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Revel W228Be In-Wall Speaker Review
- Thread starter amirm
- Start date
Hi all - I wanted to share my experience with the W228Be's in the context of a 2 channel room that is a "wanna-be" non-environment room, and lessons learned. The room is very small 11 feet "front to back", 18.9 wide, and 7.25 feet high. The reason that it is orientated along the long wall is that the other side (or back) of the room is effectively a hallway with many doors to several different rooms, so the setup is basically on one half of the room.
I put 14.5 inches of treatment across the entire ceiling; 2 feet on entire rear wall; and also about 2 feet on the side walls, with a small door shaped opening on the right side for ingress/egress. Tile floor.
Measurements from DIRAC attached (I would love to use REW but my NAD has been terrible with HDMI connectivity to my laptop, can't get it to work).
Coming from M126Be bookshelves, the W228Be's are very similar. However, because with a straight wall, there no ability to toe-in the speakers. In this kind of dry environment, that can certainly be a con. In fact, when I move from center closer to one speaker vs the other, there is an element of the sound that seems to improve. This could be the radiation of the speakers, or possibly me noticing stereo comb filtering effect being in a dry room. Because there are no side wall or rear wall reflections, I never quite get the illusion of someone signing in my room as I did previously with the M126Be and more reflections.
I will also say that I now 100% understand why many control rooms take this approach - the sound coming out of the speakers just sound right in many aspects. Because reflections are so greatly attenuated, its almost like "yeah, that's what the mic picked up". Songs that may have been grating to listen to in my prior setup, or that were really exciting to listen to but that I could not tolerate for long (due to reflections), you can effectively listen to indefinitely because of the lack of coloration.
Its really excellent for movies with all the details being so clear and quite impressive - but I will say that I miss having a projector and a center channel, even if many of the films I watch from the 80s/70s are stereo or mono, for those that are mastered in 5.1, I definitely prefer the center channel. From a music listening perspective, while it is very good, the lack of the illusion of someone being there and even the reflections (possibly making parts of the music louder or more enveloping) is a def downside.
THAT said, my implementation of NE is obviously flawed. First, the way W228Bes mount into the wall like almost all other in wall speakers, is they literally clamp onto the drywall. If I had to do it again, I would do it the right way, which is where the wall is "around" the speaker, but not attached to the speaker. The wall vibrates (not audibly to my ears) pretty significantly. In addition, I would absolutley toe in with the standard 60 degree recommendation for monitors when doing music listening.
The measurements are far from perfect - but that's effectively a + or - 6 db range (12 db span), which for a room that is front to back 11 feet and 7.25 feet tall..practically a miracle. The sound is exceptional, but 2.0 just fall short for movies for me; and for music the lack of reflections to create that "the singer is there" illusion is a bummer. It was an interesting experiment so I thought I'd share my experience. Please note again, that a lot of my conclusions are based on a flawed implementation of NE, being that my speakers are pointed straight and that they are coupled to the wall (not to mention the front wall is only 2 layers of dry wall, 1 inch total - a far cry from several layers of materials used in a NE room.
I put 14.5 inches of treatment across the entire ceiling; 2 feet on entire rear wall; and also about 2 feet on the side walls, with a small door shaped opening on the right side for ingress/egress. Tile floor.
Measurements from DIRAC attached (I would love to use REW but my NAD has been terrible with HDMI connectivity to my laptop, can't get it to work).
Coming from M126Be bookshelves, the W228Be's are very similar. However, because with a straight wall, there no ability to toe-in the speakers. In this kind of dry environment, that can certainly be a con. In fact, when I move from center closer to one speaker vs the other, there is an element of the sound that seems to improve. This could be the radiation of the speakers, or possibly me noticing stereo comb filtering effect being in a dry room. Because there are no side wall or rear wall reflections, I never quite get the illusion of someone signing in my room as I did previously with the M126Be and more reflections.
I will also say that I now 100% understand why many control rooms take this approach - the sound coming out of the speakers just sound right in many aspects. Because reflections are so greatly attenuated, its almost like "yeah, that's what the mic picked up". Songs that may have been grating to listen to in my prior setup, or that were really exciting to listen to but that I could not tolerate for long (due to reflections), you can effectively listen to indefinitely because of the lack of coloration.
Its really excellent for movies with all the details being so clear and quite impressive - but I will say that I miss having a projector and a center channel, even if many of the films I watch from the 80s/70s are stereo or mono, for those that are mastered in 5.1, I definitely prefer the center channel. From a music listening perspective, while it is very good, the lack of the illusion of someone being there and even the reflections (possibly making parts of the music louder or more enveloping) is a def downside.
THAT said, my implementation of NE is obviously flawed. First, the way W228Bes mount into the wall like almost all other in wall speakers, is they literally clamp onto the drywall. If I had to do it again, I would do it the right way, which is where the wall is "around" the speaker, but not attached to the speaker. The wall vibrates (not audibly to my ears) pretty significantly. In addition, I would absolutley toe in with the standard 60 degree recommendation for monitors when doing music listening.
The measurements are far from perfect - but that's effectively a + or - 6 db range (12 db span), which for a room that is front to back 11 feet and 7.25 feet tall..practically a miracle. The sound is exceptional, but 2.0 just fall short for movies for me; and for music the lack of reflections to create that "the singer is there" illusion is a bummer. It was an interesting experiment so I thought I'd share my experience. Please note again, that a lot of my conclusions are based on a flawed implementation of NE, being that my speakers are pointed straight and that they are coupled to the wall (not to mention the front wall is only 2 layers of dry wall, 1 inch total - a far cry from several layers of materials used in a NE room.
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