Buying speakers is a personal decision. What do you think about how they sound? What do you think about the way they look? At this level they will all sound good. If you have not heard better, they are the best regardless of the magazine reviews or Joe from Oshkosh who like Wilsons or Tom from NYC who likes Meridians (fictitious characters, btw).
Also, wrt home theater, anything better than your TV sounds good. There is no sound stage, so to speak, where you are concerned with the location of the piano or the bass. HT is a lot less discriminating.
Personally, I listened to the F50's for almost a year and then bought Aerial 8b's for $3,800. Lot's of people told me I should like the Revel Ultima's and I did. Problem was (and is) you also have to buy furniture, amplifiers, a projector, accoustical treatment, etc., and then have something left over for your wife, the family, your mortgage lender! |
Ditto w/ Quicke about personal choice. You can also add in interaction w/ your current components and cables. Bring 'em in, put your favorite sounds on and listen, listen, listen. Good Luck! |
I've heard all those - I would choose the Aerial stuff. Better made, better sound. The CC5 is as good as any center channel gets, from anyone, IMHO.
9s are very nice too, though 6, 7, 8s are no slouches either.
-Ed |
FWIW, I owned an Aerial setup for 5 yrs: 7Bs, CC3, SR3s ran it w/Sunfire amp & Classe processor. It was great, but was overkill because of all the points raised by the others here. I recently sold it all, bought an NAD receiver & Onix Rocket $2150 5 speaker package, and freed up over $4k to upgrade my separate 2 channel music system.
I am very happy w/the lower priced HT, and more than happy with improved sound where it matters most: the music system.
Spencer |
I have heard the entire Revel line and find it to be exceptional. I have heard some aerials and they are also fine speakers. Personally I prefer the Revels I have both the entire ultima Studio voice ect. line and performa m20s ect. for two different systems. I think these are excellent speakers top to bottom and based on budget would reccomend them. As far as build quality there is no better built speaker than Revel. These things are built like tanks. Aerials are also built well. I invite anyone to do an a/b and tell why specificly some speaker is built better than Revel. As far as personal preference someone might prefer another speaker over these but not because of quality. |
I like the Aerials better than the Revels. I have the 9's and they are awesome. Revels are made as good as it gets but i like the sound of the Aerials better. You must hear both of them to deside for yourself. |
Worldcat: Your response shouldnt even be allowed in a Revel vs. Aerial debate. And you know it! =P |
Get yourself the new Deftecs BP7000sc series if you want HT. These are meant for HT and have few peers if your planning to spend that kind of money.I beg to differ on Revels being built like tanks... you must mean the F50 on up. Below that they are nothing special. The BP7000sc series has a freq response from 11 Hz - 30 khz. Built in 1800 watt class D amplifiers in each speaker. A pair of these has more bass output and impact than 7 super cubes put together! For HT they are hard to beat..regardless of how much more you spend.
Use the money you saved.. on your two channel system!
Good Luck! |
i have had the Revel F30's, C30, and S30's in my HT room for 3 years (i have a separate 2-channel room with Kharma Exquisites). i have taken the F30's into my 2-channel room and listened to them on world-class amps (Tenor 300 watt hybrids among many others). i have spent time listening to the F50's also.
for the last 4 years our local audio club has used the Aerial 7B's as our reference speakers......so i have heard those on many different amps on many occasions.
both Revel and Aerial are well made and pretty capable. but there are clear differences. the Aerials are much more forgiving, much warmer, and not as fast or detailed as the Revels. one reason our club choose the Aerials was to avoid any edgyness as that was a prioity at the time for us. i would add that when we try to do cable comparisons or source gear comparisons on the Aerials all the differences are minimized due to the politeness of the Aerials......whereas my Revels tell me exactly what is going on immediately.....a good thing?.....a matter of taste possibly.
personally, i prefer the Revels for their greater excitment, dynamics and less veiled approach. my opinion is that the F50 is like the F30, but just more transparent and refined. the better, more refined your gear is....the more you will appreciate the Revel approach IMHO.
