Revel F228Be Review (Speaker)

[Sancus]

For a $10k the low band is poor. I would not use EQ for that kind of price, and also a sub is kind of weird addition.

You simply can't have correct bass without EQ in 99.99% of situations, it doesn't matter how much money you spend.

 

[Dj7675]

I don't know now, but for that kind of money, you could buy a Klipsch Horn!

Erin Measured the Heresy IV here.... It would not be my choice on something to accurately play music but they may be other people's cup of tea for sure.

 

[John Atkinson]

t's interesting that the low end impedance peak and consequent saddle (port) frequency is different on the Stereophile (JA 2019) measurement as compared to yours @amirm. About 10Hz difference.

I think you are misreading the horizontal scaling. My graph starts at 10Hz, Amir's at 2Hz. The lowest impedance peak lies around 17Hz in both graphs.

John Atkinson
Technical Editor, Stereophile

 

[richard12511]

For a $10k the low band is poor. I would not use EQ for that kind of price, and also a sub is kind of weird addition.
$10k? I don't know now, but for that kind of money, you could buy a Klipsch Horn! A speaker that sounds as live music and not like a speaker.

Why would you spend 10 grand on a speaker and then spoil it by not using EQ?
That's like buying a nice car and then never washing it

 

[MerlinGS]

Not trying to defend the performance of this speaker, but I'm having a lot of difficulty with the argument that the speaker is poor value because it would benefit from EQ and Subs. Given a budget of $30K for a pair of speakers, is there a set of speakers that could not benefit from EQ and subs? Unless one is talking about powered speakers with eq, this would be true for all speakers. As to the subs, unless the speakers come with independent sub modules, it would be incredibly fortuitous to have a speaker that cannot be improved with subs (i.e. the benefit of multiple subs and multiple locations is fairly well understood).

 

[aarons915]

Once again this speaker most likely has the amount of bass we'd expect in an actual room based on the dual 8" drivers, size of the cabinet and port tuning. If people remember the 328 be also seemed to lack bass response but when Amir measured it in room it went very deep and expected for the size. Almost every speaker on earth needs Subwoofers properly placed to round out the bottom octave, price doesn't matter.

Edited to say that the port is likely not being added to all measurements equally and probably should be considering in a room the port is always present, it's the same way in the NRC measurements but not worth worrying about. Common sense tells us a large tower with dual 8" woofers is going to bring the pain.

 

[astrex342]

I think I can see what’s going on but why it’s done I have no idea.

The port is tuned to 30Hz but the woofer has a F3 at around double that number. Too high for a standard reflex tuning. Hence, the speaker acts like a closed box speaker until the port takes over. However, as by then the energy inside the box is low the port cannot compensate the roll-off fully. The result is like a small speaker with a subwoofer working at a low level.

Interesting design, but why? What was the benefit?

The benefit is that it responds much better to bass boost. Boosting bass below the tuning frequency (Steep rolloff area) does not work well , as the port is out of phase and is actually reducing the output. However, above the port tuning frequency, because the port is aiding in output, bass can be boosted with fewer issues within the driver's limits.

 

[Deleted member 30699]

I am fairly new here and am following especially the passive speaker reviews with attention. I have the highest respect for @amirm and the other objectivist's work being done here.

However, I have difficulties making sense of the listening tests and how endorsements are given.

From the SpeakerTestData one can show a statistically relevant bias in endorsements towards Revel (and JBL) speakers.
Similarly scoring KEF and ELAC speakers get (far) less endorsements even if they achieve a similar score at a far better price to performance ratio.

From what I have seen so far, it would seem that endorsements are given more on how close a speaker gets subjectively to the Revel Saloon 2 sound rather than the objective measurements.

Please note this is not intended as a critique - I'm probably wrong. Can you please help clarify?

