Revel Owners Thread - Page 81

Yes, it's a bit of pain to switch amps but I did build a speaker switch panel using the quality parts to make the process easier. Now all I need to do is change the speaker jumper position between the two amps.

This set up gives me the best of solid state and tubes.

Well I decided not to go with the F30's but the good news is I found a great deal on a set of new F52's and a C52! I wanted the cherry finish but unfortunately they have the black ash finish but I just couldn't turn down the deal!

Congrats on the new speakers. The F52's are really sweet. If you're also into 2 channel, these will not dissapoint.

Thank you, I am very excited to go pick them up this weekend. My system is more set up for home theater but I do love music and that is why I was looking at the revels. Most of my music is on my hard drive. All flacs and other lossless codecs. I have a growing collection of 192khz and 96khz audio from HD-tracks a nice site. I don't really have good electronics for playing cd's so I have been looking at ways to stream my files to my denon receiver. I was using a sagetv server but it's flac playback is buggy so I have moved on to a popcorn hour machine. I think once I can upgrade my Denon with a good preamp with audiophile quality DAC's the flacs will really start to shine. The only thing I am worried about is the reviews for the revel speak about how unforgiving the revels are to electronics. They may start a whole new round of upgrades.

Nice!

I'd call Revels revealing rather than unforgiving. It may seem like a minor distinction, but its not like Revel makes decent sounding equipment sound bad. What they do is reveal the (sometimes very subtle) differences between decent, good, and superb equipment.

Example ... I was one of the Oppo BDP-83 early adopters and ended up sending it back because of its average analog audio. At the time, Oppo was putting no real effort into the analog outs. Sound wise, it was a step down from my 7 year old Universal DVD player and the Revels made that pretty darn obvious.

Just a quick question for you F52 and C52 owners. Have you ever had problems with your speakers causing Phase warnings from the Audyssey auto setup.

Well here they are and the eagles have never sounded so good! Though they make my 52" tv look small lol

Yes, I have. I just ignore them. I've already tested internal and external wiring so I know they are not physically out of phase. This is normal behavior as room interaction with the speakers may influence Audyssey results.

Hi everyone,

I have a question for you guys. I have a full Concerta 5.1 setup (F12/C12/M12 plus B120 sub) but i got a really good deal for a Performa S30. My room is fairly small, being 15x9 feet, but the actual listening place is more like 12x9 feet.
Is it a good idea to swap the M12 for the S30? I watch a lot of movies, and listen to music with the fronta and the sub. I'm using the M12 for music surround just when listening to concerts on bluray.

Would this be an upgrade, am I going to hear an improvement while watching movies?! I'm using parasound C2 and A52 amp, and of course planning later to upgrade to the performa line.

Thans for your help in advance.

Regards: Gustav

I've never heard the M12, but I do have the S30s. If we are only talking about movies, then I would say yes, for me, they would be an improvement. The M12 is monopole whereas the S30 is a select-able dipole/monopole. To me, movies are definitely more immersive when I set them to dipole mode.

I don't have much MC music to really do a good test on it so I can't really comment on which mode sounds better to me. I tried listening to both modes, but am still on the fence which I like better. The S30 is remotely dipole/monopole configurable so it's not difficult to A/B the two modes.

Just a quick update from Revel's Facebook page re Performa3 Series:
- The F308 has been canceled. They claimed the F208 was so good they decided there was no need for the F308.

- Previously announced prices are no longer valid. Revised pricing is being decided.

- Previously announced launch of June is now "Fall"

Does not surprise me on the release date. I can't remember the last time a Harman product was released on time, as originally scheduled.

Honestly, it doesn't surprise me... Although it makes me curious, what they are going to do with the MSRP's. The F208 was announced for 4500$, the F308 would have been 6 grand. Will they increase the price of the F208 ?! Because if they aren't it doesn't matter how good the speaker is, some people just won't consider it, because "it is too cheap". The most expensive Performa can't be 4500$... (F52 was 7800$ as I remember).

I remember that Kevin Voecks said once in an interview, that their dealers always ask for more expensive speakers, because the clients would love to be able to buy a Revel speaker, but at a higher price point.
And after that, he was asked, are they going to make a more expensive Ultima speaker? And his answer was: " If we cannot achive a better performance, we will never sell our customers a loudspeaker with tons of drivers, and a huge enclosure. We've done a lot of experiments, and we were unable to make a better speaker than the Ultima2 at any price point."

If you think twice, the fact that eventually they won't release the F308 mirrors the same philosophy. And I like this... Not the usual rip-off thing.

The Performa F32 cost 4500 or so when it was launched. It is so good IMHO there's no point in spending 3000 more on the F52. You have to go for the Ultimas in you reeeeally want or need a noticeably improvement in sound quality, construction materials and aesthetics.

The new Performa series might be pointing to a similar scenario.

I hope the new pricing is not too much more expensive than the previously announced prices.

I don't know, I've never heard the F52 or the F3. But on this very same forum, I've read a lot of opinions, and most of them stated, that the F52 is a much better speaker. It has a different tweeter, (Al vs Titanium god knows which is better) and more bass for stereo. But if I had to fork down the difference in price, I wouldn't pay almost twice as much too. Although If I had extensively A/B-d both of them, in my own home, I could change my mind.
But thats not going to happen, because our dealer is one of the worst ones, with an attitude, and of course bacause I bought most of my stufff used, it's a great way to spend less, and get more.

I haven't had much luck buying used speakers, due to either blown drivers or damage during shipping. I am not in a big city, so there is little to nothing available locally. I've been looking for used set of F32 for a long time and not found any for sale anywhere near me.

