Revel Owners Thread

Since there doesn't seem to be a thread dedicated to this fine speaker line, and I am now a Revel F-52 owner I thought it would be a good idea to start an owner's thread for these speakers.

As an introduction Revel was the speaker line of the former Madrigal company which was acquired by the Harman Specialty Group, the high end division of Harman International.

The Revel line is most heavily influenced by two well - known designers, Dr. Floyd Toole who earned his reputation at Canada's NRC, where much of the science of modern speaker design was laid out (and where many well-known Canadian speaker companies got their start) and by Kevin Voecks who has won respect for designs at Mirage and Snell prior to coming to Revel.

The F-52 I own is the latest generation of the high end model in the Performa line; the middle range betwen the Revel Concertas and Ultimas.

June 2, 2011. Since I wrote this first post in 2011 I have added more Revel models to my collection. These are:

A pair of I30's purchased used. I currently have these in storage however I recently have decided to install these in my kitchen.

A pair of M-22's which form my bedroom stereo system. These in conjunction with a Squeezebox server form a truly wonderful alarm clock.

A pair of Revel Ultima Studio 2's which are replacing the F-52's I have had for 5 years now.

Edit Jan 10 2012: I have sold my Performa 52's, and there is now a new generation - the Performa 3's. See this

Gotcha on the spelling.

Before I decided to buy into the Revels I auditioned a fair number of speakers - I found it harder to get an audition for Dali or Dynaudio yet those brands seem to be mentioned at least as much if not more.

It may be that Revel isn't thought of as much as a lot of brands simply because the brand hasn't existed that long.

I know my dealer isn't that thrilled about the Concerta - I think he sees it as a sign that Revel isn't as committed to the higher end models (i.e. Ultimas) as he would like which he thinks should have been refreshed before the lower end models were.

I think right now sales of the Ultimas would have to be hampered by people deciding to wait for the new model to come out.

I haven't listened to the F-12, but I was definitely considering buying the F-32 instead of the F-52. Now that I have had the F-52 at home I am pretty sure I would have been perfectly happy with the F-32 also. But that is not to say I have any remorse about the F-52. It is a spectacular speaker that I am sure I will keep for a long time.

That sort of parallels my own assesment - I auditioned 803Ds during my search, and ended up deciding on the F-52s. The 803Ds were good - but I thought the Revels resolved things a bit better.

The new Salon / Studio look quite interesting. From what can tell they will work in quite a few more rooms than the old versions. It is also interesting because my dealer thought that only the studio model was going to remain after the redesign.

I can't wait for the reviews to trickle in.

Not exactly a subjectivist, is he?

His comments about most people preferring the same speaker in DBT are quite interesting.