 

[Deleted member 30699]

Why would you spend 10 grand on a speaker and then spoil it by not using EQ?
That's like buying a nice car and then never washing it

I run B&W 800 Diamond and play vinyl on them in a fully analog chain. Minor room tuning and they sound glorious. Great to enjoy music when I stop worrying about measurements on a set of active speakers

 

[Sancus]

Similarly scoring KEF and ELAC speakers get (far) less endorsements even if they achieve a similar score at a far better price to performance ratio.

Many of these speakers are coaxials and lower end/2-way coaxials in particular have consistently been evaluated to sound poorer than their score/measurements indicate, you're correct. There are a variety of different reasons in those reviews but I'll note better coaxials do just fine -- Amir did like the R3 and he likes the coaxial Genelecs. I suspect there are other issues in areas we don't measure. For example, Harman's blind testing has shown that IMD is a serious problem with some 2-way Kefs. And yes, that's a potentially biased source, but it's what we have.

Subjective assessments are still subjective, but it's been proved before that Amir's assessments do correlate with scores. However, correlation is not causation and the scores do not factor in everything. The score is there to help you filter out bad speakers among hundreds of reviews, that's all, not to be the final arbiter of quality. Subjective vs score has been done a million times so I suggest reading this, this and this thread before going back and forth about it in a speaker review thread.

Neither the score nor assessment are infallible, perfect analyses of the measurements. That's why the measurements themselves are presented. If you don't like the score or assessment, all the data is there for you to make your own decisions.

 

[Asinus]

I am fairly new here and am following especially the passive speaker reviews with attention. I have the highest respect for @amirm and the other objectivist's work being done here.

However, I have difficulties making sense of the listening tests and how endorsements are given.

From the SpeakerTestData one can show a statistically relevant bias in endorsements towards Revel (and JBL) speakers.
Similarly scoring KEF and ELAC speakers get (far) less endorsements even if they achieve a similar score at a far better price to performance ratio.

From what I have seen so far, it would seem that endorsements are given more on how close a speaker gets subjectively to the Revel Saloon 2 sound rather than the objective measurements.

Please note this is not intended as a critique - I'm probably wrong. Can you please help clarify?

Even letting pass the fact that those are sighted evaluations of a speaker model at a time, and that indeed you grow accustomed to the speakers you own, I don't see how you can show a statistically relevant bias when KEF has 4 reviewed models and ELAC 5. You have some inkling of bias but the samples are too few to achieve statistical significance.

Amir does not calculate or give the Olive score and when the speaker has a good spinorama it ends up recommended even if he doesn't praise it as much, such as the R3 review. I other cases the flaws he complains about in the subjective review are readily evident in the measurements. the only outlier is the M55XC getting a bad score and a meh spin, but it could be that it being an outdoor speaker it needs a different protocol, like the in-walls do.

Other than that you could argue that the bias is pro-Genelec since there have been non-recommended Harman speakers while Genelec always gets a nod, but simply Genelec gets near-flawless measurements every time while the Harman designs are regularly textbook since the guy who wrote the book showed them how to do it. This is a quote straight from Amir's reviews:

At some point we will have to reconcile these differences, either setting me straight on my subjective evaluations being wrong, or us not knowing all that Harman knows about good speaker sound. Let's remember that they won't release a new speaker unless it passes double blind listening tests against its competitor. No other score allows them to skip this test. Components are tweaked until they achieve this. So one wonders if this is not released to public.

 

[richard12511]

From what I have seen so far, it would seem that endorsements are given more on how close a speaker gets subjectively to the Revel Saloon 2 sound rather than the objective measurements.

It's true that there is a slight Revel bias(other than the 708p, I don't really see evidence for a JBL or Infinity bias) when looking at it objectively. Revels do receive more a subjective praise, despite measuring worse than Neumann, Genelec, KEF(?). I'm not sure I'd call it "bias", though. Is it "biased" to praise a speaker more that you like more? isn't that just being honest? I think it's important to remember that the subjective portion(and panther score) are not based on what measures the best, but what sounds the best to Amir's ears. Amir rates Revels subjectively higher than KEF, ELAC, Genelec, and Neumann because they sound better than those speakers to him. Yes, Revel speakers don't measure quite as well as some of those other brands, but they get a higher panther score(and more subjective praise) because Amir subjectively likes them more. Key word there is subjectively.

