Revel Owners Thread - Page 91

No, I did not.

Dennis

lets hear what you have to say about the 105,106's.

super interested because the way they go about imaging is so (i want to swear) evident that even fred flinstone would understand how they go about trying to reproduce the analog signal and how they straight up simply cut out when moving from side to side. i'm offended and wonder if some people are dealers of revel or just like giving people a hard time aka:troll. I am often dumb founded as to why some people sit around on this forum and give people the advise they do and ponder and ponder and ponder some peoples credibility.

pay $1700 for a pair of speakesr than can actually sound like a real life musician or pay $1500 for a pair of speakers that quite simply can't, or any where near it. Not hard to figure out in my book
too many fools on this forum
though i suspect some people know genuine when they see it.

^^^^ The whole point of the WG is to widen the sweet spot. So as I said before, and agreeing with you, something was wrong!
If everything was right, there is NO way moving ones head 6" wipes out part of the audio spectrum.
In my setup, I can move my head at least one foot before I lose the sweet spot, and then it only pulls the phantom center image.

And I don't care what the dealer had marked on the floor, something was not right. In the connections, placement, whatever.

Not sure why you'd be offended, sounds like you are taking this a little personally. The fact remains you are the only person so far who has posted this opinion. You are entitled to this opinion.

But the fact also remains that two people, one of whom I've known for 30 years and I assure you is not a Revel dealer, have listened to the new Performa3 side by side with the Ultima2 and were both very surprised how close it is In terms of performance.

I can only conclude you either a.)don't like the Revel "house sound" or b.)have a dealer that had a technical issue (be it a bad set of speakers or set up improperly). It's ok, really, it is. This is not a big deal.

not sure if i'm offended lol. Just people continue to tell me something is wrong with the tweeter when there clearly wasn't. maybe revel imaged the bookshelves completely different from the big towers. I was already let down by the performa3's so to hear that they are close to the ultima2's is an even bigger disappointment. Buuuuut i have a feeling there is no way they do. Seriously the tweeter "ON THE BOOKSHELF" sounded like a soft dome tweeter.

Until someone else who has heard the M105s, all this discussion about right or not is speculative. I know from experience that Kefs have a bigger sweet spot due to the Uni-Q driver configuration than other designs but this sounds excessive to me also. I know that some have used extreme toe-in (cross in front of listening position) to create a wide sweet spot - example JBL Synthesis 1400 Arrays I heard had almost an entire couch as a sweet spot. What we need is other feedback from those listening to the M105s with imaging and sweet spot in mind. Until then, don't see the point continuing this.

"Offended" was the word you used in your previous post!?!?!?!?!?

Yes, Ultima2 sucks and is sooo disappointing as well; Im glad you straightened that out for all of us. Kevin Voecks is one of the worst speaker designers in the history of the business. Revel is not part of Harman Int'l, a company which hasn't provided any funding at all for a state of the art facility to design and test new designs. There is a massive conspiracy to sell you terrible speakers at ridiculous prices.

It's probably time for you to move on...

Then by all means, please feel free to immediately exit this thread if not the entire forum itself just because you are offended that nobody else shares your experience and/or you can't articulate well enough what exactly it is you are trying to describe. We don't want to keep you against you will and no one is begging you to stay.

I, for one, did not say there was anything wrong with the tweeters. Actually YOU DID, saying it sounded like a soft dome!
I said there had to be something wrong, which would mean anything, being YOU keep saying you lost part of the sound only moving your head 6". And I am telling you that is NOT possible unless something is wrong, be it a reversed polarity, placement, or whatever. And that is not saying the tweeter is bad.

Gents, Studio2s or Salon2s are some of the speaker systems I'm toying with changing to at some point (chronic upgradeitis).

I finally got to listen to some Salon2s about a month ago and was surprised with my impressions. I'd like to run them past you and see if any of you had similar impressions the first time you heard them (or the Studio2s).

As a baseline, I've had Gallo Ref 3s and 3,5s for the past 8 years.

What I wasn't expecting was that the sound was so....unremarkable. I've been struggling to find the right word to describe my initial impression and that was the best I could come up with. There was just nothing I could put my finger on and say "wow, I really like that" or "wow, that doesn't sound right". I suppose what I should take away from that is that they are neutral to a fault, and I may not be accustomed to hearing that.

