What speaker brands would you consider better than Revel?

[ROOSKIE]

Genelec and Neumann are hands down better than Revel but they're pricy. KEF is the only passive speaker that is up there with Revel, I've found them to be better than Revel in my comparisons but others prefer Revel so I'd say they are fairly close. One thing that doesn't have to do with sound quality but I like about KEF is their cabinets are very solid, that's one area I wish Revel would put a bit more of the budget into improving.

My understanding is that Toole and others recommend using quite a bit of analysis on the encolsure and then bracing effectively rather than indulgently.
Since you can make a concrete floor shake you can also make the thickest enclosure resonate. I have seen it suggested that poorly placed bracing makes resonaces worse and making a thicker poorly placed brace worse yet.
One thing about cabinets is that is easy to make them thick and heavy and then market the build quality. It very difficult to analyse them with advanced tools and then build them accordingly.
In some ways I see the whole overbuilt cabinet thing as similar to expensiver drivers... A great big maybe it works situation.

 

[steve59]

I wen't on a quest to find the best sounding speakers $10k could buy. First I demoed the new offerings from revel , focal, dynaudio, and paradigm then I started buying used speakers that listed for double what the new stuff did, but were significantly better{build quality) being more than twice the money before inflation. What did I learn? Our ears will notice the differences, no speaker is perfect, and the act of choosing your speaker will rely on what aspect of reproduction is most important to you, your ability to set up a pair to compliment your rooms acoustics, and despite 'all amps being equal' some speakers need amps with balls to really open up.

 

[waynel]

I've listened to a decent number of speakers and imo none of them were even close to what I heard from Revel. I'm getting the upgrade bug and I was curious what speaker brands had speakers that you guys considered better than the equivalent at Revel?

I own Revel, Kef , and Neumann speakers . For wide dispersion speakers , I can’t think of anything better than Revel, if narrow dispersion is ok the KEF R series and reference are on par and Neumann and Genelec are top notch.

Revel: top wide dispersion passive
KEF: top narrow dispersion passive
Neumann & Genelec: top narrow dispersion active

 

[ROOSKIE]

I've listened to a decent number of speakers and imo none of them were even close to what I heard from Revel. I'm getting the upgrade bug and I was curious what speaker brands had speakers that you guys considered better than the equivalent at Revel?

are you shopping monitors, floorstanders, stereo pair vs hometheater.
Tell us more here.
Does the speaker need to look a certain way such as furniture grade vs black studio.
Budget?
Are you open to active (or do you still love the equipment stack)and adding dsp? Even with the most expensive actives you still will need to use room correction dsp.

 

[BingaMoon]

Try mid field or mains, bigger monitors are a completely different story.

What models would you recommend? Something that can play loud like Revels and still be clear.

 

[BingaMoon]

What model Revel speakers are you considering?

I own M16's now. I'd have to listen to the higher end models before I know what's worth upgrading to.

 

[Absolute]

I've listened to Neumann KH80 and they couldn't go very loud. This along with problems with the other active speaker I tried kinda put me off active speakers.

There's no comparison between the Neumann KH80 and JBL M2, both active speakers. Unfortunately, in speaker-world at least, size matters greatly.

I've had three active speakers here, Devialet Phantom Silver, Kii Three and JBL M2. Small speakers is not big speakers.
I agree about problems with active speakers, I will never again buy speakers with built-in amplifiers. Outboard amps like the M2 is like any other passive speaker but with the advantage of actives.

 

[Absolute]

What models would you recommend? Something that can play loud like Revels and still be clear.

If you want loud, there's the M2. Here's my DIY version (original drivers, original dimensions driven with Crown DCI 4/1200).
77 inch TV for size impression;

 

[BingaMoon]

are you shopping monitors, floorstanders, stereo pair vs hometheater.
Tell us more here.
Does the speaker need to look a certain way such as furniture grade vs black studio.
Budget?
Are you open to active (or do you still love the equipment stack)and adding dsp? Even with the most expensive actives you still will need to use room correction dsp.

Stereo pair. I'm only at the research stage right now. I don't know exactly what I'm looking for. I just want to see what brands I should be looking at. I'm probably gonna spend around 3-5k but I'd like to look at everything in the under 10k-15 range.

 

[Sprint]

There's no comparison between the Neumann KH80 and JBL M2, both active speakers. Unfortunately, in speaker-world at least, size matters greatly.

I've had three active speakers here, Devialet Phantom Silver, Kii Three and JBL M2. Small speakers is not big speakers.
I agree about problems with active speakers, I will never again buy speakers with built-in amplifiers. Outboard amps like the M2 is like any other passive speaker but with the advantage of actives.

Agree..Depends on the speaker quality as well. I transitioned from 4 * floor standers Yamaha NS-777 passives with subs to Genelec actives with subs. No comparison between the two. The Genelec inspite of their smaller size got me more musical details in my room than Yamaha passives. Ofcourse M2 is in another league and will sweep smaller speakers anyday.

 

[LTig]

Stereo pair. I'm only at the research stage right now. I don't know exactly what I'm looking for. I just want to see what brands I should be looking at. I'm probably gonna spend around 3-5k but I'd like to look at everything in the under 10k-15 range.

For 3-5k you can get a good 3-way like the Neumann KH310 (8" woofer sealed, 3" and 1" domes) or a Genelec 8341 (ca. 6,5" woofer vented, koax mid/tweeter). There are also good 2-ways like the Genelec 8x50 series but I would go for a 3-way.