Also keep in mind we're talking about 1 person here. With a sample of that size, objectively great measurements don't mean subjectively great sound, and the two can often deviate wildly. Ex: Revel M55XC - 2.2 Olive score, 5/5 panther score. Genelec 8341a - 6.8 Olive score, 4/5 panther score. Measurements are there to guide us toward what will be most preferred on average, but they can often be very wrong for any one individual, and this is normal. It's the nature of statistics and extremely small sample sizes .

I also think it's important to understand Amir's personal preferences as well as your own, and understand where they differ. His preferences are slightly different than mine, and he often praises speakers for characteristics that I would be docking speakers for, or complains about characteristics that don't matter at all to me. Doesn't mean either of us are wrong, but rather we just have different preferences. I can't expect his subjective impressions to perfectly match my own when we don't have the same subjective preferences

Understand your preferences and filter his subjective comments through that lens. An example of filtering his comments through my own lens:

"As a way of comparison, I put my Revel M16 next to the Triangle on a stand. While tonality and to some extent clarity was better on the Revel, the sound was clearly localized to a smaller source vertically, leaving a preference for the Triangle for the larger, more realistic image it portrayed."

My personal preference is exactly the opposite of the bolded, as (other than for symphonic music) I find a smaller source to be both much more pleasant, and slightly more realistic sounding. Filtered through my own lens, that sentence would read more like this:

"As a way of comparison, I put my Revel M16 next to the Triangle on a stand. It was clear that Revel was a much better speaker. Not only did it have better clarity and tonality, but the image was clearly localized to a smaller source vertically, and there for sounded much better and more realistic"

See how things like that can make a huge difference? That's just personal preference. One of the main reasons I went for the Genelec Ones is because of their (imo) best and most unique attribute, which is their true point source design. Amir actually sees this attribute as a negative, though, and would probably prefer if they split the 4 drivers up vertically.

Amir also doesn't like using subwoofers, so he cares deeply about how good the bass is. This makes sense for someone who wants 2.0 as bass accounts for 30% of the overall rating. For someone like me, though, who always uses 2-4 subwoofers in every system, it's mostly irrelevant. Deeper bass for me is actually almost a negative, as it often means they had to sacrifice sensitivity.

He also has a huge $25,000 1000 watt amp, which kinda skews the results in favor of passive speakers a bit. Usually(for most people) actives will tend to have the volume advantage over passives, since they usually have more power than most AVRs and entry level amps. Very few active amps can match Amir's amps, though. Many passives likely wouldn't have scored as well with an 80 watt amp, as he really penalizes speakers that don't have enough power to play loud and deep.

He also prefers wider dispersion(Revel), even if the directivity is not quite as good (Genelec, KEF, Neumann). I'm not entirely sure on my own preferences for this one. I prefer a wider soundstage, which comes with wider dispersion, but I also prefer a smaller image, which comes from narrower dispersion. I probably prefer more narrow for multichannel and wider for stereo, and even wider for mono.


Btw, he's not the only reviewer who rates speakers based on his own individual preferences. In fact, I'd argue that all reviewers do. No reviewer that I'm aware of rates speakers based entirely on objective measurements. @napilopez for example knows that he likes slightly wider dispersion, even if it means sacrificing some "objective performance", and he sometimes rates speakers as such.


So...while I think it's fair to say

"endorsements are given more on how close a speaker gets subjectively to the Revel Saloon 2 sound rather than the objective measurements."

I don't see anything wrong with it. The endorsements have never really been about or correlated strongly with the objective measurements (see Revel M55XC, SVS Ultra, Elac Uni-Fi 2.0). They've always been more about how good they sounded to Amir. Given that the Salon2 is the best speaker that Amir has ever heard, it seems perfectly logical to subjectively rate speakers based on how close they come to that standard.