Ti should be better than Al. I've got two systems, one with Al tweeter and one with Ti. The Ti is certainly better. Although the Al is better now than original as I built a biased XO for that system. In fact I plan on buying a pair of Ti tweeters to replace those old Al tweeters.

The F52 is a much better speaker IMO and well worth the money. I would not buy the F32 again no matter how cheap it was. I owned the F32 and the M22 and the M22 was better than the F32, again IMO.

I finally got a chance to listen to the Salon II Friday. They seemed very neutral at all frequencies, no resonances in the vocal range. They were very articulate on vocals. I would not recommend for anyone looking for a "warm" or euphonic sound.

Not as much bass as I would have thought, but that may be because, unlike some speakers, they do not employ a mid-bass bump to make it seem like it has more bass than it really does. The bass, of course, could also have been limited by the room. They were being powered by two 500wpc Bryston monoblock amps, so that may account for some of the "sterile" nature of the sound.

The dealer is going to get in some Focals soon, and I am going to compare the "house" sound to the Revel.

I also disagree with the assessment of the F32 being so good, as compared to the F52. Don't get me wrong, the F32 is a great speaker. I had the chance to hear the F12 (Concerta), F32, & F52 all side by side. The F52 was so superior, it was amazing. It got REALLY interesting when hearing the F12 vs the F32.

I was always surprised that Revel didn't go back after the F52 and F12 were released, and do a running change to the F32 by putting in the waveguide tweeter. They could have called it a F32 MkII or something, and raised the price to compensate. The F12 seemed to have more in common with the F52, with the major difference being the cabinet quality and place of manufacture. I refer to the F12 as a "Poor Man's F52".

I agree, the whole thing is kind of annoying. I really thought the F208 was going to be the sweet spot of the lineup @ $4,500. The announced price of the F308 was $6,000. So my guess is that the revised pricing of the F208 will be somewhere between 5,000-6,000. My bet is that the center C208 will go from $1,700 to $2,199. Just a guess. Like i said, kind of annoying.

Have you seen the picture of the F208 next to the F52? The F52 is 44", and the F208 looks to be at least 2-4" higher.

I agree. I bought the F32's because the F12's I had were so great. They were not an upgrade. Those F12's really are great speakers and the waveguide tweeters on them and the F52's are very nice.

Why is everyone assuming that the price of the F208 is going to increase cos the F308 has been dropped? What does one have to do with the other? If one wants a more expensive speaker, you get a Studio2, or Salon2.

How do you (and any other members who have heard them both) feel the F12s compare to the M22s?

I realize that the F12s don't really have much (if any) deeper bass extension, but do have the tweeter waveguide, and will likely play louder at the same volume setting on the same amp, but I'm talking about a level matched comparison.

Also, how do the M12s stack up to the M22s?

There's not much talk here at AVS about the M12s for some reason, but I feel that they more than hold their own against competition such as the NHT Classic Three, Ascend Sierra, etc.

Because the loudspeaker business is all about price points. You know, that if you pay 4 times the price, you won't get 4 times the performance. But people need to know, that they own a speaker which was 8-12-25 or 100 grand.

Don't forget, Revel isn't a korean/chinese Loudspeaker company. They are in the Top-Tier if you don't count those ridiculously expensive Audiophile things which cost over 100k (although, those are often not much better). So they don't want to look like a company, whose most expensive middle series loudspeaker is just 4,5k. No one cares, if it is better than other speakers from KEF/B&W/Polk/etc. Because those manufacturers have speakers for 8 grand, while the Ultima starts at only 16-18 (?!) so there is going to be a huge gap, which is not good for the market

I'm working in the automobile industry, why do you think nowdays all the Premium manufacturers (BMW, Audi,Merc etc.) have at least 50 models (with all the engines, cabrios, roadsters, limousines, 3 sizes of SUVs, Tourings, small cars etc.) ? Because the more pricepoints you are able to cover, the more customers you are going to have.

And from the post of the Revel guy, it seems they were also shocked how good the F208 got, and I think they weren't able to distinguish the F308 in those fancy Double Blind tests. but if it is so good, they would have to be fools to sell them so cheap.

That's exactly right. It's about covering price points. I think two other factors will be at play here:

1.)Revel would seem to be a bit handicapped, at least initially, by the previously announced prices. I cannot see the F208 all of the sudden going for the previously announced price point ($6,000) of the now canceled F308. What I could see happening, is a price point for the F208 of $5-6k, and then in 12-18 months, there will be a price hike of $0.5-1.0k

2.)One also has to wonder if the performance of the new line was so good, that Revel wanted to raise the prices substantially. At that point, let's say 8-9k for the F308, it may have been possible that they felt that speaker would start to cannibalize sales of the Studio 2. Just a thought I had.

Hi Esox50,

I own the F32 and I have compared to the F52 side by side. I even compared these and the Ultima Studios. I agree with you. The F52 is a better speaker than the F32, particularly in terms of high freq extension...but the difference is not worth the 3000 exta bucks. Of course this is my POV.

On the contrary, the Studio is so good that it is very easy to recognize the price differences.

I recently talk to a dealer here in Santiago Chile who told me most people share this POV... at least in this country. As usual, it is a matter of tastes and ultimately of wealth. I could have bought the F52 but in the end I considered the F32 was a much better bang for the bucks. Now I've been thinking of those Ultima Studios but they are still out of my league.

Perhaps this might be the reason Revel decided to limit the new Performa series to the 208...

But the price point for the F208 has already been set, no matter how good it is. The fact that it is NOT the F308 means it is not worth of that increase.
Right, Revel is not a Korean company, but they are not built in the US either...try Mexico.