good luck. |
Mike made a good point on Revel's. They are much more detailed to the extent where they will show up flaws in the rest of your equipment which may or may not make for an enjoyable listening experience. The better your source and amplification is, the better they will sound. One reason why I personally feel Revel products(Ultima Series)are superior to Aerial regardless of HT or 2 channel listening, it just forces you to upgrade the rest of your gear accordingly. To me, "laid back" and "forgiving" means information lost. SOmething I found when I recently had a pair of 20T's next to my Salons. On a few passages you could hear the vocalists every so slight breathing patterns between passages through the Salon's, along with some cymbal/drumstick contact information, both of which were non existant on the Aerial's which had a much more "laid back" personality, but its a given that when you sacrifice dynamics, you lose detail in the process. Thats why I like speakers that have maximum dynamics and detail. If I want to "lay back" the sound, I would rather do it through my amplification,source and cabling, not the speakers themselves. |
your response shouldn't be allowed RITTERI! Go buy your Kharma's and shut up! |
Worldcat: I feel my response is at least merit'd. Ive OWNED and SOLD as a dealer the products I speak on and have listened to the above products for countless hours. You based your buying off on opinions BEFORE you had ever even heard the speaker(or amps or source or cabling). Look at your setup! LOL! All your equipment came from the same dealer who doesnt even have demo samples to listen too!LOL!You bought sound unheard! LOL! |
Worldcat: Check out this thread you posted on countless occasions : http://forum.audiogon.com/cgi-bin/fr.pl?aamps&1053349700&openusid&zzWorldcat&4&5#Worldcat You bought an amplifier based on a DEALERs words, not your ears, LOL! Damn, I wish I was your dealer. I could have sold you a pair of used American Standard toilets, slapped a Mark Levinson label on it and called it an "awesome sounding" monoblock set. LOL! All of your 25 posted responses are of a 16 year old kid, giving no subjective content. When you have some true "real world" experience on multiple combinations of equipment and performance abilities, then come back and post. |
Now lets all play nice,be friends and have fun! =) |
My vote is for Revel. I think they are more detailed. Aerials are nice too but I perfer Revel. |
i heard the revels lots of times and the Aerials a few times. Theta is making great product all the reviews on their equipment is great (they don't advertise either) and i talk to people who owned theta so i was happy with that and it turned out better than i could ever expect. Just look at the review on the GEN VIII Theta rocks I am rockin my system is AWESOME i am so happy with it!! Looks like your not because your selling the beloved revels for an upgrade???... Kharma hahaha can u hear?? And if i didn't like the system i could of always sold it! Probably thats why your selling your REVELS. The 20t's are in another world than anything revel makes--people take a listen find out for yourself! |
Worldcat: You really need to take the foot out of the mouth and to complete your random ADHD thoughts. You've most likely never even heard of another pair of Aerial's other than the 9's, and dont tell me you've ever heard a pair of Revel's either, you bought equipment sight unheard, and if your dumb enough to think that Theta doesnt advertise, check out some of the national "hifi" mags. If you knew why I was selling my Revel's you probably wouldnt have made the comment you just did, active stage speakers have more flexibility in room setup than traditional passive speakers do when you have multiple monoblocks powering each stage of the speaker such as the Kharma Exquisite Reference 1A w/diamond tweeter upgrade that extends flat to over 100k before its first breakup mode, and the best thing of all is that each driver can be individually amplified and trimmed for the ultimate in dynamics and imaging capabilites. As for reviews, I really could care less about em. BUt if Im correct, the Revel Salon, was product and/or speaker of the year for 3 different major publishings(2 of which Revel/Madrigal/Harmon did not have any advertising influence) from back in 99' to last year in 03' I havent seen any glowing reviews of Aerial products lately. The few minor reviews(Model 9,Model 10,Model 5B)got mixed reviews at best. As the speaker really doesnt do anything special. As for Theta, the products are pretty good, but its not like you can really hear what they are capable of through a pair of Model 9's. |
I have more money than brains you have more brains than money i guess! |