P.S. Now I'm kinda interested to see what kinda panther score patterns we might find in the data based on say brand, type, bass extension, beamwidth, etc. I might do some exploring.

 

[FeddyLost]

What can those artefacts be do you think?

Something like in Adam A5X case - few strong resonances, maybe even notching out some midbass/midrange.
It's still a windpipe.
Stereophile measurements of ports show what exactly can emerge from loud BR holes.

 

[napilopez]

For a $10k the low band is poor. I would not use EQ for that kind of price, and also a sub is kind of weird addition.
$10k? I don't know now, but for that kind of money, you could buy a Klipsch Horn! A speaker that sounds as live music and not like a speaker.

You should use EQ for any kind of price.

 

[napilopez]

I am fairly new here and am following especially the passive speaker reviews with attention. I have the highest respect for @amirm and the other objectivist's work being done here.

However, I have difficulties making sense of the listening tests and how endorsements are given.

From the SpeakerTestData one can show a statistically relevant bias in endorsements towards Revel (and JBL) speakers.
Similarly scoring KEF and ELAC speakers get (far) less endorsements even if they achieve a similar score at a far better price to performance ratio.

From what I have seen so far, it would seem that endorsements are given more on how close a speaker gets subjectively to the Revel Saloon 2 sound rather than the objective measurements.

Please note this is not intended as a critique - I'm probably wrong. Can you please help clarify?

So keep in mind the preference scores are perfect and should not be extrapolated for a single listener. It estimates the overall most preferred speakers among a larger simple of listeners, and even then it's not perfect. It's just the best thing we have associating measurements

2) Endorsements are a combination of subjective and objective pretty much, I believe. As a reviewer myself I don't think it makes sense to give a speaker I don't like a negative review if the objective performance is great. But

It's true that there is a slight Revel bias(other than the 708p, I don't really see evidence for a JBL or Infinity bias) when looking at it objectively. Revels do receive more a subjective praise, despite measuring worse than Neumann, Genelec, KEF(?). I'm not sure I'd call it "bias", though. Is it "biased" to praise a speaker more that you like more? isn't that just being honest? I think it's important to remember that the subjective portion(and panther score) are not based on what measures the best, but what sounds the best to Amir's ears. Amir rates Revels subjectively higher than KEF, ELAC, Genelec, and Neumann because they sound better than those speakers to him. Yes, Revel speakers don't measure quite as well as some of those other brands, but they get a higher panther score(and more subjective praise) because Amir subjectively likes them more. Key word there is subjectively.

Also keep in mind we're talking about 1 person here. With a sample of that size, objectively great measurements don't mean subjectively great sound, and the two can often deviate wildly. Ex: Revel M55XC - 2.2 Olive score, 5/5 panther score. Genelec 8341a - 6.8 Olive score, 4/5 panther score. Measurements are there to guide us toward what will be most preferred on average, but they can often be very wrong for any one individual, and this is normal. It's the nature of statistics and extremely small sample sizes .

I also think it's important to understand Amir's personal preferences as well as your own, and understand where they differ. His preferences are slightly different than mine, and he often praises speakers for characteristics that I would be docking speakers for, or complains about characteristics that don't matter at all to me. Doesn't mean either of us are wrong, but rather we just have different preferences. I can't expect his subjective impressions to perfectly match my own when we don't have the same subjective preferences

Understand your preferences and filter his subjective comments through that lens. An example of filtering his comments through my own lens:

"As a way of comparison, I put my Revel M16 next to the Triangle on a stand. While tonality and to some extent clarity was better on the Revel, the sound was clearly localized to a smaller source vertically, leaving a preference for the Triangle for the larger, more realistic image it portrayed."

