Big Screen, Big Speakers
It was RBH Sound of Salt Lake City, Utah that won over our ears during the Audio Advice LIVE 2022 weekend. Showing their 92-inch tall modular loudspeakers, along with a most magnificent Sony ES Series projector doing its best to heat up a large lightcatcher from Stewart Filmscreen.
Reporting by Eric Franklin Shook
I’m no home theater nerd, so I can’t tell you much of anything useful when it comes to Sony projection or ambient light rejecting movie screens from Stewart Filmscreen. So I won’t even try. But I will say this, both of these companies win major awards from the most critical publications and societies in the field, and do so quite often.
RBH Sound on the other hand, well there again I wish I could tell you that I’ve listened to their products at countless audio shows throughout the years, but that’s not the case. I’ve seen their products covered somewhat in a few print publications here and there over the last two decades, and I’ve read about them in audio forums back when I found that sort of thing useful.
This was my first physical listen to the RBH brand, and I have to say, it was mind blowing.
Signature SV Reference Series
The 92-inch tall SVTRS-FRS full range passive loudspeaker is a combination of two SV‑831R modular monitor speakers and four SV‑1212NR subwoofers.
Notable Specs:
- Proprietary reference high-excursion 12-inch aluminum cone subwoofers
- Proprietary 8-inch aluminum-cone mid-bass woofers arranged in a format designed to reduce sound interference when compared to a standard straight array, we call it “dispersion averaging alignment”
- Air Motion Transformer (AMT) tweeter utilizing a flexible, ultralight-weight aluminum diaphragm that is carefully folded and then suspended in a highly saturated magnetic field
- Passive crossover networks for external amplification are built-in
- For safety steel plates on the rear securely hold the SV-831R and SV-1212NR cabinets together
- All housed in high-gloss cabinets finished with eight layers of hand-polished polyester paint
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Was this the best sound at the show?
There was a real discussion had between Jameson Mourafetis, Jonah Shook, and myself after our third go at this home theater exhibit.
Considering two thirds of the demonstration was featuring musical content, could we make the claim that this experience was “as good if not better” than anything else we heard at the show? Was it the best sound at the show?
Yes, there was a center channel and satellites from RBH surrounding us like a wagon train under attack, but when it was all tallied up; the quality of the sound, the smoothness, the feeling that this was listenable at extremely high volumes without fatigue or giving up detail. It all just worked flawlessly.
