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Revel F328Be Speaker Review

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You might be surprised at how well the f52 stand the test of time. While the tweeter might be a bit cheap it is a soundstaging champ and is one of revels easier to drive speakers.
I agree with your statement, and I still have them but never put them in my new music room. I had them in an old house in a less than optimal room, and they were OK. Since then I went with a different brand, still a floor stander but a totally different speaker.

This makes me want to pull my F52s back out and see how they sound.

Since I ran my Revels, I went with class D amplification, and I probably will never look back.

Thanks for commenting, and the F 52‘s were on some magazines top 100 all-time list, I would love to know how they measure.
 

steve59

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I sold my f52's to help purchase a pair of salon 1 speakers and regretted the decision. sure the additional tweeter in the salon opened up the room, but I lost that very intimate soundstage of the f52 and in my room the bass was about equal!
 
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I sold my f52's to help purchase a pair of salon 1 speakers and regretted the decision. sure the additional tweeter in the salon opened up the room, but I lost that very intimate soundstage of the f52 and in my room the bass was about equal!

That’s quite the statement Steve! I always liked the look of both versions of the Salon. I think they got it right with the second version, or maybe they would like the intimacy also.
 

Brent71

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While the tweeter might be a bit cheap it is a soundstaging champ and is one of revels easier to drive speakers.
John Dunlavy showed what could be done with inexpensive drivers when implemented properly. He didn't use them because he was cheap, he had access to all sorts of exotic drivers that companies wanted him to use, he got the best results with drivers that didn't cost big-bucks.
 

steve59

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I used the word cheap because at loud volumes one of the tweeters would rattle a bit causing me to turn them down. I liked the sound of them and have tried to repurchase the f52 whenever I see them online.
 

192kbps

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I recently picked up a JBL BassQ which implements SFM.
imagehandler.ashx

Will get to it soon. :)

Can you talk about your feelings?
 

Kal Rubinson

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Can you talk about your feelings?
It is an early expression of SFM but it is almost trivial to use and it does a nice job. I use it as a prelude to DiracLive when I am not using DLBC.
 

MattHooper

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The are integrated and fully optimized for the rest of the speaker. With subs, you become the speaker designer having to do that optimization.

Sort of stumbled upon this thread today and didn't realize that Amir was of the same mind as I am on subwoofers. Even accepting the technical case for using subs, it always
gave me pause that adding subs/crossover essentially takes a fully designed loudspeaker by engineers who (hopefully) know what they are doing and spent years perfecting the coherence, and then saying to the consumer "ok now YOU give a go at being a speaker designer, and have fun integrating an external box of drivers with this carefully constructed loudspeaker."

I've just heard so many poorly done sub systems (to my ears, even though they pleased the owners) and it's no wonder why.
 

sarumbear

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Sort of stumbled upon this thread today and didn't realize that Amir was of the same mind as I am on subwoofers. Even accepting the technical case for using subs, it always
gave me pause that adding subs/crossover essentially takes a fully designed loudspeaker by engineers who (hopefully) know what they are doing and spent years perfecting the coherence, and then saying to the consumer "ok now YOU give a go at being a speaker designer, and have fun integrating an external box of drivers with this carefully constructed loudspeaker."

I've just heard so many poorly done sub systems (to my ears, even though they pleased the owners) and it's no wonder why.
Very true. I just said the same to someone who has recently purchased Salon2 on this this thread.
 

MarkS

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Sort of stumbled upon this thread today and didn't realize that Amir was of the same mind as I am on subwoofers. Even accepting the technical case for using subs, it always
gave me pause that adding subs/crossover essentially takes a fully designed loudspeaker by engineers who (hopefully) know what they are doing and spent years perfecting the coherence, and then saying to the consumer "ok now YOU give a go at being a speaker designer, and have fun integrating an external box of drivers with this carefully constructed loudspeaker."
The engineers are not coming to your house to optimally place the speakers to minimize interaction with room modes. This interaction has a huge effect on the perceived quality of bass, and even above. See, e.g., Amir's review of the KEF R3 and the addendum after he realized his impressions were colored by an uncorrected room mode.
 

Astoneroad

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Sort of stumbled upon this thread today and didn't realize that Amir was of the same mind as I am on subwoofers. Even accepting the technical case for using subs, it always
gave me pause that adding subs/crossover essentially takes a fully designed loudspeaker by engineers who (hopefully) know what they are doing and spent years perfecting the coherence, and then saying to the consumer "ok now YOU give a go at being a speaker designer, and have fun integrating an external box of drivers with this carefully constructed loudspeaker."

I've just heard so many poorly done sub systems (to my ears, even though they pleased the owners) and it's no wonder why.
I'm certainly out of my depth here as I look to answer the question of subs or no sub with my Salon 2s. If no sub is optimum, why does the preference score, of most speakers, typically improve with a sub as it does here? 328Be Spinorama Does this reflect preference by "untrained" ears? I find the debate between cadres of knowledgeable antagonists like Einstein's "Spooky actions at a distance" debate with proponents of quantum physics. Both highly qualified sides can't be right... unless we acquiesce to a matter of personal preference... which seems like a cop out... but one which I'm willing to embrace as a path of least resistance. Is this the audio version of the observer effect? Calling Dr. Bell... Dr. Toole... Dr. Howard...
 
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MattHooper

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The engineers are not coming to your house to optimally place the speakers to minimize interaction with room modes. This interaction has a huge effect on the perceived quality of bass, and even above. See, e.g., Amir's review of the KEF R3 and the addendum after he realized his impressions were colored by an uncorrected room mode.

