Revel Concerta2 M16 Black

Product Information

As soon as we pressed play on the Classic Yoyo album we dropped into the CDS50 we were delighted with the combination’s natural and well-detailed presentation. The cello’s lower register is smooth and warm while piano keys, in particular, are articulate. Truth to be told, I tried, I really tried to give the M16s the middle of the road award so that I would not be accused of bias. But at the end, I just could not. These are wonderful sounding speakers. It is what "high-end" sound reproduction is about in smaller budget. The combination of measurements and subjective listening impressions left me to no room but to give them my highest award (in the context of a small, lower cost speaker). The CDS50 did very well and put on a brave show. However, we were keen to hear how it performed through the SA20 as, after having the disc spinner already plugged into one of our other amplifiers, we knew that it had more to give. High frequency response is supported by 1 inch aluminum dome tweeters that were derived from Revel’s Performa3 series. Low/Mid range frequency response is supported by 6.5” Aluminum cone woofers featuring low-distortion motor-structures for greater clarity and accuracy with improved sensitivity and output capability.

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. The waveguide acts as physical protection for the tweeter, but its real purpose is to ensure that at the crossover frequency, the off-axis dispersion of the tweeter is similar to that of the off-axis dispersion of the bass/midrange driver.If you want to have a taste of what all of Harman research and engineering is about, get a pair of M16s and listen. They are delightful "bookshelf" speakers showing what can be done when you combine serious research with a decent budget for pats and manufacturing. 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:

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? Revel bringing to the table to make their bookshelf speakers noteworthy? Read on to find out... Appearance 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. I’d assumed that the Revel’s smooth character would mask the dynamics of pop and dance music, but I was in for a surprise. True, the upper bass seemed less punchy than that of other speakers of a similar pedigree, but replacing a pronounced upper bass was a ‘weight’ to the music, which was fantastically dynamic, robust and very well layered into the lowest bass frequencies. Once again the effect was non-fatiguing: there was less wham-bam impact but nevertheless the overall result was incredibly engrossing and surprisingly addictive. 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.The reality is wholly positive though. The M16 impressed out of the box and with some more hours on them, they’ve really only improved. In one very important way, this is immediately identifiable as an American speaker. The M16 is big and confident in the way it approaches everything it plays but this is done in a commendably subtle way. When you listen to something like Biosphere’s Substrata, which is at once large scale and also impressively intimate, oscillating between these two extremes, often very swiftly. The Revel is utterly at home at both ends of the scale. It doesn’t impart scale where it shouldn’t be present and delivers it when it should. 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. Dynamics and timing are where we feel the need to shout “your entry-level is showing!” Throwing anything complex at the SA10 could either leave you somewhat satisfied or quite confused with no middle ground in our experience. We felt that this was most apparent via the phono stage. Where we expected grand, mountainous dynamics we found hills. OK, that might be unfair. Let's say, slightly less impressive mountains. 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