Revel, Paradigm, AV123,??? Ahhhhhh

You may also want to look at the swan d2.1se. They are not floor standers but are a simply incredible monitor and are currently on sale at theaudioinsider. Outstanding 2ch speaker, unbelievable amount of bass from a small speaker. The xpa will make them sing!

Because nothing is perfect we all hear things a little different so it would be difficult to
state which is better most of us will give you a bias choice especially if we own one of
those and that is to be expected because it sounds right to us but of those choices you
really can't make a bad one but I will throw my hat in the ring and say years later i'm
still happy with Paradigm Studio's.

The plus for AV123 is that they are on sale right now.

Best if you audition them all and pick the one you like. Go to AV123 forum and request an audition. Many will be willing to help you with that request. One thing about AV123 is that their items are not in stock due to extremely high demands. Are you willing to wait for 3 or so months for them?

The swans are also on sale. The 6.2s are supposed to be very good. I have the 5.1s and they are excellent HT speakers.

I had some F12's and they are great speakers. Check out the stereophile review on them.

One thing to keep in mind about the above three: AV123 has a miniscule R&D budget compared to Paradigm and Revel. There's no comparison. Read this interview with Kevin Voecks of Revel to see what I'm talking about.

Go with the Revel if you are doing 2-channel listening. The tweeter is from the previous Performa line and is very good. If you are concerned about a speaker that doesnt give you listening fatigue you might consider a good soft-dome speaker like the Dynaudio Excite series.

Revels are bad at theater? Is theater somehow different from music?



What are you saying? Tweeters made from 'hard' materials are fatiguing?

Whats the budget?

The Revels are exceptionally good at theater, better than most, because they design their speakers to sound the same on-axis and off-axis, and their drivers are built to handle gobs of power.

Theater is different than music. Many people that listen to theater only prefer a more forward-sounding speaker with an elevated midbass. If you are listening to ONLY movies this isnt necessarily a bad thing, BUT the original poster said he listens to 70% music and 30% theater. Therefore this type of speaker would not suit his listening habits, and hence the recommendation for Revels from the 3 listed brands, and also a recommendation for Dynaudio speakers because of their music performance.

ALL tweeters from hard materials are subject to resonances. You can either (a) help counteract this through very careful crossover design (b) use a material with better self-damping characteristics like beryllium. Unfortunately beryllium comes at a price and does not fit into the original poster's criteria in terms of price range.

I think the point was if only listening to 2 channel, don't buy less than Revel. But Revel is also equal at doing HT.


My experience is the Al, Ti Be tweeters, among others, that Harman speaker companies use are not fatiguing. Of the two JBL models I own, 30 year old L212 and 2 year old PT800, which is very much like the Revel Gem2, I can sit listening to for hours.

I have never listened to AV123 nor have I heard a Revel that I liked. I would choose Paradigm out of your list.

As you can see there are as many opinions as brands. You need to listen and make your purchasing dession on what you like. Even if not one of those that you listed.

Sound is sound, right? That's how all the NRC guys talk about it.



But if you do "a", you won't hear any resonances.

Just a guess but Paradigm has changed the design several times and v1,v2,
v3,v4 and now v5 some like to have the latest greatest so they sell for half
off or better to recoup the cost of new just read how many have upgraded
in this forum or they bypass the studio upgrade and go to the sigs.

I work on many brands of speakers as part of my business (approx. 250 audio systems a year) and have worked with many of the products discussed here along with many others. The list of brands I have heard is at the bottom of this web page. I would not discount the ability of a small manufacturer to make very high quality products. The absolute best products I have heard are not from any of the large manufacturers. These include MBL 101's, Aerial 20T's, Vandersteen Model 5A and the Von Schweikert VR-11's. I would also rate Salk's as some of the best for the money. Revel is my personal favorite though of those distributed by a major manufacturer and I am a huge fan of the F30's at their price point.

While I greatly respect Toole and others in the field they are constrained by their business model with the quality of product they can sell at a given price in a retail store. Manufacturers like Salk who bypass this overhead can put higher quality components in their products at a given price point. It is a fact that driver, cabinet and crossover quality are a significant component of quality sound. Small manufacturers can also do things that the big boys may not be willing to do like sell something much more expensive with much higher quality or use drivers that they do not want to manufacture.

Product quality for a given manufacturer may also not be a constant. For example I prefer the previous Revel line over this years. Other manufacturers whose products I have disliked can suddenly be very good and some who were once great are now poor. In the end I find that speaker quality is an ever changing thing.

Even though I hear and measure a wider variety of systems than most identifying the absolute best speaker at a given price point is an elusive thing. Each of us has different preferences and room situations. A given manufacturer that makes some great speakers may sell some that are not so good. Given technologies will perform better than others in specific situations and the quality of a specific manufacturer or product may be more variable than you are aware of.

