Revel F328Be Speaker Review

[echopraxia]

It makes no sense to me why Revel would design a tower speaker with 3x 8” woofers to start rolling off bass at 100hz, unless there’s something audible we are not seeing in the measurements here. Otherwise I agree, the Revel F226Be is clearly the better pick of this line.

I’ve got nothing against main speakers with big and/or many woofers, but only when they extend really deep. For example with no EQ placed near a wall, my Salon2’s are almost flat to 20hz. Is there some boundary magic that would make this occur for the F328Be as well? If the bass response is correct from these measurements, it seems unlikely.

 

[amarsicola]

So this speaker isn't too bad. It only fell .16 short of the JBL 308 mkII in the formula for scoring. Looks like the 308 goes flatter into the bass a ways.

If you add a sub to the Revel it slightly exceeds the JBL 308 score.

So yes, that formula still bothers me.

Imagine you are a big loudspeaker manufacturer seriously committed to science and you want to formalize a scientific method that would guide your engineering activities for several years.
What you would do is invest millions by getting the best audio scientist in your r&d doing large scale experiments. You want them to come out with a formula that almost perfectly predicts, from objective measurements, what most consumers will subjectively perceive as a quality sound.
Now that you have the secret sauce you have three possibilities:
1- Publish your results entirely so that other manufacturers can join the campaign for a better audio and a better planet, no matter if one day they will leverage your investments to grab your market share
2- Hide the secret sauce, but then the whole story of your epic r&d effort cannot be used to strengthen your brand reputation, your company will be one of the many in the high end industry that claim to have found the best snake-oil ever, with no evidence. You might become like the enemy you are fighting.
3- Do something in the middle, keep the special ingredients of the sauce secret, now publish a recipe that is good enough to celebrate your r&d superiority, your competitors are still far away to get even closer to it, gain some time, Keynes said "in the long term we are all dead".

(some years later... destiny is sometimes ironical...)

One of the former snake-oil merchants from Britain has become theoretically superior to you according to the published formula, thanks to a proper design of coincident drivers.
According to the published formula, there is no objective reason to buy your top-of-the line speaker costing several times more than your mid-line.
A real threat is taking place: manufacturers of "pro" market are launching everyday high performance active monitors for few bucks, just pray none of them wants to make a nicely looking floorstander...

What an exciting story! Any clue on the sequel?

 

[Rick Sykora]

It makes no sense to me why Revel would design a tower speaker with 3x 8” woofers to start rolling off bass at 100hz, unless there’s something audible we are not seeing in the measurements here. Otherwise I agree, the Revel F226Be is clearly the better pick of this line.

I’ve got nothing against main speakers with big and/or many woofers, but only when they extend really deep. For example with no EQ placed near a wall, my Salon2’s are almost flat to 20hz. Is there some boundary magic that would make this occur for the F328Be as well? If the bass response is correct from these measurements, it seems unlikely.

Agree, but despite both Amir and Erin using Klippel, this seems more likely to be a measurement/environment difference.

 

[daftcombo]

I have to agree with you. The F226Be does appear to be a better proposition overall.

In particular, it seems to have a smoother low end (no downward shelf below 200Hz, and a less premature roll-off), a more balanced midrange (no obvious broadband bump between 200Hz and 1000Hz) and virtually identical highs. Horizontal beamwidth on the F226Be also appears to be slightly more uniform, especially between 500Hz and 2000Hz.

Comparison of spin with highlighted areas in which the F328Be seems to under-perform vs the F226Be:

View attachment 92801

View attachment 92797

And a comparison of normalised horizontal polar response, showing the F226Be to be better controlled in the upper midrange:

View attachment 92799

View attachment 92800

I'm not saying here that the F226Be is clearly a better speaker. These two obviously have more similarities than differences. But what I am saying is that, low-end distortion and perhaps smoothness of PIR aside, the F226Be appears overall to slightly outperform its larger sibling.

(I should add the caveat that no doubt the accuracy of Amir's F328Be measurements are slightly higher owing to his equipment. So admittedly it may not make sense to go down quite as deep into the weeds as I have here.)

Good work, but the areas you highlighted look more like different smoothing to me.

 

[st379]

Cost 15000$ more than Elac dbr62 and scored lower. Am I missing something? I would expect almost a 7 not a 5.
Or we should throw away the score or the subjective listening. Something is seriously wrong with the score if this speaker is so great but the score is so low.