Higher up you'll find the Neumann KH420 (10" woofer vented, 3" and 1" domes), the Genelec 8351 (ca. 8" woofer vented, koax mid/tweeter) and for high SPL the Genelec S360 (10" vented + 1.7" compression driver).

 

[Pearljam5000]

What models would you recommend? Something that can play loud like Revels and still be clear.

Obviously the bigger Genelecs, 8361, S360 or 1237
Or Neumann KH420
Focal actives are not recommended around here but I like their sound, the Trio 6 or Trio 11 will play plenty loud

 

[Absolute]

Agree..Depends on the speaker quality as well. I transitioned from 4 * floor standers Yamaha NS-777 passives with subs to Genelec actives with subs. No comparison between the two. The Genelec inspite of their smaller size got me more musical details in my room than Yamaha passives. Ofcourse M2 is in another league and will sweep smaller speakers anyday.

Good quality small = better than poor quality big

With active speakers you can get quite the amount of "free extension" for normal listening and can get away with far smaller speakers for the same amount of extension - if you want. With active speakers the designer can "cheat" by pouring way more power into the bass to extend the bass extension as long as he makes sure that there's a power limiter kicking in when you increase volume and run out of driver excursion to protect the driver.

For normal listening at around 65-70 dB avg I didn't miss any capacity with Kii Three because that's within its full-range capacity (comfort sone if you will).
So deciding on size/capacity is all about defining the needs. Your Genelec will sound better than M2 at 1m listening distance (I assume) because it's designed for that.

Knowing what I know now I will always advice people to be specific when defining their needs before any candidates are considered.
There's no silver bullet anywhere, we need to pick suitable components to solve specific problems.

 

[steve59]

If your priorities are big sound, musical over analytical try a pair of meridian dsp 5200 used with a 218 pre/dac. 2 1/2 way active built in dsp does a good job of minimising room interactions. other than tone and axis controls there's little user dsp control. the speakerlink models use time delay for the bass suggesting in real life the subs would have to be 20+feet behind the mains for all sound to arrive in correct time. I have tried both ways and the results are more subtle than I expected. Used prices make them competitive.

 

[Pearljam5000]

You first have to decide if you want passive or active speakers and then decide on a model, that'll be easier for you.

 

[test1223]

The studio monitors from Me Geithain are very good. There are also a lot of high end speaker, which are horribly expensive but will sound better like some from backes & müller, the top speaker of cabasse or some of the big linearray or horn speaker (for higher listening distances).

 

[AudioJester]

There's no comparison between the Neumann KH80 and JBL M2, both active speakers. Unfortunately, in speaker-world at least, size matters greatly.

I've had three active speakers here, Devialet Phantom Silver, Kii Three and JBL M2. Small speakers is not big speakers.
I agree about problems with active speakers, I will never again buy speakers with built-in amplifiers. Outboard amps like the M2 is like any other passive speaker but with the advantage of actives.

What problems did you have with actives?

 

[detlev24]

[...] Your Genelec will sound better than M2 at 1m listening distance (I assume) because it's designed for that. [...]

Although, 'JBL M2' is designed for listening distances starting at only 46 inches [= roughly 1.17 meters], according to owner's manual on page 7.

 

[Sprint]

Good quality small = better than poor quality big

With active speakers you can get quite the amount of "free extension" for normal listening and can get away with far smaller speakers for the same amount of extension - if you want. With active speakers the designer can "cheat" by pouring way more power into the bass to extend the bass extension as long as he makes sure that there's a power limiter kicking in when you increase volume and run out of driver excursion to protect the driver.

For normal listening at around 65-70 dB avg I didn't miss any capacity with Kii Three because that's within its full-range capacity (comfort sone if you will).
So deciding on size/capacity is all about defining the needs. Your Genelec will sound better than M2 at 1m listening distance (I assume) because it's designed for that.

Knowing what I know now I will always advice people to be specific when defining their needs before any candidates are considered.
There's no silver bullet anywhere, we need to pick suitable components to solve specific problems.

True ....In my case, the Yamaha's and Genelec were at the same place. I sit at around 3,5 meters from the speakers. I have 2 SVS sb-12nsd crossed at 80hz. I watch movies around 74 db average and 88 db peak max. I never had so much fun with Yamaha's compared to Genelecs. The GLM is really doing a great job here. Today I watched Avatar from a Blu Ray. Completely Amazed what these small actives with subs produce. I am very happy.

@BingaMoon : If you have a chance, just listen to a Genelec 8340 or 8350 or the ones like 8341/8351. I am sure they will blow you out. Kii3 is also excellent but it will be limited to 2ch music. With Genelecs, you can do both movies - 5.2.Atmos or 2 ch music If you want to have a set up for movies.

 

[andreasmaaan]

Genelec and Neumann are hands down better than Revel but they're pricy. KEF is the only passive speaker that is up there with Revel, I've found them to be better than Revel in my comparisons but others prefer Revel so I'd say they are fairly close. One thing that doesn't have to do with sound quality but I like about KEF is their cabinets are very solid, that's one area I wish Revel would put a bit more of the budget into improving.

It's interesting to hear that. KEFs speakers for some reason look to me to be lighter weight than equivalent size/class Revels (based on nothing but seeing them, ofc).

Not sure why I had that impression... perhaps because the only Revel speaker I've owned weighed 74kg each, and I've never had to lift up and carry a KEF...