people interested in either their first home theater or improving their existing one.

We are now sitting in the spring of 2020, less than 4 years after launching our new venture and we’re shipping hundreds of boxes across the country each day.

During 2019, as we were talking to people across the nation interested in home theater systems, we started to notice that many were very enthusiastic about one particular brand that Audio Advice did not currently sell. The brand was SVS, a company known for their massive subwoofers, who had also recently gotten into the home theater speaker category.

We decided to reach out to SVS and found out that the driving force behind the brand was an old friend we knew from decades ago. One conversation led to another, and after a CES meeting with some listening tests and some creative thinking on where to put even more speakers and subs in our showrooms, we are happy to welcome SVS to the Audio Advice family!

SVS History

SVS started out in the mid 1990’s with an idea to create products that had very high performance but with much lower price points than what you would normally expect to pay. They started out building subwoofers and made some huge subwoofers that, while they did sound pretty amazing for the money, were too big for most living rooms. Imagine a 3-4’ tall huge 16-20” diameter tube!

In 2011, Gary Yacoubian saw potential in the SVS idea and raised some capital to purchase the company. Gary had a long history in the consumer electronics industry having been a major part of Myer Emco, a chain of stores in the DC area in the 1990’s, and later working at Monster Cable. If you have ever been lucky enough to meet Gary, he is one of the most positive people you will ever meet! He is just fun to get to know and talk to.

The new team at SVS decided to take the original idea and expand upon it. They felt great sound could move you and add delight and fun to your life. At Audio Advice, we could not agree more with that! The other part of their equation was the stigma that to buy great sound, you had to be wealthy. SVS wanted to flip that equation upside down and produce products that would seriously surprise you with how great they sound for the price you pay.

They hired some of the best engineers in the industry and set out to take the great performance of those early subwoofers, but put them in a cabinet that was not quite so large, while improving even further on their audio performance.

The rest, as they say, is history. SVS has gone on to become one of the most popular subwoofers on the planet. In the last few years, they have applied their philosophy to speakers and accessories with huge success.

SVS Subwoofer Design Philosophy

When the new team at SVS set out to take those original monster subwoofers to a new level, they came up with 5 performance attributes that they wanted to deliver on. These same five attributes apply today. We have to say, these are pretty lofty goals in the subwoofer world, but SVS has nailed it.

• Have great low frequency extension. This is pretty much a must for any serious subwoofer. It needs to be able to reach down to the lowest frequencies to do a great job.
• Be able to produce those frequencies at the highest sound pressure levels. This attribute is a whole lot harder than the first one. To do this requires a serious subwoofer driver and amp, along with a great cabinet design. But when you pull it off, you start grinning when you’re sitting in your home theater!
• Be accurate in terms of frequencies being produced and not being produced. This one is pretty easy to do with attribute 1, but really difficult to achieve and also hit attribute 2. This means your sub design can have no boom at all - just pure accurate bass.
• Have speed and control in transients to stop and start reproducing bass according to the actual program content. We love this attribute. Great subwoofers have this and it's what distinguishes the best ones from the mediocre ones. Real-life music is fast with no overhang. Again, this one is pretty easy to do with 1 and 3, but not 2. Hats off to SVS for pulling this off with the ability to make you grin when you are slammed with a special effect, while in the next session, hear the texture in an upright bass.
• Blend seamlessly with full-range speakers. This is the goal of all great subwoofers, to fill in that last bottom octave without ever having you feel like a subwoofer is there calling attention to itself.

With the drive SVS had to meet all of these attributes, you can easily see why they have developed such a loyal customer base, which we started to realize with all of our customer phone calls.

SVS Overview

You can check out our more in-depth overview of SVS subwoofers here, or their speakers here, but you can be sure SVS has a subwoofer for just about any application and price range. From their entry-level $499 model to their huge PB16 Ultra (it weighs 174 pounds!), they all adhere to their design philosophy. What is pretty cool is the fact that their very top of the line model is $2,499 with a 16” driver, app control, and huge amplifier. That’s pretty impressive in today's subwoofer world. Another aspect about SVS we connected with is their philosophy on dual subwoofers. At Audio Advice we have always believed two subs are better than one and SVS will even help you achieve this by giving you a price break when you buy most of their subwoofers two at a time!

Their new Prime series of home theater speakers are starting to win awards all over the world for their great price/performance ratio. These are just like their famous subwoofers, offering a whole lot of value for the money. Their Prime Elevation speakers at $400 a pair are also pretty cool for adding Dolby Atmos to an existing theater.

Finally, they have some really cool accessories that can work with almost any system. We were especially impressed with their Soundpath Subwoofer Isolation System that starts as low as $49 for the set.

We will have a good variety of their speakers and subwoofers in both of our Audio Advice locations and all of them will be available on audioadvice.com.

With SVS now being part of the Audio Advice family, we welcome you to come in and check out their lineup in our Raleigh, Charlotte, or Wilmington showrooms. Now, we just need to find room in our warehouse to stock these new favorites!

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