That's what I've always thought as well, that's why I chose the speakers I own.

Sound is sound correct, however most theater listeners prefer a more pronounced top-end and mid-bass. Therefore some speakers cater more to that preference than others, Klipsch is the one that comes to mind the most.

In theory you wont hear any of the resonances because you are essentially brick-walling the driver, but my understanding is that steep-slope crossover design require quite a bit more skill to implement properly.

My 2 cents...A couple of months ago I was auditioning speakers. I listened to the Revel F12's,F32's, and Paradigm 100's. The 12's were good but the 32's sounded mighty fine. I loved the soundstage and the twetter was crystal clear but not too bright. The Paradigm 100's sounded ok to me. I just didn't like the way the metal tweeter sounded.

I have never heard the RS1000 but, I do own the 750 ninja masters and have owned the 450's and 550's. I have always liked the smooth sound of Rockets. Speaking of smooth sound, you might check out some Dynaudio Focus 220's. Very nice sounding speaker IMO.

Dan

Kevin Voecks says Revel Ultima is cost-no-object. "that's the only thing Dr. Harman said at the inception of the company - Make the world's best loudspeakers. No restrictions on the kind of technology."

To quote Kevin Voecks from an April, 2004 interview:

"Sumit: The Salon is the most expensive loudspeaker in the Ultima series. Correct?

Kevin: That's correct.

Sumit: What do they cost?

Kevin: Salons are $20,000/pair approximately.

Sumit: If someone had said that you could design a loudspeaker that cost twice as much, could you have designed a better loudspeaker at that time?

Kevin: No. We actually have been getting demands for more expensive loudspeakers for years and we have absolutely resisted just putting in a lot more drivers and making bigger speakers and collecting money. We'll only make more expensive loudspeakers when there's a reason: they have to be more expensive in order to sound better."

http://www.hometheaterhifi.com/volum...ks-4-2004.html


Not sure about putting higher quality components in... Even if they do, what the lose is the engineering economies of scale. Small companies like Salk don't have other speaker lines with which to share resources like anechoic chambers, stereolithograph machines, listening labs.

While I do agree with many of the points brought up: driver, cabinet, and crossover making up a large part of the resulting sound quality, it is also a fact that an equally large and arguably larger component is implementation, as we are talking about a "system" or parts working in harmony with one another. In it of themselves each part does not do anything until its integrated in a system.

This same parts logic is applied to CD players and digital source components all the time where people associate a better DAC chip with better quality source component (many threads on AVS with these exact debates), when in fact it has little to do with it. Great for companies like Denon that uses the latest Burr-Brown DAC thats newer than what Bryston uses. But at the end of the day, the Bryston is a better player because the implementation is superior.

Also in terms of quality, most people are talking about driver quality only as it applies to a set retail price. Example: I buy a Scanspeak Revelator Ring Radiator and their new sandwich-cone woofer to build a bookshelf. I spend $650 on the drivers and $400 on the crossovers. Using the quality and price of parts logic, $1000 in raw parts mean that Im getting a better speaker than a company who makes its own stuff and markets a speaker for $3000 because they couldnt possibly be using that expensive of parts.

Problem is that companies like Revel arent in the business of selling parts so you cant exactly compare speakers based on the parts quality alone logic. And if they were to sell their parts as a business they would cost similar to other parts in their class, except with they would have pretty chromed magnets because the visual element is only applicable in OEM drivers (Dynaudio sells its old Esotar tweeter for $1000 whereas the most expensive Scanspeak is only $400).

My original argument does not suggest "small" manufacturers cant be competitive. On the contrary much innovation through various industries is spawned from small companies. Also as I pointed out in terms of sheer volume, most speaker manufacturers would be considered small. But, I do contest the validity of ONLY small manufacturers can make good products, or all the big manufacturers are ripping people off with expensive prices because their parts dont have a tangible expensive retail price.

I've got a pair of F32's and a pair of M22's. I'm using some Magnepan 1.6's.

The F12's were a fantastic sounding speaker. I'm not a big paradigm fan as they always sounded a bit to lush/warm to me. I bought the F12's when I moved to FL and didn't have room for the Magnepan 3.6R's I had owned for a number of years. The F12's were great so I bought some F32's. I then bought some M22's thinking they might be better in the room I was in. I will say that for the money, the F12's have got to be one of the best values in audio. And the M22's are one helluva monitor with bass you have to hear to believe. In the end though, I like what Magnepan does with vocals better than the Revels so I've gone back to them now that I've moved again and have a bigger room.

I never said part quality was the only factor only that it was significant. Being an engineer I completely understand other factors are at play.

That is a fine goal, but I would say they have failed. I am not saying I do not like Revel products in general, but I do not find them to be the world's best at this time. Having a goal and actually achieving it are two different things. It is easy to find examples of this with various businesses.