I thought the imaging was very good laterally but perhaps not as layered front to back as I've heard before. In any event it was very good.

Is this an unusual reaction to have when first hearing these speakers?

Then you missed a few.

That was just from a quick off the cuff search. I could probably keep finding more, but I think it's now clear that there were more than one.

My experience is just the opposite. When I auditioned Gallos years ago, I thought they were ordinary at best.
When I auditioned the Salon2, I knew I was hearing a great speaker.
And you are right, Salon2 are neutral. Which is what makes them so good.
As to how deep a soundstage gets depends on placement and source material.

To be clear, I did not think they sounded ordinary. Ordinary means typical or average. For example, their LF response was certainly not ordinary. But even given the extension I heard, I have heard speakers that seem to move more air with low bass.

When I say "unremarkable', I mean literally unremarkable. There was nothing that seemed accentuated or lacking.

i did not say the ultima's sucked. Someone said that their dealer said they sounded very close. I had a hard time believing that and by that i mean i had a feeling the ultima's are on a totally different level.
After giving some more time to settle my thoughts on the speaker i could see how they could be close to each other.
I actually think the performa3's sounded quite amazing . I was not a fan of the depthless imaging but have changed my mind on that and now could see how in the right environment
they would be bar none spectacular. I did not like that the tweeter did not get energetic but if it did, the tweeter would not compliment the rest of the sound. I did like that
the tweeter never once sounded off. The psb's that i heard had a titanium tweeter and at times i was screaming for it to stop trying.

I did not check to see whom it was that said that there was something wrong with the tweeter but there was two people.
And i do apologize for getting tempered up last night...i was up till 6:30 last night..this morning with my friend Yuengling.
This morning i went to correct myself for last night and had chosen to say that "i am not sure if i'm offended" and by that i meant i that i was unsure if people were people were saying that i was wrong with my assessment
or if they were saying that they could comprehend what i was saying and that speaker placement was the culprit. My confusion came because of the simple fact that i could not comprehend how it could be
the speaker placement because of how they go about imaging so i took it in a negative way.
Very much apologize

crazy how easy it is to lose any credibility when you have a few drafts in ya.
i threw myself to the dogs lol.

after showing my friend how one speaker would cut out he found it interesting that when he was on his stool next to me and sitting about a foot or foot and half above the speaker and to the left of me by a foot, the imagine actually enhanced and to him it sounded better where he was sitting than in the main listening chair which sat my ears the same exact height as the speakers.

Really? Then how are we supposed to interpret this quote (given you have been railing on the Performa3):

You'll have to excuse the rest of us as we clearly don't have the same magic decoder you got from the bottom of your cereal box this morning.

Maybe your dealer needs higher stools and chairs in the demo room!

update - since my post above, Ive moved home several more times lugging the Gem2's from home to home but still not round to opening the boxes or setting them up!
Now Im in a home that has probably the worse shaped rooms in the world and really doesn't lend itself to anything close to ideal speaker placement in the least! Have you ever seen a 'P' or 'S' shaped room!?

being let down by a speaker and thinking they suck are two different things. I did not like the imaging on the performa3's and if the ultima's imaged the same way then i would have been disappointed. Now that i can cope with the imaging on the performa3's i could only imagine what i would think about the ultima's.
I obviously pissed you off. i apologize once again but in my defense i was new to this type of sound and it took me a while to understand why revel did what they did.
You put them in the same set up next to some kef R300's. Right away you will notice the enveloping sound of the kef's and be intrigued by the feel of getting a live performance and wonder why the Revel's weren't doing the same. Both have great clarity but the kef's tweeter adds to the overall feel of getting a live performance. The Revel's tweeter does not get energetic and blends, not adds into the overall sound of the speaker.
That's why i was so disappointed by them. I can't say i was ever irritated by anything the the performa3's did except the sense of no sound coming from one ear when i would move from the sweet spot. They are a great speaker and definitely worth the money but i think it's easy to misunderstand this speaker. I think i should have thought about them for a few more days before i said anything about them but i was so excited to get home and write.

