Once announced on the net, SVEN Royal 2R Stereo Speaker system was immediately and almost unanimously qualified as a long-awaited, lastly-implemented and doomed-to-success novelty. The grounds for such qualifications are more than clear. Let it be remembered that following the 2008 results we together with many other publishers qualified SVEN Royal 2 as one of the best models on multimedia market within its price range, next to, naturally, microlab SOLO-6 system. Indeed, SVEN Royal 2 model may be termed as one of the most successful and balanced speaker systems in the whole company history. The speakers turned to be fairly showy by appearance and their musical potential has approached very closely the tops ever attainable in multimedia sector. The emergence of such products made us confidently qualify the top multimedia systems as fully complying with the initial Hi-Fi level. Meanwhile, the next 2009 year we succeeded to put under test the revised Microlab version with cordless RC (SOLO-6C) which accounts for a slightly long pause taken by SVEN company. Nevertheless, no one doubted that Royal 2R will also get the cordless RC feature. Moreover, with the previous appearance fully preserved, the speaker system became more powerful thus revealing a great deal more large-scale revisions.

Package Contents

The speaker system comes with a conventional set of contents including:

• two speaker systems;
• remote control with batteries;
• 2 RCA – 2 RCA signal cable;
• 2 RCA – 3.5 mm signal cable;
• audio cable;
• operation manual and warranty card.

Appearance and design

The appearance of the speakers is left practically unchanged save for, maybe, a pair of details not observable to the naked eye. The cabinets are made of 15 mm thick MDF covered with vinyl film from outside. The front panels are thicker. They are painted black and covered with mirror-finished varnish coating. Protective nets are still not provided, and rightly so, as Royal 2R appearance is truly impeccable.

Drivers proved to be well familiar to us. The bass and medium frequencies are under the responsibility of the original driver whose cone is 115 mm in diameter and made of glass fibers. Suspension is made from soft rubber and has a spectacular bullet-shaped cap in the centre. The tweeter is a most conventional one: it’s an ordinary dome inch-size driver with a textile diaphragm.

The speakers are controlled by means of a button panel on one of the speakers. The button panel has three main buttons (more, less, function), LED and remote control signal receiver. Though the user will now enjoy remote control feature, nevertheless, even since so much time of using the button panel it still needs some effort to get used to it.

The speakers are interconnected with rather good terminal screws. Signal is fed to one of stereo inputs of RCA type. Now there are two of them selectable with electronic switchboard.

The remote control unit as the main novel feature is implemented in small cabinet made of matt plastic with rubber buttons. The workmanship as well as set of functions are most conventional. The remote control unit enables general volume, treble and bass balance adjustment, toggling of outputs, turning speakers ON/OFF.

Design

With appearance being so apparently similar to that of the previous version electronic part happened to be largely modified. The transformer is still a toroidal one. It’s hard to say anything about its power as it bears only EMT-B012029 marking and output voltages specification (2 20 V). Its power must be 100…120 VA judging by appearance. Royal 2R amplifier is built not on one LM4766T microchip as before, but on two TDA7294 microchips at once. This makes statements about 50 W per channel against 40 W well substantiated.

Digital control is made on the already familiar R2S15904SP chip. It was present also in previous versions, but now it functions together with some unrecognizable controller. In general, we see nothing substantially new in this respect – the same electronics plus RC unit just hooked to it.

The crossover is totally rebuilt. In contrast to previous versions with typical high-order filters (second order for low frequencies, third order for highs) now we see implemented most simple first-order solutions. The way all this reflects on sound quality we’ll analyze further on.

Practical testing and Listening

Tone controls operate correctly enough providing a good deep response for both attenuation and ramp-up.

Sound volume is blameless as it is good enough. SVEN Royal 2R is fully capable of covering even large premises as sound pressure is indeed very high. For example, the following curve shows distortions as a function of frequency at 85 dB (A) volume and 1 m distance. You can see that non-linear distortion factor exceeded 1% only in the lowest section and a pair of points nearest to it. Such performance may be qualified as decent.

Z-response appears utterly plain as is natural for phase-inverter speakers with non-complicated filters. The proper phase inverter is preset to the frequency slightly under 50 Hz, though the speaker sound reproduction threshold is apparently somewhat higher.

According to our personal impressions the speakers are sounding pretty well. Unfortunately, we failed to make direct comparison with previous Royal 2 speakers, therefore we’ll omit this part of the test. Renewed version speaker sound range is characterized by a pretty good attack and a smooth middle. Bass is tough. Highs are relatively clear. Detailed reproduction level ensures good performance when reproducing both classical music and more complicated «metallic» tracks. The scene shaping is good enough as sound sources are clearly positioned in space. In general, we appreciate sound reproduction quality as high enough; this appreciation may be deemed as more than decent for multimedia speaker system.

Conclusion

As a result, we can state that SVEN Royal 2R is not slightly modified version of already known speakers with mere addition of remote control feature. This is a substantially rebuilt speaker system equipped with new amplifier and filters. And this fact is doubtlessly agreeable to us because it is the evidence of right and proper attitude of developers trying to make their best product even more convenient and practicable. Due to a long time span it is hard to say something of actual sounding differences, nevertheless, they do exist. The novelty quality level is not too much inferior to that of the previous version that’s why we recommend it as a universal option for demanding listeners even in 2012 year realia.