RATING
I HAVEN’T yet decided what to call the new genus of streaming-on-board powered stereo speakers. Streakers? Speamers? Whatever you call them, active DSP speakers, with amps, digital converters and crossovers, and of course streaming capabilities built right in, are officially now a thing. SVS has recently upgraded its original example, the Prime Wireless, to Pro status with larger cabinets and woofers for enhanced bass extension, the addition of an eARC-compatible HDMI input, a new IR remote controller, enhanced front-panel display, plus improved streaming via Wi-Fi, Apple Airplay 2 and Chromecast. But in this newly hot product category, features and specs alone won’t bear away the bell; let’s see what kind of game the Prime Wireless Pros bring to the field.
At heart, the SVS’ are an active two-way monitor, with separate 50-watts Class D amplifiers for each woofer and tweeter. Digital-to-analog conversion for all signals including incoming analog ones, and DSP processing—which includes the crossover function—is 24-bit/192 kHz. Eliminating the speaker-level crossovers (a notorious power-sink and nonlinearity gumption trap) is one of the prime virtues of powered speakers that use a digital crossover (some designs still use passive crossovers).
The Prime Wireless Pros house all the electronical doin’s in one cabinet, which is fixed as the right-channel member. This sends discrete, amplified-and-crossed-over woofer and tweeter output to its passive, left-channel fraternal twin via an included, roughly 9-foot-long mini-4-pin cable.
An obvious limitation of this
