Revel Concerta2 M16 Black

Product Information

The Focal are very nice, warm with a rich sound which offer great characters. The Revel offer the same but with a bit more bass. However I'm not sure in the high frequencies if the Revel are as good as the focal. from the listening looks like but not sure. more than up to the task of providing the sound. Revel Concerta2 M16 Bookshelf Speaker Measurements and Analysis

The Concerta2 cabinetisn't quite as sophisticated as those on Revel's pricier Performa3 models, but its design and execution are more advanced than you typically find in this price range. The curved side walls create astiff enclosure that forms a solid foundation for Revel's custom-designed drivers, as well as contributing to the M16's sleek looks. Looking for a measurement of the C205 I found the link in the first post of this thread and I was very disappointed to find out that the C205 has a worse directivity than the C25. Records the default button state of the corresponding category & the status of CCPA. It works only in coordination with the primary cookie. Revel is now part of the considerable grouping of product that forms the impressively named Harman Luxury Audio Group. This also includes Mark Levinson, Lexicon, JBL, Harman Kardon, AKG and Arcam and this large (by the standards of Hi-Fi anyway) group is in turn owned by Samsung. Revel seems to have been issued the challenge of making speakers that can complement this considerable selection of electronics brands, leaving JBL to get on with the business of being JBL. Does this mean that the M16 is a flexible friend to many an amp or a speaker struggling to exert its own identity? Listen further to material like this and the ‘fingerprint’ of the Revel’s aluminium drivers does make itself felt in some aspects of the tonality. Compared to my resident Acoustic Energy AE1 Classics that really do have a ‘metal’ signature to their performance, it is benign but it is there nonetheless. Listening to the Revel side by side with the Spendor A1 - still one of the most affordable speakers to offer a genuinely ‘Monitor’ performance from 100Hz and up - and the Revel can’t match the effortlessly ‘right’ sense of tonal realism that the Spendor can. How much this is going to bother you is somewhat subjective - I could happily live with it and I suspect that most people could too.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. It is fairly unusual to have a product turn up and me to have no real idea how it will sound. My exposure to other Revel speakers has not been extensive and has occurred mainly with rather more expensive members of the range in turn being powered by some very serious pieces of kit indeed. The M16, costs a tenth as much as the last Revel I listened to and much as I don’t think the equipment I have to hand is shabby, it also costs a great deal less than the Levinson gear it was running off. When approaching your local dealer for a listen it is essential that you discuss a home demo. Take your time; the M16s will grow on you and could prove to be indispensable. I can imagine many people spending years of sonic bliss with these speakers and being ever so grateful that they had the patience to run them in. Find the correct isolation and stands and begin to build a system around them.

The low end is incredible with these speakers, but what about the high end? The higher mid range is accurate and clear, though I found when listening to other units around that price point, the separation between the tweeter and woofer was not as obvious. Revel’s engineers created a “low-resonance” tweeter, effectively meaning the crossover is lower. This is great for accurate mids between the tweeter and woofer, but the frequencies above 18,000hz tend to be overshadowed by the lower range. This resulted in a slightly boxy less-open sound, but still accurate. High frequency response is supported by 1 inch aluminium dome tweeters that were derived from Revel’s Performa3 series. Low/Mid range frequency response is supported by 6.5” Aluminium cone woofers featuring low-distortion motor-structures for greater clarity and accuracy with improved sensitivity and output capability. My type of music is very much classical music such as Brahms, Strauss, Vivaldi, Wagner, Mozart……… and more rhythm with Daft Punk, Jean Michel Jarre, Electric Light Orchestra, the Alan Parson Projet, Muse, and Electro. Very large variety of music as you can see. Acoustic measurements can be grouped in a way that can be perceptually analyzed to determine how good a speaker can be used. This so called spinorama shows us just about everything we need to know about the speaker with respect to tonality and some flaws:That proved to be the case in our listening sessions, because although the M105’s bass was outstandingly neutral, free of unwanted distortion and stayed very clean even at higher listening levels, the very lowest musical octave was a tad lower in level than you’d hear from, say, a pair of Revel F206s or F208s… or an M106.

In terms of music reproduction, I find myself listening more than ever for the “little” things. Low-level resolving power, dynamic gradients, shadings, timbral color and contrasts. Listening to a lot of vocals and solo piano has always helped me recalibrate and nail down what I’m hearing. Tonal neutrality and presence are important to me but small deviations are not disqualifying. But I am quite sensitive to treble over-reach, and find dry, hyper-detailed systems intriguing but inauthentic compared with the concert-going experience. For me, true musicality conveys the cozy warmth of a room with a fireplace not the icy cold of an igloo. Sensibly, we started with the SA10 and CDS50 hooked up to the Revel Concerta2 M16 speakers via a set of Jorma Design speaker cables. We also called in the service of the VPI Prime turntable to test the phono section. As we also could put our hands on some other integrateds at the time of this review, we decided to plug the Revel standmounts into them too to see what happened.

Specification and Design

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 Digging up an old thread, as I just took delivery of the C205 speaker. Being that it's on sale, I had to take advantage of this, and finally replace the 18 year old Polk LSiC. Both are rear ported through curvaceous tubes, and they have several other similarities. I think both companies are fairly heavily influenced by lab testing and research, but with listening still featuring in final design. Both products are made in China. Firstly we should thank the lovely folk at Harman for sending over all of this kit. While we are no strangers to Arcam equipment, it was a Revel-ation to spend some time with the Concerta2 M16 loudspeakers. Hopefully, it won’t be the last time we see some Revel speakers here at SNUK HQ.

Revel bringing to the table to make their bookshelf speakers noteworthy? Read on to find out... Appearance At 2.1 kHz the crossover frequency is a little lower than you’d normally expect from a 2-way standmount. I suspect this is down to the waveguide providing a better match with the directivity of the mid/bass driver, blending the sound for a one-source effect – a little like the technique employed by Amphion speakers, if I remember correctly.measurements is touched on in Objective Loudspeaker Measurements to Predict Subjective Preferences. The direct You paid for it, might as well use it so don't cover the sidewalls. Let the speaker use them to present a larger image. Once decoupled, the M16’s cabinet and tuned rear port began to function in sync. All interactions between driver, cabinet and port now produced a sound which was smooth, detailed and extremely well chiselled. In my time I have come across very few speakers that display such a stark contrast in performance pre and post spikes, so be warned: I suspect the M16 will sound as good on most stands, provided the two are de-coupled. Then there’s the authority of the presentation, helped by the Revel’s ability to dig deeply in the bass. These speakers may just be 37cm tall, but close your eyes and you’d swear you were listening to decently sized floorstanders.