My personal preference is exactly the opposite of the bolded, as (other than for symphonic music) I find a smaller source to be both much more pleasant, and slightly more realistic sounding. Filtered through my own lens, that sentence would read more like this:

"As a way of comparison, I put my Revel M16 next to the Triangle on a stand. It was clear that Revel was a much better speaker. Not only did it have better clarity and tonality, but the image was clearly localized to a smaller source vertically, and there for sounded much better and more realistic"

See how things like that can make a huge difference? That's just personal preference. One of the main reasons I went for the Genelec Ones is because of their (imo) best and most unique attribute, which is their true point source design. Amir actually sees this attribute as a negative, though, and would probably prefer if they split the 4 drivers up vertically.

Amir also doesn't like using subwoofers, so he cares deeply about how good the bass is. This makes sense for someone who wants 2.0 as bass accounts for 30% of the overall rating. For someone like me, though, who always uses 2-4 subwoofers in every system, it's mostly irrelevant. Deeper bass for me is actually almost a negative, as it often means they had to sacrifice sensitivity.

He also has a huge $25,000 1000 watt amp, which kinda skews the results in favor of passive speakers a bit. Usually(for most people) actives will tend to have the volume advantage over passives, since they usually have more power than most AVRs and entry level amps. Very few active amps can match Amir's amps, though. Many passives likely wouldn't have scored as well with an 80 watt amp, as he really penalizes speakers that don't have enough power to play loud and deep.

He also prefers wider dispersion(Revel), even if the directivity is not quite as good (Genelec, KEF, Neumann). I'm not entirely sure on my own preferences for this one. I prefer a wider soundstage, which comes with wider dispersion, but I also prefer a smaller image, which comes from narrower dispersion. I probably prefer more narrow for multichannel and wider for stereo, and even wider for mono.


Btw, he's not the only reviewer who rates speakers based on his own individual preferences. In fact, I'd argue that all reviewers do. No reviewer that I'm aware of rates speakers based entirely on objective measurements. @napilopez for example knows that he likes slightly wider dispersion, even if it means sacrificing some "objective performance", and he sometimes rates speakers as such.


So...while I think it's fair to say

"endorsements are given more on how close a speaker gets subjectively to the Revel Saloon 2 sound rather than the objective measurements."

I don't see anything wrong with it. The endorsements have never really been about or correlated strongly with the objective measurements (see Revel M55XC, SVS Ultra, Elac Uni-Fi 2.0). They've always been more about how good they sounded to Amir. Given that the Salon2 is the best speaker that Amir has ever heard, it seems perfectly logical to subjectively rate speakers based on how close they come to that standard.

P.S. Now I'm kinda interested to see what kinda panther score patterns we might find in the data based on say brand, type, bass extension, beamwidth, etc. I might do some exploring.

I agree with pretty much all of this but I'd also add some thoughts on directivity:

--Theres evidence that the average home listener prefers wider horizontal directivity, but also that directivity in general is preferential and not something where one style is objectively 'better' than the other. For example, mixing engineers preferring fewer sidewall reflections and mastering engineers being more okay with reflective spaces, while consumers seem to generally like sidewall reflections.

--That said, Toole seems to believe, or at least implies in his book, that a wider directivity speaker may be preferred when directivity is less even or 'pretty'. This is my experience too.

My (educated but certainly not definitive) reasoning for this is that we often look at directivity graphs and assume that the 'prettier' graph indicates the off-axis is perceived to be more similar to the direct sound. But it's not just the frequency response shape that indicates similarity to the direct sound, it's the overall SPL of those reflections too.

Likewise, narrower speakers with very good directivity tend to have a more dramatic tilt off-axis, which might look prettier in an SPL chart or polar map but in reality just means that the speaker gets increasingly dark as you move off axis, which will sound totally different from the flat line of a good listening window. A wider directivity speaker maintains its tonal tilt better off axis. It might beam more at the highest frequencies, but most directivity effects seem to happen before 10kHz.

This may be part why the D&D 8C was one of the few narrower directivity speakers I really loved; the cardioid directivity means the off-axis tilt is less dark than on traditional waveguidey speakers.

(I'm pretty sure there's at least a graph or two backing up my theorizing but I can't recall where to look at the moment).