 

[andreasmaaan]

Good work, but the areas you highlighted look more like different smoothing to me.

Perhaps. Although I wasn't trying to draw attention to the jaggedness of the F328 in those areas (which is no doubt down to the absence of smoothing or other measurement-related differences), but rather the F328's broadband downward shelf below 200Hz and broadband elevation between 200Hz and 1000Hz. Other measurement issues could explain this difference, but even a smoothed measurement would clearly show it.

 

[andreasmaaan]

Agree, but despite both Amir and Erin using Klippel, this seems more likely to be a measurement/environment difference.

Erin actually uses the ground-plane method AFAIK. @hardisj?

 

[hardisj]

Agree, but despite both Amir and Erin using Klippel, this seems more likely to be a measurement/environment difference.

I don't use the NFS. I use a combination of ground plane and 4-pi measurements with Klippel's ISC module to make the ground plane the 'reference'.


The differences don't seem to be as significant, though. They're closer than they are different. Which is what is so odd. I certainly would have expected the triple 8's to measure much more flat, further down in frequency rather than rolling off earlier than my tests of the F226Be indicate.

I don't think either of our measurements are incorrect, BTW. My ground plane measurement is easy to reproduce and completely logical and easy to understand. And I'm sure the NFS is quite accurate as well (except at the lowest of frequencies, where the SNR is lower due to the placement of the microphone wrt the woofers; something Klippel clearly acknowledges in their product discussion pages (page 36)). I believe both are accurate. So, it boils down to design. I frankly don't know how to explain just why the difference between Amir's measurement of the F328Be is so different from the SPIN data Revel published below other than the fact that Revel has stated they have updated their chamber (or recalibrated).

 

[richard12511]

So, the family is like 226, 228, and then 328? I guess the tweeter and the midrange are the same so the difference is all in the amount of wub wub.

The 226 would have the benefit of being shorter.

The 328 features a newer and slightly improved waveguide. I don’t remember if it uses the same tweeeter.

 

[hardisj]

Erin actually uses the ground-plane method AFAIK. @hardisj?

I use a combination.

I posted this elsewhere last week when someone questions the Ascend measurements and asked if I would be willing to test that speaker as well, so will just copy/paste myself:

I have to practically measure each speaker 140 times total. Ground plane 70 times and free-field 70 times at 10° increments horizontally and vertically. Then I have to use those two sets (GP and FF) to get a single measurement for each of the 70 positions. It's a very time consuming process. And that's just for the FR data. All my additional testing adds more time. It literally took me the span of 4 days to measure the Revel F226Be. So, I appreciate when people offer up speakers to test but I think they fail to also understand how much of my own time I am contributing to these tasks. It's practically a second full-time job. I hope that paints a better picture for why I don't necessarily have interest in replicating a test someone else has done. Of course, Amir's is the only data I feel doesn't need validation or re-testing. No one else provides the high level of accuracy as his NFS measurements do besides myself, and it takes a lot of effort on my part to do that.

 

[echopraxia]

Maybe we should all individually reach out to Revel and urge them to work with Amir to reconcile these differences. This is a big and important discrepancy between the NFS and Harman’s measurements, and I don’t think it’s in Revel’s best interest to keep stonewalling @amirm, who seems to have reached out many times in good faith to resolve bass discrepancies, only to be shut out by Revel/Harman. Anybody know of good contact info for this?

 

[hardisj]

Cost 15000$ more than Elac dbr62 and scored lower. Am I missing something? I would expect almost a 7 not a 5.
Or we should throw away the score or the subjective listening. Something is seriously wrong with the score if this speaker is so great but the score is so low.

Well, for one, scoring doesn't factor in sensitivity/output capability, AFAIK.


Personally, I put zero stock in the preference score. I think it's more of a "we have the data, we might as well see what it results in" exercise and really shouldn't be a go-by other than to weed out very poor performers (at best).

Again, all IMHO. I don't want to derail the topic as this is beaten to death in nearly every thread (but, all the more reason why I ignore the score).

 

[richard12511]

View attachment 92761

I plotted Harmann data v.s. ASR data. Clearly it tracks very well except below 300 hz.
You can compare scores and details here.

