Revel F328Be Speaker Review

[echopraxia]

Is the F328Be better than Genelec 8351B?

I have the Revel Salon2’s and the Genelec 8351B, and I cannot say one is universally better than the other. I find the Revels better for recordings of real music (e.g. acoustic instruments and unamplified voices, including classical, jazz, etc.) due to the extremely wide dispersion that fills the whole room with a wide soundstage that surrounds you and sounds very “real” as if it were in the room. It is also more forgiving to older and low quality recordings.

Yet I find the Genelec sound better for amplified or synthetic style music, like rock, electronic/EDM, pop, and many other kinds of modern music, and can excel to reach higher highs than the Revels for exceptionally good recordings where the soundstage is part of the recording. Where the Revel’s style brings the performance into your room, the Genelec transports you to the performance as recorded... which is fantastic is if the recording is good enough, but less so if it’s not. If it’s not a great recording, you’ll know it.

Both are extremely good across all genres, so you can’t go wrong with either IMO. But overall the Revel’s style makes a wider range of recording qualities sound good, even if the recording itself is not that great. But the Genelecs do tend to excel more for “amplified” and “synthetic” music genres, whereas the Revels tend to excel for recordings of real instruments and voices. For example classical music sounds better and more realistic on the Revel Salon2’s than on any other speaker I’ve ever heard.

I don’t know how well this comparison applies to the F328Be though but it looks like it also has very wide dispersion so I imagine much of the Salon2’s strengths will also be true for the PerformaBe series.

 

[Pearljam5000]

I have the Revel Salon2’s and the Genelec 8351B, and I cannot say one is universally better than the other. I find the Revels better for recordings of real music (e.g. acoustic instruments and unamplified voices, including classical, jazz, etc.) due to the extremely wide dispersion that fills the whole room with a wide soundstage that surrounds you and sounds very “real” as if it were in the room. It is also more forgiving to older and low quality recordings.

Yet I find the Genelec sound better for amplified or synthetic style music, like rock, electronic/EDM, pop, and many other kinds of modern music, and can excel to reach higher highs than the Revels for exceptionally good recordings where the soundstage is part of the recording. Where the Revel’s style brings the performance into your room, the Genelec transports you to the performance as recorded... which is fantastic is if the recording is good enough, but less so if it’s not. If it’s not a great recording, you’ll know it.

Both are extremely good across all genres, so you can’t go wrong with either IMO. But overall the Revel’s style makes a wider range of recording qualities sound good, even if the recording itself is not that great.

I don’t know how well this comparison applies to the F328Be though but it looks like it also has very wide dispersion so I imagine much of the Salon2’s strengths will also be true for the PerformaBe series.

Thanks for the detailed comment.
Actually it impresses me that the 8351B even comes close to the Salon2, considering the price and size difference.
Should be very interesting to compare the Salon2 to the 8361A also

 

[richard12511]

I have the Revel Salon2’s and the Genelec 8351B, and I cannot say one is universally better than the other. I find the Revels better for recordings of real music (e.g. acoustic instruments and unamplified voices, including classical, jazz, etc.) due to the extremely wide dispersion that fills the whole room with a wide soundstage that surrounds you and sounds very “real” as if it were in the room. It is also more forgiving to older and low quality recordings.

Yet I find the Genelec sound better for amplified or synthetic style music, like rock, electronic/EDM, pop, and many other kinds of modern music, and can excel to reach higher highs than the Revels for exceptionally good recordings where the soundstage is part of the recording. Where the Revel’s style brings the performance into your room, the Genelec transports you to the performance as recorded... which is fantastic is if the recording is good enough, but less so if it’s not. If it’s not a great recording, you’ll know it.

Both are extremely good across all genres, so you can’t go wrong with either IMO. But overall the Revel’s style makes a wider range of recording qualities sound good, even if the recording itself is not that great. But the Genelecs do tend to excel more for “amplified” and “synthetic” music genres, whereas the Revels tend to excel for recordings of real instruments and voices. For example classical music sounds better and more realistic on the Revel Salon2’s than on any other speaker I’ve ever heard.

