Dynamic Duo

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CERTAIN GEOGRAPHIES have long-held associations with loudspeaker design. Maidstone, Kent or Steyning, Sussex in Britain (KEF and Bowers & Wilkins, respectively) for example. Or Cambridge, Massachussetts (Acoustic Research/KLH/Advent) and Los Angeles, California (JBL) here in the United States.

And Youngstown, Ohio? Youngstown is the home of SVS, an all-American speaker-maker whose origins lie a few miles up the road in the even-more-small-town midwest. SVS got its start by devising surprisingly effective but highly affordable tubular subwoofers (I’ve long wondered if the originals were built within “construction tubes” sourced from the local home center), descendants of which the firm still manufactures today, alongside numerous more conventionally rectilinear, highly regarded subs. But SVS has long since branched further up the audio-frequency tree with fuller-range models, including the Prime Pinnacle, a new flagship tower for its Prime series.

The Prime Pinnacle is a relatively slim, deep tower that follows a fairly familiar