Revel Performa F228 Be speaker... thoughts?

I have a pair of F228Be that compare very well to the salons I just acquired. 
I feel the midrange is slightly better on the Be and they require less power to drive them. The salons really require a beefy amp. 
If you can get that last octave with a quality sub, it’s a great choice for both music and movies. 

I have heard the Salon 2 and 328be in the same room back to back but on different electronics. McIntosh C49/MC462 on the 328be and Mark Levinson on the Salon. salons on the inside and 328be on the outside. 

So not a true direct comparison but they are very similar. As a whole the 328be system seemed to have cleaner more even highs (to my ear) and the Salon system had deeper bass. They would be hard to tell apart if they were not in the same room. room/toe in/ and general setup will probably make a bigger difference than the speakers then selves. I felt like the equipment was making a bigger difference. I could hear the Mac sound through the 328be. I own Mac so no hate just an observation. The sound was a bit more in front of the 328be and a bit more behind the Solon. Again just a demo room so not super tweaked out.

I would be iffy on buying the Salon/studio as they are more or less discontinued. They have been out forever and I question part support going forward. Maybe if you don’t have kids running around to worry about breaking them. 

I have owned older B&W and Focals. I would take the Focals every time. B&W’s only good speaker imo is the 803/802/800 and even they have some midrange and treble oddities. Amazing speakers messed up with questionable tuning.  

Most impressive thing of the 228be has been the mids (well and how stupid loud they play) So transparent but natural sounding. The mids are a little forward for a revel but just a hair forward in reality. Really great speaker but I don’t think it impresses during the demo. When I demoed the 328be I thought it had the least issues of everything I demoed but I was not wowed. Even having them at home it took me almost a week to appreciate them but they were good right away. Not sure if it was positioning, sub integration tuning (I use two high-passed at 60hz), break in or psychoacoustics (I am going with the last one lol!) but I really like them now and have finally had a few wow moments. 

I have a hometheater music room so now the decisions is do I get another pair and center… or just live with a mix and match home theater. I am 90% music 10% home theater.  

 As a side note I have never had a speaker that can play this loud. I don’t understand what is going on. Maybe it is the 24db crossovers and some what limited bass extension. But even at 100db the sound seems to never compress or change. The highs are still clean, no midrange break up and the room gives up and rattles long before the bass drivers. From 70db to 100bd they frequency balance seems to stay the same. 

@james633

"The Kanta is a fine speaker I am sure but it will need subs imo.

You can these the bass drops off hard after 100hz and relies on room gain which can be hard to optimize both soundstage and bass or if you have an odd room. Below 100hz you are listening to the port which might not be as clean."
So, can you suggest some speakers that don't rely on the port for below 100Hz and don't drop off hard below 100Hz? 

mtrot,

all ported speakers work that way but speakers with larger boxes get lowers before dropping off. The subject of this thread the 228be is on example and it goes down to 60hz before heavy roll off starts. 


The Sophia 3 is another example. Even though the 228be’s two 8” drivers have 20% more surface area than the 10” of the Sophia 3, due to the large box of the Sophia 3 it goes down to 50hz before dropping off (resistance and other things at play here but box size is #1)
At each point the port picks up where the drivers leave off. Room gain most likely adds 6 db of bass in the low 30/40hz and you can see that the Sophia is down about 5db at the port and the 228be is down at 6db. 


In listening to both the Sophia 3 has stronger deeper bass than the 228be. The 228be sounds rolled off to me. But with subs crossed in at 60hz all of this goes away. The 228be has much cleaner highs and the mids are more transparent and natural imo. I believe the 228be with subs (picture of my setup in my profile) is better than the Sophia 3 with or without subs.


  
This more or less is how all ported speakers work. Larger boxes are always better. The issue with the Kanta IMO on paper…. Is that the box is pretty small and the port is tuned pretty hot. At high volume it will be limited and chuffing could appear. I think at normal volume they will be 100% fine in every way but next to a large speaker in a large room they will come up short when played loud.
Another approach active speaker when the power is increased in the low bass to get flat down to 20hz. This is effetely what is burnt done when you high-pass in subs. It turns the speaker into a 4 way with active bass. The kicker is you as the user then kind of become the speaker designer which is not for everyone.
Since we are on a harman thread so to speak harman claims that in their subjective data bass extension attributed to 30% of the total positive opinion of their blind test. Interesting for sure abs it show how important it is to get the bass right.



So nothing wrong with the Kanta just point out as a smaller speaker it will be more limited in shear output. Rear wall placement could be more critical too.


https://www.stereophile.com/content/revel-performa-f228be-loudspeaker-measurements



https://www.stereophile.com/content/wilson-audio-sophia-series-3-loudspeaker-measurements



Video of audioholics talking about how good the bass is on the Kanta. Notice how close they are to the wall. 24” maybe and this is probably where they need to be for strong low flat bass.
https://youtu.be/KVNoiBOf96o

@james633

Thanks much for the extensive explanation.  Hmm, considering that in my family room, the front L/R speakers have to be close to the front wall, perhaps the Kanta 2 will work great.  The back of the speakers will need to be about 18" from that wall.  I was about to rule them out, based on your comment about Focal rolling off the bass hard below 100Hz. 

One nice thing about the Kanta 2 is that nice used sets are showing up at around $6500 lately.  Similarly, used sets of F226Be are showing up around that price or even lower.  So, Kanta 2 vs F226Be.....  They will be used probably around 50% for movies/50% music, so they also need to work well when playing movies fairly loud.