Revel vs the field

I have heard the Focal 906 and had the Focal towers in my room for about 2 weeks. I compared them against Fritz Heiler’s Carbon 7 Mk 2 SE and they were not nearly as musical, though the towers threw out a much wider sound stage (because they’re towers).

I cannot speak to Revel’s sound, but I did eventually settle (after hearing Martin Logan XT 60i and Dynaudio Evoke 30 towers) on the Ascend Acoustics Sierra Towers with RAAL tweeters. Really an amazing company (small, engineer founded and run, very effective customer service). That tower is now at TMR for about 2/3rds the price.

I had Focals for a while. I liked Revel or Monitor Audio a great deal more. While the Focals had a crisp mid-range presentation, I felt they were cheaply made and often hard to drive compared to their competition. Also a little too bright.

If you like to tinker, Focals use rather harsch film caps. On the tweeter and midrange replacing them with Mundorf MKPs will really make them sound a lot smoother.

Revel is a lot more neutral than Focal.  The other thing they do exceptionally well is create a very wide sweet spot with a very stable image.  Not something a lot of boutique speakers do at all well, including Focals.  Closer to how well Magico does this.

revels do have a bit of a cult following and i liked their older stuff, but i'm not a big fan of the performa 3 line,  nothing wrong with liking what you like.