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Revel Salons - Do they really sound like this?

I've been entertaining the idea of a speaker change lately. Not that I'm unhappy with my system. I just thought I might try something new for a change. Lots of people rave about the Revels so I went to my local dealer to hear the Salons. Associated equipment were 2 Levinson 436 monos, the latest Hovland preamp, and the new Ayre cd player. Transparent reference cables throughout. This audition turned out to be a big letdown. Im not trying to bash the speakers, I'm just looking for a little insight. The room was about 35X20. The speakers were set up parallel with the long wall. They were about 10ft in from the back wall and 5ft from the sidewalls with no toe-in. I was sitting back about 8ft centered perfectly and there were large acoustic panels on every wall across the room spaced about 2 ft apart. There were no defined images, the sound seemed to come from all over the room. The mid and high frequencies were very laid back which was non-fatiguing but to such an extreme that it was almost lifeless. I couldn't make out details on music that I was familiar with, it was almost as if there was a veil over the sound, and the bass wasn't that great either. Im thinking for 17 large, there must be something wrong with the setup. I use Dunlavys with Pass gear and the imaging is pinpoint. I can hear a vocalist take a breath. I can even hear Daina Kralls lips come apart before she starts to sing. I figured I would try and explain what I wasn't hearing to the sales rep so he could mabye change something and he looks at me and says, "Have you had your ears checked recently." I was absolutely floored. I did bite my tongue however and left quietly with a poor opinion of the salesman and the speakers. I came home and thought I might ask the fellow goners their opinion of the Revel Salons.
cmpromo
kr4's avatar
kr4
3,662 posts
 
Actually, only individual parameters of "accuracy in speakers can be measured" with instruments. What I was hoping was that you might have measurements for the Revels that would show significant deviation from a flat response. As for time-coherence, something I am not against btw, B&W have shown that it makes a much less significant contribution to real-world performance.

Nonetheless, I stand by my earlier statement that the flip dismissal of any of the speakers discussed here, including the Dunlavys, is neither objective nor responsible.
cincy_bob
270 posts
 
Here are Atkinson's measurements of the Salons:

http://www.stereophile.com/loudspeakerreviews/96/index9.html

Nearly flat from 20Hz to 20KHz.
mactrumand57e
1 posts
 
The Salons have not nearly doubled in price. When introduced, they were about $15K a pair. These days, I understand they are about $18K per pair. Of course, you pay a little more for fancier finishes. This price increase is in line with price increases for similarly-priced speakers over the past few years.

The assertions about accuracy are irrelevant. Dunlavy designed speakers to generate a flat response in a lab. The speakers would not generate a flat response in the standard living room. Revel had a fundamentally different design objective: to build a speaker that would produce a relatively accurate response in a real listening environment, for more than one listener. Revel also used more than measuring instruments in its design effort--it used real people, trained to listen like audiophiles. So to criticize Revel for not being as subjectively accurate at Dunlavy is really no criticism at all.

To my ears, the Revels sound great. They sounded better to me than the Dunlavy IVs and Vs I listened to when I made my purchase. I have no quarrel with those who prefer the Dunlavy sound. I do not claim that my ear is more golden than Dunlavy buyers, or that my Revel purchase is any wiser (subjectively speaking, of course) than a Dunlavy purchase.
9rw's avatar
9rw
318 posts
 
This is typical Stereophile drivel. John Atkinson attempts to explain away mediocre results (slight lumpiness, lack of presence-region energy, etc.), saying, "This could be a measurement artifact."

A few years ago, John Dunlavy revealed Stereophile's measurement capabilities for being what they are: extremely flawed. And that frequency response graph doesn't look all that flat to me -- especially in the high frequency portion.

Judge for yourself. This is from Stereophile's measurements section in the review of the Revel Salon, which retailed for $14,400 in 1999:

"However, the high-order crossover means that the Salon cannot be time-coherent, as shown by its step response on the tweeter axis (fig.8). The tweeter output arrives first at the microphone, followed by the outputs of the midrange unit, then the upper woofer, then the three lower woofers. It is arguable whether time coherence is necessary or not. Certainly, LG's very positive reaction to the Revel's resolution of detail and its imaging accuracy was not negatively affected by the speaker's time-domain behavior.

". . . The Salon's waterfall plot (fig.9) was not as clean as I had expected. I suspect that some of the HF hash present in the floor of this graph is due to early reflections of the tweeter's output from the tops of the speaker's side cheeks. There is a hint of delayed energy just below the on-axis notch in the presence region, but this is probably too subtle to introduce any coloration.

". . . Another finely engineered loudspeaker design from Kevin Voecks and his team. — John Atkinson"

Indeed. Are we talking about the same speaker? The main problem, though, is that these speakers just don't sound that great compared to the competition at this price and even one-third the price.

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