People who got duped by their marketing, sadly.
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Black Lion Revolution 2x2 Review (Audio Interface)
- Thread starter amirm
- Start date
People who got duped by their marketing, sadly.
While this product is not good, I'm not sure if it's fair to expect a low volume manufacturer to sell something like this for $200. Focusrite and MOTU can do it because they will sell a ton of product and have established relationships with CMs.
KingRolo
Member
Yep, Motu can do the 4x4 for $230! The Motu units seem to fail over time in my experience.. maybe just my bad luck but for the price Can’t be beat.
Are we talking about modding the "already modded" ?
greenmountains
New Member
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- Apr 10, 2021
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There is a thread on the BLA Revolution over at Gearspace (formerly known as Gearslutz). There's a link to this thread, at which point the manufacturer steps in to defend the product and attack Amir's review. Amir, having none of that, responds. (Starts on page 9)
https://www.gearslutz.com/board/pro...-revolution-2x2-portable-audio-interface.html
Interesting to see some of the hype and comments earlier in the thread.
Anytime a pro audio manufacturer of conversion or amplification starts talking about how emphasis was placed on making something sound good (as opposed to accurate) and/or "look past the spec" is a bit of a red flag. Some comments in the gearspace thread, "But how does it sound?" are non-starters too. Obviously, for pro audio work, a DAC that sounds great but is inaccurate is not a good thing.
There were a couple of $500+ pro audio headphone amps - the Little Labs Monotor and the Rupert Neve RNHP - which also got pro audio hype but didn't measure so well in Amir's tests. The response from Little Labs indicated the quality of the Monotor, why it cost what it did, and what it was designed for, which could justify the cost for some. There are many cheaper solutions which perform better in quantitative tests though. Before finding this site, I would have assumed the Monotor and RNHP were near the peak of headphone amp performance.
Pro audio people sometime look down on audiophiles as people who buy into hype. Pro audio isn't immune either.
Thank you Amir.
https://www.gearslutz.com/board/pro...-revolution-2x2-portable-audio-interface.html
Interesting to see some of the hype and comments earlier in the thread.
Anytime a pro audio manufacturer of conversion or amplification starts talking about how emphasis was placed on making something sound good (as opposed to accurate) and/or "look past the spec" is a bit of a red flag. Some comments in the gearspace thread, "But how does it sound?" are non-starters too. Obviously, for pro audio work, a DAC that sounds great but is inaccurate is not a good thing.
There were a couple of $500+ pro audio headphone amps - the Little Labs Monotor and the Rupert Neve RNHP - which also got pro audio hype but didn't measure so well in Amir's tests. The response from Little Labs indicated the quality of the Monotor, why it cost what it did, and what it was designed for, which could justify the cost for some. There are many cheaper solutions which perform better in quantitative tests though. Before finding this site, I would have assumed the Monotor and RNHP were near the peak of headphone amp performance.
Pro audio people sometime look down on audiophiles as people who buy into hype. Pro audio isn't immune either.
Thank you Amir.
As someone who is primarily a musician/producer rather than an audiophile, Black Lion's response was rather disappointing. I appreciate this forum because it puts hard numbers behind what we think we're hearing, and while there may not be good tests to determine if the "color" of a microphone or tube preamp etc. is to our liking, transparency in conversion and related measurements are not some dark art that no one can understand.
The thread on the new MOTU Ultralight v5 degenerated in the same way.
It was pointed out that the majority of the MOTU interfaces measure the same regardless of price and the differences are in features and things like the maximum voltage obtainable on the outputs or how beefy the headphone amp is, bus powered interfaces are necessarily limited in this regard and this is a understood trade-off for the convinience.
You then get the 'more expensive interface must be better' and the 'I can hear differences so your measurements must be worthless' finally culminating in people taking the fact that their subjectivism is being rebutted at a personal attack and effectively demanding that they must be allowed to state things without evidence.
D
Deleted member 12642
Guest
Whats there to doubt, the measurements are accurate. Whether they translate to real world differences is another thing.
Frankly I've never used an interface that I had a problem with. They all sound fine. My issue is that this theres really no reason to pay 400 for this thing when you can get better stuff for half that. I think people do waste a lot of time with these measurements. Like just buy what you can and don't be a sicker for marketing.
Two hours ago I've bought Audient ID14 mk2 and I was happy. Now I'm starting to doubt in my decision.
Maybe BLA Revolution has an incredible sound that can not be measured. Amirm nothing said about his personnel feelings about headphone amp.
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D
Deleted member 12642
Guest
There is no such thing as incredible sound that can't be measured. It's all quantifiable on the hardware side of things. If there were colorations to these interfaces that result in a more pleasing sound, we could see them. I watched that users review, you need to realize that aside from the RTL measurements, everything he said was subjective. Has anyone ever bought a new interface and claimed it sounded worse than their previous ones?
You can take a look at measurements people have made of popular vintage pre-amps that can impart a bit of "mojo" and color to the sound. A Neve 1073 is a popular one and we know exactly what it is doing to the sound to achieve it's coloration.
Yes, listen to some clueless YT amateur with no credentials parrotting marketing garbage. That review is the biggest cringeworthy crock of... I ever heard.
But he has these nice LED lights in his studio, must be a pro, right?
The sad part is that he has 20k confused followers, truly a blind leading the blind.
You get to choose what you want to believe - hard science or those mesmerizing LED lights in some random guy's room who makes a living with youtube unboxing videos.
OP
- Thread Starter
- #76
I just watched that video. It is a pure informercial, rehashing the company website for half the video, another 20% is his sponsorship message, and then there is one latency test at end. And oh, "the sound has that little spice" or whatever he said.
There is no way, no how he can determine any fidelity advantage using that kind of evaluation. It is the typical, random joe opinion piece to keep sponsors/manufactures happy.
And if he thinks this is a good headphone amp, he has never heard of a competent one. Headphone amp power ratings I show absolutely translate into audibility performance. Run out of power and the amp will sound terrible. Such is the case here with the weak amplifier. Now, if you are not critical about sound, can't hear distortion, then sure, it can sound good to you.
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Hey, does anyone here currently have access to a Revolution 2x2 and could do me a favor?
I measured the Equivalent Input Noise of the mic input on my Revolution 2x2 and it comes in around -119 dBu(A) which is not great. I want to find you if my device is defective or if other 2x2s perform the same.
What I would need is a short recording of the noise floor with the mic gain at the maximum. First unterminated and then the XLR input terminated with 150 Ohm (between pin 2 and 3). Big thanks in advance!!!
I measured the Equivalent Input Noise of the mic input on my Revolution 2x2 and it comes in around -119 dBu(A) which is not great. I want to find you if my device is defective or if other 2x2s perform the same.
What I would need is a short recording of the noise floor with the mic gain at the maximum. First unterminated and then the XLR input terminated with 150 Ohm (between pin 2 and 3). Big thanks in advance!!!
Hi Julian,
I can confirm that the mic preamp on the Revolution 2x2 is noisy at max gain. I have returned my unit but made a level matched recording with a ribbon microphone in parallel with an Audient id14mkii. Going by ear I would say that the Revolution is approximately 10 dB noisier than the id14mk2. You can hear the samples at gearspace: https://gearspace.com/board/showpost.php?p=15400062&postcount=303. At the end of the samples you can hear difference the noise level.
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