I don’t know how well this comparison applies to the F328Be though but it looks like it also has very wide dispersion so I imagine much of the Salon2’s strengths will also be true for the PerformaBe series.

That’s very similar to my views with the 8030c and M105. It’s not a strong preference either way, but I think I prefer classical music on the Revels, and modern music on the Genelecs.

I’ve got a pair of 8351b on the way. Really curious how they will compare to the 8030c. I’m hoping there will be more to the difference than just bass and headroom, but the measurements do look pretty similar.

 

[Pearljam5000]

That’s very similar to my views with the 8030c and M105. It’s not a strong preference either way, but I think I prefer classical music on the Revels, and modern music on the Genelecs.

I’ve got a pair of 8351b on the way. Really curious how they will compare to the 8030c. I’m hoping there will be more to the difference than just bass and headroom, but the measurements do look pretty similar.

Looking forward for your comparison

 

[echopraxia]

Thanks for the detailed comment.
Actually it impresses me that the 8351B even comes close to the Salon2, considering the price and size difference.
Should be very interesting to compare the Salon2 to the 8361A also

They are surprisingly hard to compare and yet surprisingly different in character — because while they both have no weaknesses I can identify, each one has a specialty that it‘s exceptionally good at (dispersion width and bass quality and depth for the Salon2, and flatness and off-axis consistency and smoothness for the 8351B).

 

[Newman]

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?

I’m filing this one under Conspiracy Theories. A large group of people just can’t help falling for the idea. Toole has, IIRC, openly disavowed this notion.

 

[richard12511]

They are surprisingly hard to compare and yet surprisingly different in character — because while they both have no weaknesses I can identify, each one has a specialty that it‘s exceptionally good at (dispersion width and bass quality and depth for the Salon2, and flatness and off-axis consistency and smoothness for the 8351B).

How do you like the 7360A? I splurged a bit and got a pair of 7370A to go with the 8351bs that are on the way. I'm really curious how they'll stack up against my JTR RS2s. I got the 7370s on a slight sale, so they were actually the same exact price as what I paid for the RS2s. So, same price, same room(at least for the near future). It should be fun to compare. Trying to keep my expectations in check, but I'm excited, for sure. Half of me knows there's no way a single 12" woofer and 400W can compete with two 18" woofers and 4000W, but the other half of me is really wondering what tricks the Genelec engineers may have up their sleeves, and saying to myself "Maybe it can . There's a reason these are $4,000". I've got 7350s in my office, and I'm very impressed with the punch they deliver with such a small woofer.

 

[Newman]

No one has said that they cannot trust the measurements but agglomerating them into a single index, imho, is arbitrary.

More the opposite of arbitrary, surely. IIRC the researchers started with their subjective preference data from listening tests, then smashed that against the measured data, and derived a scoring method that had an impressive correlation with preference. Then tested that with many, many further listening tests, with highly reliable predictability.

Not sure how you can, in all good conscience, sit on the sidelines and adjudge that as “arbitrary”.

 

[Newman]

The first issue people run into is exactly this that only one subwoofer is used. I'd say start at four and work your way up from there.

According to Toole, start at two and end at four. Anything more is not money well spent.

 

[Blumlein 88]

According to Toole, start at two and end at four. Anything more is not money well spent.

I've been contemplating using those inexpensive Parts Express Dayton Woofers in large numbers. Like 6 along each side of my listening room.

It does seem to me the source and sink model has to be the ultimate method. In the direction I've been considering a couple of the good Rhythmics on the source end, and maybe 6 Daytons on the sink end. I don't see how after spreading around the room the precision for sinking can be as high as the source. But I probably need to advance to the initial phase of one good source and a couple cheap sinks doing some real experiments to see how it might work.

 

[phoenixdogfan]

AFAIK, yes, that is the only physical difference.

Actually Revel claims a more advanced version of the beryllium tweeter in the 328 with a sixth generation waveguide.

