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Revel M105 Bookshelf Speaker Review

Laserjock

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Can anyone who owns the M105 please tell me if its front-heavy, back-heavy or balanced? I am considering it for my surrounds but my shelves are tilted with 1/2" lip. I had to return the S16 speakers because they would just fall off.

Edit: @amirm just noticed you are going to test them again, so if you could check this while you fondle this amazing speaker again, that would be very helpful :) Thank you!
Blu-Tack ;)
 

BYRTT

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M105 radars verticals first then Horizontals..


Radar_ver.png

Radar_hor.png
 

chaking

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sorry for the dumb question, but in those charts, what is the x axis measuring? E.g. we look at 20480 Hz on the vertical chart. I see +/- 40 degrees at the 70 mark on x. What's 70? Thanks!
 

stunta

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Bear123

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That's interesting. Many Japanese branded speakers which used recessed captive nuts for stand mounting covered the captive nuts with a perfectly fitted round, removable felt plug of the same colour as the speaker.

It speaks to the holistic attitude of the company in my opinion. If the factory workers don't really care about the only parts the consumer sees, what about the rest of the product they don't see?

I see the same all the time on many European cars. The badges on AU$150,000+ cars are often not carefully placed. I've always blamed the Australian importers because I figured BMW/Mercedes/Audi etc surely wouldn't allow their cars out the door with wonky badges. (Do they fit badges in the country after importing?). It's rare to see Japanese manufactured vehicles (actually out of Japan factories) with anything other than perfect badges.

The badges/name/model plates are the final piece in many cases and should show pride in the product as it goes into the carton- wonky/angled badges show the exact opposite.

I agree 100%. It's the one nit pick I have about my Revel speakers. On the one hand, I'm honestly surprised a company can even produce and sell the bare cabinet for my Revel F36 tower for what I paid for the complete speaker....just over $700 shipped. A lot of work goes into a good piano gloss finish. To then add the (probably fairly inexpensive) 3 woofers, tweeter, crossover, stuffing, port, waveguide, trim rings, etc, along with the very excellent design and engineering of the speaker itself....really seems like quite the bargain.

Then, they stuck the Revel logo on slightly crooked......wtf?
 

BYRTT

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sorry for the dumb question, but in those charts, what is the x axis measuring? E.g. we look at 20480 Hz on the vertical chart. I see +/- 40 degrees at the 70 mark on x. What's 70? Thanks!
No problem its SPL in dB for example if you track exactly onto the on axis 0º you will see the twelve overlays cross that axis exactly at same numbers as on axis in below spinorama plot and directivity index (DI) below is a avarage course and another way to express what we see in both those radar charts or other directivity presentations..
chaking_1.png


In M105 is high rated objective/subjective and looks good plus have some interest can print the directivity details in quite a good detailed resolution where you have what is the base for those radar overlays, first come hor/left then hor/right, ver/floor and ver/cieling, M105 directivity should be covered there :) it looks beatifull wish some day i could hear it myself..

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Laserjock

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65 degrees

The lip of the shelf is half an inch
That’s fairly steep. If you could drill a hole and insert a screw or attach a strap (like a TV to the wall) somehow might be best.
 

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Bear123

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Curved side speakers sell to women or men chasing the WAF factor. There's also a great story with inert cabinets from kerfing/laminating and reflections, minimal baffle width etc. An easy sell and they look good. It's just a lot more expensive to manufacture, but less so than it once was.
I personally really like the curved cabinets for my own aesthetic preferences. Although my towers are 13 or 14" deep, which is a pretty imposing footprint in a living room, the curved cabinets drastically shrink the apparent footprint and makes the speakers appear much smaller from my seating.. They appear 4-5" deep rather than well over a foot, which I think is a really nice touch.
 

restorer-john

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I personally really like the curved cabinets for my own aesthetic preferences. Although my towers are 13 or 14" deep, which is a pretty imposing footprint in a living room, the curved cabinets drastically shrink the apparent footprint and makes the speakers appear much smaller from my seating.. They appear 4-5" deep rather than well over a foot, which I think is a really nice touch.

Oh, I totally agree. Curved sides are lovely for all the valid reasons we have outlined.

I recently retrieved a NOS pair of Jamo 507a speakers (balck ash) from my storeroom after ~14 years in storage and had forgotten just how lovely they are, not just in styling, but in sound. They are internally kerfed and glued multilayer panel curved sided design with a glass top. They are ~370mm deep (~12") and 930mm high and at the widest part, 220mm but 130mm front and back faces.

Very wife friendly design.

Here's an old review attached.
 

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Tangband

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Is the high distortion in the bass at higher levels, coming from the iron-cored coils in the crossover ?

Im asking, because I dont see such rise in distortion in tests of the bass-unit ( Sb NBAC 15 )
 

BYRTT

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Is the high distortion in the bass at higher levels, coming from the iron-cored coils in the crossover ?