Dude, if you need a place to store them, I have a room in my house perfect for them. I suggest you get them hooked up! Has anyone tried those mounted to the wall? That's an appealing setup for small rooms.

cool, no worries. If it were me, I'd go back and listen to them again, play around with location, and maybe try the 106 or 206.

if i do go back then i would def like to hear the massive towers. they truly are MASSIVE.

another quick thing about the performa3's sound and i've kind of already said it but in a different way but even at loud volumes you will never have to talk over the sound. It never intrudes your space and because of that these speakers could never be fatiguing. If i ever open my barber shop, there will be a pair of these right up front.

Revels can be a bit finicky in regards to placement, but once dialed in (toe-in, toe-out, or the like), they are quite dynamic and deep (I have both Performa 2s and the JBL titanium cousin to the Gem 2s -- the PT800s). They will not please everyone, and take some work to adjust, but unless Revel took a bizarre step back with the Performa 3s (which indeed may be trending slightly downmarket), your sweet spot description seemed to miss its mark. Tough speakers to assess quickly, and the neutral (house?) sound might come off as austere to some. KEF speakers are great, by the way.

Electra Glide,
I officially stand corrected

But the other comments about Revel's quality going "downhill", "cheapened" and somehow the cabinets have less rigidity(?!?)

Some of these seem to be from someone who liked the looks of of old Salon and somehow felt that they were more rigid and a new tweeter could make up for a less inert(cheap) cabinet?
The 2 are mutually exclusive and irrelevant to each other.

From what I'm reading it seems the new Performa line is a continuation of Revel advancing the performance level of the speaker line.
If as people are claiming, that the Performa line is approaching that of the Ultima2 then that is quite an achievement and hardly a "cheapening" of the brand but quite the opposite.

I can tell you as a new owner of the Studio2's and as someone who has built speaker cabinets that these things are monsters.
2 1/2 thick baffles certainly sound cheap to me. 9 layers of curved mdf for the cab sidewalls?
Most speaker makers never mention the cabinets and if they do they brag about 1" baffles and maybe even 1" sidewalls of they're really over the top.
Plus the fit and finish are exemplary and this is coming from someone who would rather not pay for high end piano grade finishes.
I do know that the driver materials that Revel chose are really f'ing expensive and difficult to machine properly even to loose specifications, which no one does of course.
All of the design decisions are based in solid science, acoustic and otherwise.
This isn't to say that other speaker maker design decisions are inferior because they're not.
There are excellent drivers made from just about every material imaginable, but the good ones all adhere to basic acoustic fundamentals.
Hell, Vandersteen uses carbon fiber and balsa wood and they sound incredible.

Speaker designs evolve. Cabinet and driver designs evolve. I agree that the old Salons looked cool back in the day but given the choice I much prefer what Revel is doing with their speaker designs now.

I nearly bought a pair of the M20 monitors years ago and have followed and listened to Revel speakers throughout their different permutations.
I can't say that the Ultima2 line is sounds better than the old line or not and I don't really care.
In the limited amount of listening I've done with my new speakers I can say they're are as musical, detailed and everything else I value as any speaker I've ever spent time with and I haven't even begun to properly configure them as of yet.

To be clear, I'm not targeting you as the one who has a negative view of Revel or beleives that the line is getting cheapened, and if you do that is totally fine, it's just that people have a lot of opinions and they're not always based on the facts.

Per Kevin Voeks, the finish of the Performa3 is better than the Ultima2. There is a youtube video of it.

Also, trust your own ears and eyes. Go listen to the Revels yourself if you are interested in buying them. I couldn't care less what anyone says either for or against Revel. I auditioned the Performa3s on 2 separate occasions and there is no doubt these are great speakers for me. For you? You can judge for yourself.

It's kind of funny here. So what may be going on is that with the price of the Performa3 actually going down vs. the Performa2...people are assuming they must be lower quality now. Rather what Revel has done is passed on savings of their location strategy and efficiencies/synergies between the speaker lines. I just cannot imagine what a new Concerta2 is going to be like in terms of price/performance ratio. And it will be interesting to see what happens with Ultima3 when that inevitably hits down the road. Why? Because the Ultima2 was originally produced in the USA, but when production was moved as part of their location strategy...there wasn't any sort of price cut (nor would one expect there to be). Is it possible Revel will do with Ultima3 what they just did with Performa3 in terms of pricing? And does that not mean the new Ultima won't be world class, but rather "down market"? LOL

Having seen the F52 in the same room as the F208 & F206 just yesterday, I can confirm the fit n finish of the new Performa3 is beyond that of the Performa2. But to each his own...