 

[LTig]

That's not a very good definition of "SOTA". You're just declaring that 20hz is “deep enough” and that “a lot of music doesn’t need” anything lower while criticizing someone else for picking a different arbitrary point.

20 Hz is the lower limit of human hearing hence not arbitrary at all. Any other value would be arbitrary.

 

[audioBliss]

According to Toole, start at two and end at four. Anything more is not money well spent.

There is a difference between not having to spread out the subs to more than four locations and having four subwoofers. If you have 8 subs but they are grouped up in two locations you could basically just count them as two. Also there is a difference between diminishing returns of frequency response flatness and overall capacity of the system. As long as you got bass traps and room correction there is almost no limit to the amount of subwoofers you could add and get benefits in lowered distorsion.

When you can shake your whole room at 10Hz but you can't see the drivers moving then you know you got pretty low distorsion. If you see your subs moving like crazy you will benefit a lot by adding more subs. Low distorsion bass is incredible when you ge there.

I hear it time and time again. "But I added one sub to the corner and now the bass is overpowering everything and it all sounds like crap". Yes this is expected. You WILL have issues <100Hz, that's just the way of things. Bass traps, room correction, multiple subs are needed. Once you have an even frequency response in multiple points in the room then you will see.

Adding one sub to the corner is actually a really good way of exciting all room modes and see what problem frequencies you have doing on.

 

[audioBliss]

20 Hz is the lower limit of human hearing hence not arbitrary at all. Any other value would be arbitrary.

Nah that just some made up average like everything else. Some people hear 22kHz some 20kHz. Some hear 20Hz others 16Hz. There is a spectrum. Not being able to hear a note below 20Hz does not mean that you can't feel it. Most people have never experienced a sound system that can give you the proper force needed for <20Hz but the difference between 20Hz and 10Hz is real.

"Under ideal laboratory conditions, humans can hear sound as low as 12 Hz[11] and as high as 28 kHz"
Olson, Harry F. (1967). Music, Physics and Engineering. Dover Publications. p. 249. ISBN 0-486-21769-8. Under very favorable conditions most individuals can obtain tonal characteristics as low as 12 cycles.

 

[LTig]

That’s very similar to my views with the 8030c and M105. It’s not a strong preference either way, but I think I prefer classical music on the Revels, and modern music on the Genelecs.

It’s also similar to K&H O300D (precise imagimg) and Mackie HR824 (wide imaging).

 

[Dimifoot]

You're just declaring that 20hz is “deep enough”

The reason I picked 20Hz is that

20 Hz is the lower limit of human hearing hence not arbitrary at all. Any other value would be arbitrary.

My preference is even lower, but this can't be an objectivists approach.

So, let's see some measurements, and note subjective listening impressions.


These are my L-R speakers, equalised by Dirac, in the MLP (measurement back in 2018....Don't ask about the hump around 70Hz, that's how I liked them back then)

As you can see they can extend down to 30Hz.


This is how L+R+C+subs measure today, using MMM and measuring the whole couch seating area:

And yes, they need subs.

The difference in the first octave is audible, and the improvement is significant, even though the speakers can reproduce 30Hz by themselves.

If you listen only to pop/rock music, or recordings of the 60s, you won't hear any improvement, of course.

 

[Valentin R]

This is Harmans predicted in room Response for the Revel F328be

it clearly goes deep

 

[restorer-john]

The reason I picked 20Hz is that
My preference is even lower, but this can't be an objectivists approach.

Clearly your preference for linear response would also be well in excess of 20kHz at the top end. Nothing else would be logical. What should we shoot for, say 200kHz @-3dB? Is that fair? Not sure how the Class D boys will like that. Or the ribbon tweeter maufacturers.

 

[Dimifoot]

Clearly your preference for linear response would also be well in excess of 20kHz at the top end

No.
Get serious.

 

[BDWoody]

It is not in the cards for a while due to their size and weight and being on a different floor. Come next spring with the pandemic under control, may have people over to help.

Have you looked into one of the stair climbing electric furniture dolly's? They aren't exactly cheap, but likely less costly than an injured back!