Even if the score is low, I am sure this speaker is excellent with lot of bass and low distorsion. I would be surprise you could here the difference with and without EQ (above Schroeder) in a normal room. It would be interested to compare them to my Genelec 8361 for example.

For the sake of future tower speaker reviews, I think it’s worth it to try and get to the bottom of why the bass response is so different from the published Harman spin. This is a pretty large discrepancy, and I’d like to see further investigation (similar to what we went through with the KH80 DSP).

Would be really great if we could get both Revel and Klippel to comment.

Amirs subjective impressions of the bass have me kinda thinking the Klippel is wrong here.

 

[hardisj]

Maybe we should all individually reach out to Revel and urge them to work with Amir to reconcile these differences. This is a big and important discrepancy between the NFS and Harman’s measurements, and I don’t think it’s in Revel’s best interest to keep stonewalling @amirm, who seems to have reached out many times in good faith to resolve bass discrepancies, only to be shut out by Revel/Harman. Anybody know of good contact info for this?

I have a contact who sent me the F226Be but I'm sure Amir's is just as good and probably better.

FWIW, before I published my data I contacted Revel to make sure they didn't see any glaring issues and they gave my data a thumbs up. Again, just a FWIW.

I've tried to get more stuff to test but I get the impression they aren't really concerned with sending me anything else. Kind of a shame, too, because I was really proud of the reviews (data and YouTube) I did on those and thought they might appreciate all the immense effort I went through as well. Especially compared to this weak-ass "review".

But, I'm just whining now so I'll stop...

 

[daftcombo]

Perhaps. Although I wasn't trying to draw attention to the jaggedness of the F328 in those areas (which is no doubt down to the absence of smoothing or other measurement-related differences), but rather the F328's broadband downward shelf below 200Hz and broadband elevation between 200Hz and 1000Hz. Other measurement issues could explain this difference, but even a smoothed measurement would clearly show it.

I think Amir did his best but the measurements don't reflect the bass behaviour. Those frequencies must be very hard to measure especially with multiple woofers and ports. I wonder why three 8'' woofers wouldn't give as much in the bass area as the two of the F226Be.

 

[Lorenzo74]

Maybe we should all individually reach out to Revel and urge them to work with Amir to reconcile these differences. This is a big and important discrepancy between the NFS and Harman’s measurements, and I don’t think it’s in Revel’s best interest to keep stonewalling @amirm, who seems to have reached out many times in good faith to resolve bass discrepancies, only to be shut out by Revel/Harman. Anybody know of good contact info for this?

I believe Amirm knows.
it's just a matter of Harman's willingness to do.
John Atkinson measurements also shows lack of bass below 50Hz.

 

[Kal Rubinson]

Personally, I put zero stock in the preference score. I think it's more of a "we have the data, we might as well see what it results in" exercise and really shouldn't be a go-by other than to weed out very poor performers (at best).

Exactly. The data are the information.

 

[vavan]

I don’t think it’s in Revel’s best interest to keep stonewalling @amirm, who seems to have reached out many times in good faith to resolve bass discrepancies, only to be shut out by Revel/Harman

I've tried to get more stuff to test but I get the impression they aren't really concerned with sending me anything else.

may be problem is samsung, not revel/harman

 

[hardisj]

For the sake of future tower speaker reviews, I think it’s worth it to try and get to the bottom of why the bass response is so different from the published Harman spin. This is a pretty large discrepancy, and I’d like to see further investigation (similar to what we went through with the KH80 DSP).

Would be really great if we could get both Revel and Klippel to comment.

Amirs subjective impressions of the bass have me kinda thinking the Klippel is wrong here.

Before I say anything, let me say this: I am NOT saying I don't believe the NFS is right.

Okay, with that out of the way...

I think that *if* Amir wants to track this concern down the easiest way is to simply find a large empty parking lot and take a simple ground plane measurements. Would take one single sweep at 4 meters. Done. No worrying about exact aiming because he'd only be concerned with response below 300Hz.

Just a suggestion.

 

[Lorenzo74]

because I was really proud of the reviews (data and YouTube) I did on those

...and we all really thank you for that even if won't buy that Harman speaker.

keep pushing delivery the best reviews as you did with single components and subs.

@hardisj question: for 16k€ you will buy a passive speakers with roll of in the bass or a kii three or D&D?