Sure, I know the theory. But in practice I don't find it that hard to get subjectively smooth sounding bass from speakers in my room (and if I'm ever stuck with an obvious node, it's usually only occasionally notable on certain tracks, not something that detracts most of the time).

Whereas integrating the subs was harder to achieve even the coherence I normally enjoyed from my speakers. And then there are all the failed attempts I've heard
from other systems using subs as well.

In general, I tend to notice coherence and bass boom issues more often with systems using subs than I do with speakers without subs.
 
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amirm

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If no sub is optimum, why does the preference score, of most speakers, typically improve with a sub as it does here?
That score assumes an ideal sub perfectly integrated into the speaker. In reality you can't do this anywhere close to that. Put another way, the score with sub is no advertisement for a sub. It simply takes out of the equation the level of bass response. The idea was that a perfectly built speaker could lose to a poor one with deeper bass response.
 

Beave

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Apologies if it has been pointed out already, but the Revel Ultima2 series was designed for bass extension at the expense of a bit lower sensitivity - meaning subwoofers not so necessary - while the PerformaBe series has higher sensitivity but less bass extension - meaning a subwoofer is more necessary for deep bass.

(Of course this is all separate from the need/usefulness of multiple subwoofers placed optimally to reduce room modes. I'm simply commenting on the bass extension vs. sensitivity tradeoff and how the two series differ in their approaches there.)
 

SimpleTheater

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(Of course this is all separate from the need/usefulness of multiple subwoofers placed optimally to reduce room modes. I'm simply commenting on the bass extension vs. sensitivity tradeoff and how the two series differ in their approaches there.)
One of the biggest issues is sub placement, however this makes me think it is easier to place dedicated subs than full range speakers, which would need to be placed first for stereo imaging.
 

MarkS

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Sure, I know the theory. But in practice I don't find it that hard to get subjectively smooth sounding bass from speakers in my room (and if I'm ever stuck with an obvious node, it's usually only occasionally notable on certain tracks, not something that detracts most of the time).

The sound can be affected in non-obvious ways by room modes. Quoting Amir's KEF R3 review:
Alas, once again subjective feeling was low. My standard routine is to cycle through my reference clips that I have selected during all my normal listening to sound superb on my Revel Salon 2 Speakers. Sadly hardly any of them sounded all that good here. Yes, the highs were there. The lows at times were there. But overall experience was unexciting and unengaging for lack of a better word.
...
EDIT: later testing showed that the room mode at about 105 Hz was impacting the tonality of the speaker. Once I filtered that, the sound was very good. I have since made this part of the protocol.

So here a room mode led to sound that was "unexciting and unengaging", rather than to an obvious problem in the bass.

Whereas integrating the subs was harder to achieve even the coherence I normally enjoyed from my speakers. And then there are all the failed attempts I've heard
from other systems using subs as well.

Did you try by ear only? Or did you use measurements?

I agree that trying to integrate a sub without measurements can all too easily lead to poor sound.
 

valerianf

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There is an additional question to the debate: the studio sound mixing.
If for a movie the sound engineer is controlling the LFE sound quality using a sub, I am sure he does do that for stereo music mixing.
In the studio room he has a large enough speaker pair able to reproduce the low frequencies.
Why not doing the same at home?
 
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amirm

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One of the biggest issues is sub placement, however this makes me think it is easier to place dedicated subs than full range speakers, which would need to be placed first for stereo imaging.
In a symmetrical room, you can arrange the speakers to get mode cancellation as well. Here is Dr. Toole's book:

1689641782803.png


Multiple subs shine when you want to have even response for multiple seats. For single seat, EQ works quite well to get you 90% of the way there with a pair of speakers.
 

jhaider

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Multiple subs shine when you want to have even response for multiple seats. For single seat, EQ works quite well to get you 90% of the way there with a pair of speakers.

IMO that’s exactly right. Yet I will still always use multiple subwoofers personally. It adds something when you can enjoy great bass without being fixed to one position in the room.

I also agree that getting subs integrated well is hard, and a huge time sink if you’re doing it manually. That’s under-discussed, and why Dirac Live Bass Control was such an important and useful innovation.
 

MattHooper

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The sound can be affected in non-obvious ways by room modes.

Yup! Just as the sound can be affected (negatively) in non-obvious ways by adding a sub.



So here a room mode led to sound that was "unexciting and unengaging", rather than to an obvious problem in the bass.

Sure, which isn't a problem if your speakers don't sound "unexciting and unengaging."

I mean, I get your point certainly, but it's not easy to integrate subs which is the main point. I had a hard time keeping the tone I loved, a major feature
of why I bought my speakers, when trying to integrate a sub. I can imagine other people may not be as picky about that particular aspect and revel
in what a sub brings, but that's not how it worked for me. Also, I was somewhat limited in where I could place the subs, aesthetically, ergonomically etc.

Did you try by ear only? Or did you use measurements?

I did both. First by ear. Then I used a DSpeaker Anti-mode 2 to measure/even out the bass in the room (from the crossover point down, e.g. anywhere from 40Hz up to 100Hz, I experimented a lot) which helped in that respect. But it still slightly altered the sound of the speakers in a way I didn't care for, including losing some of the excitement and punch I was used to.

Which, to me, re-enforced that it is quite challenging to integrate subs to a degree I would find satisfying, and there are real world limitations in many rooms in terms of
placing ever more powered speakers (subs). So it's a Good In Theory, Not So Easy In Practice thing. Whereas I've had tons of different floor standing speakers in my room,
typically rated down to 35Hz, some down to 25Hz, and I've rarely had issues with obvious bass boom, lack of integration or "something missing" in the sound that felt like a sub was needed.
 
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