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Revel Concerta2 M16 Black

£9.9£99Clearance
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I first started testing the M16 on my desktop in near-field listening, comparing it to cheap Pioneer SB-22 speaker (levels matched, one speaker at a time). The Pioneer just wasn't in the same class. It sounded tinny and small compared to Revel. Pushing the M16 hard, I could get the small woofer to distort. Since this is not a near field monitor, I decided to test it in my 2-channel system as I have tested other hi-fi speakers. Here is what that looks like: Perhaps even more impressive is the enthusiastic way these standmounters deliver large-scale dynamics. They pound out crescendos with relish, refusing to harden up or compress the music even at high volume levels.

The room response must be averaged to recognize trends in the summation of direct and reflected signals at the microphone. The resulting curves must not be taken as a 1:1 representation of what is heard as loudness at different frequencies. The room response gives a picture of the steady state SPL, where sound generation and sound dissipation in the room have reached their equilibrium." -Linkwitz The real party piece of the M16 can be found higher up the frequency response though. It is impossible to separate the activities of the tweeter and the waveguide as you can’t turn one off and listen to the other in isolation but the net result is that the M16 has a truly fabulous top end. The Naim equipment that I habitually use doesn’t place a huge emphasis on the idea of soundstage. It works on delivering a stereo image that the speakers can then attempt to render three dimensional. This works for me in a review sense because it allows you to discover when a speaker really excels and this the case here. With a slight toe-in applied, the Revel simply vanishes into a wholly convincing sonic space that has both appreciable width and depth to it. Something like Air’s Talkie Walkie which is all about these sonic spaces is a genuinely invigorating listen as a result. The Revel is not an easy product to photograph - not least because like most piano finish products, it is both enormously reflective and capable of retaining fingerprint smears seemingly forever. It is however a member of the notorious category of ‘things that look better in the flesh.’ You’ll have to take my work for this but sat on a stand in most rooms, this is a handsome and appealing speaker. It does without some of the fussiness that can affect some American designs and the result is a pleasantly understated object that should work well in a variety of spaces. There are no fasteners on the exterior panels, but rather, the the addition of magnetic grilles with metallic brushed logos on the front of the speakers. Together, these add to the speaker set’s well-polished, properly-made feel, bolstering the overall quality of the M16.The M16's 1" aluminum dome tweeter sits in Revel's concave Acoustic Lens waveguide, which increases the tweeter's dispersion at higher frequencies, and also helps create a more seamless match between the tweeter and the woofer just below it. The result is very smooth, consistent sound both on-axis and off-axis, creating a larger sweet spot. An advanced cabinet forms a solid foundation Not quite, as they come to about 22.5” whereas the standard tall stands are 24” as you know. The Revel ones that are meant to be designed for the job are just over 25” per the link immediately above. The M106 also has a 6.5" aluminum-cone mid/woofer with a cast aluminum frame; the cone is ribbed to eliminate resonances and to optimize its pistonic behavior. The speaker's rear-firing port has identical flares at both ends to minimize dynamic compression and port-generated noise. The original Celestion branded Cliff Stone Foundation stands (from the late 1980s and my SL600s). Spikes slightly higher at the front to project better into the room As I have circled, the Harman measurements seems to be some evaluation version? Perhaps there has been changes since? Regardless, the rest of the measurement matches mine quite well so confidence is high in the data you see here.

We should note that Revel expects that some buyers will use the M105s in a multi-channel home theatre system, probably by using M105s in the surround channels as well (or, if you want dipolar speakers, a pair of S206s). So it also makes a dedicated centre channel (C205) that uses the same bass/midrange driver as the M105s, though of course two of them, rather than just the one. There are also two powered subwoofers in the Performa3 range – the B110, which has a 10-inch bass driver, and the B112, which has a 12-inch bass driver. Measurements that you are about to see were performed using the Klippel Near-field Scanner (NFS). This is a robotic measurement system that analyzes the speaker all around and is able (using advanced mathematics and dual scan) to subtract room reflections (so where I measure it doesn't matter). It also measures the speaker at close distance ("near-field") which sharply reduces the impact of room noise. Both of these factors enable testing in ordinary rooms yet results that can be more accurate than anechoic chamber. In a nutshell, the measurements show the actual sound coming out of the speaker independent of the room. The resulting ceramic/metal/ceramic sandwich provides constrained layer damping that pushes cone break-up modes outside the passband, so the driver can deliver ideal pistonic motion throughout its operating range. The bundled remote can also control the CDS50 CD player and streamer. The remote’s buttons light up and, given slightly darker silver over slightly lighter silver text on the amps’ selection buttons, I found myself keeping that glow-in-the-dark handset close. Arcam CDS50 The primary purpose of ribbing on any surface is to increase the rigidity of that surface, and that’s exactly what is taking place here, with Revel saying that in this case, the increase in rigidity enables the cone to “achieve ideal, piston-like behaviour, eliminating a major source of resonances that are audible in most loudspeakers.”You can tell someone was making sure that the sound you hear reflected horizontally is just as perfect as the on-axis direct sound: Additionally, thanks to the tweeter’s dispersion, taking the Revel Concerta2 M16 out of the corner of the room pays off and allows them to show what an impressively wide and open sound stage they can produce. The upshot of this is that toeing in appears more to do with personal taste than necessity here. SA10, CDS50, Revel Concerta2 M16 Review On the face of the rather attractive cabinets, the tweeter boasts a dished waveguide that controls its directivity. Furthermore, the acoustic lens – the grille-type thing in front of the tweeter’s dome – also helps too. The SA20 is the most affordable offering to come sporting Arcam’s Class G amplifier topology, delivering just under 20 of its 90Watts in Class A @ 8Ohms. Our horizontal directivity plot shows that this speaker has similar tonality to +- 60 degrees and rolls of very smoothly:

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