Im asking, because I dont see such rise in distortion in tests of the bass-unit ( Sb NBAC 15 )
Will not thinks so, its rather because the other tests you study is using some IEC or infinite baffles, here we see what happen when transducer is loaded all the havoc that happen in a real world realistic small size of enclosure, another thing is i think its not SBA transducers they use anymore even they look like from the front side, IIRC it was over F208 thread some members pointed to videos and pictures where we could see from back side that its not renamed OEM SBA transducer hardware anymore.
 

ElNino

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I'm a little late to this thread, but it's great to see that Amir measured these!

I ended up buying a pair of M105 about two months ago. I think these are really impressive speakers, but I do think that equalizing the 5k peak is almost a necessity. The overall character of the speaker really does change in my experience. It goes from a speaker that perceptually has a little too much upper midrange energy (combined with a hint of bass over-ripeness and a lack of top end-air) to a speaker that is very neutral.

I think this subjective impression actually aligns pretty well with Amir's measurements, too. Without EQing the 5k peak, I find that it doesn't really sound like the red line below... it's actually closer IMHO perceptually to the green line I drew below, which tracks the overall FR more closely than the red line Amir drew:
M105picture.png

The green line's slope is a little less steep, which suggests a more upper-midrange emphasis in-room, and the frequency extremes end up a little unbalanced comparatively.

I'm not being critical -- once you EQ it to remove that 5k bump, I think it tracks the red line Amir drew very well, and they're quite wonderful.
 

Alexanderc

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Regarding the physical dimensions of speakers, I would rather Amir carried on testing other components than taking more time measuring speaker dimensions (for his sake and for ours). On the other hand, I would love to have a source of more accurate dimension measurements. For example, the Revel F208s measured a while back have a small plinth, yet there is only a single set of HxWxD measurements on the Revel site (or anywhere else I’ve seen). I assume the width and depth are the footprint of the speaker and also include any distance the terminals stick out from the back, but you know what happens you assume, right? How wide and deep are the actual cabinets? How much height do the spikes add? I assume (that word again) that it’s a difference of a few mm, but then that’s not really what we’re all about here (assuming things, that is). Maybe I’m the only one who’s curious about this.
 

Rick Sykora

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Regarding the physical dimensions of speakers, I would rather Amir carried on testing other components than taking more time measuring speaker dimensions (for his sake and for ours). On the other hand, I would love to have a source of more accurate dimension measurements. For example, the Revel F208s measured a while back have a small plinth, yet there is only a single set of HxWxD measurements on the Revel site (or anywhere else I’ve seen). I assume the width and depth are the footprint of the speaker and also include any distance the terminals stick out from the back, but you know what happens you assume, right? How wide and deep are the actual cabinets? How much height do the spikes add? I assume (that word again) that it’s a difference of a few mm, but then that’s not really what we’re all about here (assuming things, that is). Maybe I’m the only one who’s curious about this.

My request for speaker dimensions (and plans to add the ASR database) were just using the stated manufacturer's specifications. So, to be clear, was not trying to get Amir to measure directly...

Am hoping that ASR can get to testing bigger speakers someday and then much of what you mention becomes more important and more important. As an example, when I shipped the C-Note speaker to Amir, I did so in a 1 cubic foot box. The depth of the C-Note is about 9.5 inches, with some bubble wrap around it, it was stressing the box a little. The UPS office took it, but in route, the box got flagged as more than 12 inches and they tried to slap me with a 50% upcharge! I pushed back and UPS conceded, but the experience did increase my awareness of how much shipping costs could affect the motivation to supply test speakers.
 

RichB

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My request for speaker dimensions (and plans to add the ASR database) were just using the stated manufacturer's specifications. So, to be clear, was not trying to get Amir to measure directly...

Am hoping that ASR can get to testing bigger speakers someday and then much of what you mention becomes more important and more important. As an example, when I shipped the C-Note speaker to Amir, I did so in a 1 cubic foot box. The depth of the C-Note is about 9.5 inches, with some bubble wrap around it, it was stressing the box a little. The UPS office took it, but in route, the box got flagged as more than 12 inches and they tried to slap me with a 50% upcharge! I pushed back and UPS conceded, but the experience did increase my awareness of how much shipping costs could affect the motivation to supply test speakers.

I think we need to pressure manufacturers to have good measurement specifications. This is not a job for ASR.
Mounting the Revel M126Bes was particularly difficult due to the lack of mechanical specifications.

- Rich
 

KaiserSoze

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Maybe we can have all those youtube reviewers actually produce something useful and worthwhile for once and provide detailed specs. They may even be able to handle that task--but probably not that guy who I assume wants to have sex with cartoons.

Self-produced and uploaded videos of clueless self-anointed experts reviewing speakers using language that is tantamount to gibberish. The Internet is a wonderful thing.
 
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