Revel C208 Review (Center Speaker)

[Rottmannash]

Although it seems like this is a fair trade-off between ability to try it out in your home versus lower prices. Not all dealers will allow in-home demos (or may not even have them available if they have no stock and have to order), so if you buy and you don't like it, you will have to deal with maybe a 20% restocking fee or even no returns. Whereas the online authorized dealers from what I see don't have restocking fees, and may even subsidize most of the cost of shipping both ways.

Doesn't Crutchfield charge shipping fees for returns?

 

[starfly]

If you want a "deal" you must locate a dealer and ask for a discount. It is an odd thing for sure, in this day and age when we order everything direct from the manufacturer.

If you look around you can get Revel speakers for 20-25% off MSRP.

 

[Rottmannash]

If you look around you can get Revel speakers for 20-25% off MSRP.

Truth-been there and done that.

 

[Tks]

For Revel products there are a limited number of online dealers, and they all seem to charge MSRP. I haven't looked at all six or so of the authorized dealers, but they all seem to charge return shipping. Like Crutchfield and Music Direct, for example. While they do include shipping costs in the purchase price, for Revel products online dealers still look like a questionable value compared to B&M retailers.

I dont understand any of this. Why are people saying B&M, with higher overhead, somehow the folks you can negotiate down? If anything it seems they would be the sort to stick to MSRP more than anything since their service is what I would assume, superior than a simple online retailer? Or is it simply that they are THAT desperate seeing as how B&M is dying, theyre willing to bend over backwards even further?

 

[amirm]

How was the dialogs clarity with this Revel?

I did not play any movies but on music, vocals were incredible. Clear, open and tonally correct.

 

[blueone]

I dont understand any of this. Why are people saying B&M, with higher overhead, somehow the folks you can negotiate down? If anything it seems they would be the sort to stick to MSRP more than anything since their service is what I would assume, superior than a simple online retailer? Or is it simply that they are THAT desperate seeing as how B&M is dying, theyre willing to bend over backwards even further?

I don’t know for sure, not being a dealer, but I suspect this is Harman trying to protect B&M dealers. And B&M dealers have given me discounts for decades, at least on rather pricey equipment.

 

[Rottmannash]

I dont understand any of this. Why are people saying B&M, with higher overhead, somehow the folks you can negotiate down? If anything it seems they would be the sort to stick to MSRP more than anything since their service is what I would assume, superior than a simple online retailer? Or is it simply that they are THAT desperate seeing as how B&M is dying, theyre willing to bend over backwards even further?

I had the same questions.

 

[Vovgan]

Just curious am I the only one in the camp of those who prefer not to have a central speaker with 65” TV or under, or is it a respectable stance among ASR community?

 

[respice finem]

Loose thoughts: Nice center speaker, interestingly not ported. I think this, and also the better off-axis than on-axis response, is a good concept. This is not the kind of speaker you would put behind a screen, so it will always be a bit off axis unless you intentionally tilt it. The non-ported design and lack of deep bass keep THD at bay - and the deep bass is probably "better off" with the subs and large main speakers, because nobody will buy large a 2000$ sub for a small system.

 

[respice finem]

Just curious am I the only one in the camp of those who prefer not to have a central speaker with 65” TV or under, or is it a respectable stance among ASR community?

For a nearfield "cinema for one", a "phantom center" (= no center) might be OK. Similarly, if you're sitting really close to big floorstanding main speakers, you can sometimes do without a sub.
My situation is a bit like yours, I'm sitting approx. 170cm away from a 55" TV (5.1.2 system with a 1,90m stereo triangle but floorstanding main speakers). The (mini) center I chose is this one https://www.nubert.de/nuline-ws-14/p1290/?category=3, VESA-mounted on top of the TV. It's better with it than without in my small setup, but not a "day vs. night" difference. For larger, farfield home cinema setups, where the main speakers are 3-5m apart, a center speaker is a must IMHO.

 

[martijn86]

Question: In the 'driver components near field' measurement, the tweeter and midrange driver, copy the response of the woofer below 150 Hz. Is that because they move with the internal pressure caused by the woofer? Is that something that can be eliminated to further improve performance?

 

[Robbo99999]

To me that doesn't look like a very pretty spinorama, given the variation in the on-axis response, but also to me the directivity does not look good as the early reflections do not mirror the on-axis and instead continually move towards and away from the on-axis response.....for example at 1kHz and at 2.5kHz, surely those are directivity errors.

@amirm, you say "Objectivity there is a miss in on-axis response but off-axis response fills that in resulting in excellent subjective and objective performance." When you say that how can it be guaranteed that each room will use the reflections in the same way to even out the on-axis response? Wouldn't it be more ideal to have a flat on-axis response along with good directivity (combining to make it less room dependant)....from the spinorama it seems that directivity is not great along with varying on-axis response?

 

[uwotm8]

Combining the two shows a predicted in-room frequency response that is excellent:

For me it looks like there's no low bass and overall tilt is pretty uneven especially for a hi-fi speaker. I believe it will be beaten by JBL 305P.

 

[Frank Dernie]

Question: In the 'driver components near field' measurement, the tweeter and midrange driver, copy the response of the woofer below 150 Hz. Is that because they move with the internal pressure caused by the woofer? Is that something that can be eliminated to further improve performance?

I think it is simply because the microphone picks up the bass driver output even when it is close to either tweeter or mid unit.

 

[TimVG]

Developing a speaker with the drivers bunched up together isn't easy. Both the tweeter and midrange 'see' various driver surrounds which present themselves as anomalies in the direct sound. A possible solution would be to seat the drivers deeper and use a custom trim ring, which I've seen on certain speakers from other brands, which adds cost I suppose. Having owned this speaker, I liked it better than the F206 - it's actually better behaved in the horizontal off-axis due to the smaller 4" midrange. I almost put of a full LCR setup of C208 speakers, but unlike on the other Performa3 series speakers, no discounts were available in Europe.

 

[tuga]

Combining the two shows a predicted in-room frequency response that is excellent:

So don't go building a dead theater. You want these reflections to even out the overall response.

It would be interesting to verify this in real-life conditions (in-room measurement vs. "prediction").

 

[PeteL]

Loose thoughts: Nice center speaker, interestingly not ported. I think this, and also the better off-axis than on-axis response, is a good concept. This is not the kind of speaker you would put behind a screen, so it will always be a bit off axis unless you intentionally tilt it. The non-ported design and lack of deep bass keep THD at bay - and the deep bass is probably "better off" with the subs and large main speakers, because nobody will buy large a 2000$ sub for a small system.

Why not behind a screen?

 

[napilopez]

This is the Harman spin for this speaker, btw (via speakerdata2034)

Harman's is smoother overall, though the graph doesn't look very 'smoothed.' Notable is the difference in the lower mids, which are much better in harman's measurements. The LW overall seems significantly optimized. Not saying there's anything wrong with Amir's measurements, just posting for reference.

I think it's a decent spin, considering center speakers are usually a bit compromised in their spins. 7.2 preference score seems about right. Directivity 2kHz and above is excellent horizontally, and that's usually where the soundstage-y bits make their impact.

 

[MZKM]

To anyone arguing the quality of the performance, the Infinity RC263 gets a better score:
https://www.audiosciencereview.com/...s/infinity-rc263-center-speaker-review.12442/
And even though it was back when Amir did 10v THD and not 86/96 so not directly comparable, it still has decent distortion.

 

[q3cpma]

Looks like such center speakers objectively "need" a coaxial MT unit to me.