-- With regards to Amir's preference for the Revels, let's also not forget that measurements are and always will be second to double blind tests. The entire point of measurements and the preference score is to correlate the graphs to the speakers that are the most enjoyed in blind tests.

Now I don't know how strict Harman really is about it, but supposedly Revel doesn't release a speaker until it can beat the competition in double blind testing. At the very least, blind testing is a huge part of Harman's process.

So if we assume that Harman is actually doing extensive blind testing against the competition, it shouldn't be that much of a surprise that revels end up being liked by Amir. Especially when he already likes Revel stuff, considering he owns the Salon 2. The preference scores are useful, but they cannot, by definition, be more accurate than blind tests.

Of course, this assumes the pre-release blind testing is as extensive as implied.

 

[carlob]

I own the F208s and was thinking to upgrade but to me the difference is too small for the price plus finding the Revels in most of European countries has been a nightmare and now with brexit buying from the UK is out of question.

 

[Senior NEET Engineer]

My (educated but certainly not definitive) reasoning for this is that we often look at directivity graphs and assume that the 'prettier' graph indicates the off-axis is perceived to be more similar to the direct sound. But it's not just the frequency response shape that indicates similarity to the direct sound, it's the overall SPL of those reflections too.

Educated based on what?

In double blind testing, the prettiness of the off axis is most strongly correlated with preference. Not any particular directivity width.

 

[Ata]

It's true that there is a slight Revel bias(other than the 708p, I don't really see evidence for a JBL or Infinity bias) when looking at it objectively. Revels do receive more a subjective praise, despite measuring worse than Neumann, Genelec, KEF(?). I'm not sure I'd call it "bias", though. Is it "biased" to praise a speaker more that you like more? isn't that just being honest? I think it's important to remember that the subjective portion(and panther score) are not based on what measures the best, but what sounds the best to Amir's ears. Amir rates Revels subjectively higher than KEF, ELAC, Genelec, and Neumann because they sound better than those speakers to him. Yes, Revel speakers don't measure quite as well as some of those other brands, but they get a higher panther score(and more subjective praise) because Amir subjectively likes them more. Key word there is subjectively.

For the KEF R3 review (the passive speaker preference rating champion here?) the poor subjective review issue was an untamed room mode. Unfortunately you have to comb through the 55+ thread pages to figure that out. Now Amir is on the lookout for this kind of issue, and it was indeed a problem with F228be, too, but spotted during the review.

I asked for the R3 master post review to be edited so that this issue is put to rest.

 

[Ata]

Many of these speakers are coaxials and lower end/2-way coaxials in particular have consistently been evaluated to sound poorer than their score/measurements indicate, you're correct. There are a variety of different reasons in those reviews but I'll note better coaxials do just fine -- Amir did like the R3 and he likes the coaxial Genelecs. I suspect there are other issues in areas we don't measure. For example, Harman's blind testing has shown that IMD is a serious problem with some 2-way Kefs. And yes, that's a potentially biased source, but it's what we have.

How does one test for IMD in speakers and why isn't this done by Amir and the others in this forum?

10+ percent IMD sounds like a lot, I wonder how audible it would be? In my subjective auditioning of LS50 original vs R300 and LS50WII vs R3 I always preferred the clarity of the 3-way designs, bass response is a clear difference, but I would not be surprised if IMD was a factor.

 

[MacCali]

Honestly I just demo'd these speakers and even though they are great and measure well I am not sure what it is about speakers with larger than 5 1/4" drivers but they have this boomy crap going on that's really annoying to me. It sounds like there's literally something unnecessary in the frequency going on and adds a thump that would sound way cleaner without that in place.

I wish I knew what it was, it's not distortion. The place where I demo'd it says it's because of the ports. Yet, I have 3 speakers all ported and have 5 1/4" or less and I am getting no boomyness. It's not something that is technically bad but whenever the lower frequency's going into the air it sounds like it veils the clarity to my ears. Might be just my ears, but I experienced the very same issue when I was demoing speakers for my first purchase.