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Revel vs the field

Long story short, I bought Focal Aria 906 bookshelves years ago because I got a great deal.  A few years later I added the Aria 926 towers and CC900 center (again bc of great deals)
 

Recently I’ve had more time to actually go and spend some time in listening rooms and I heard Revel for the first time  (f208, f226be and f228be)

I’m curious if anyone has made the switch between these two brands and why they did it.  While I loved the f228be, the f208s are a much more realistic price point ($4-5k) It seems like I prefer the neutrality of the Revels and would be open to demo-ing other, similarly neutral speakers 

 

i know it’s subjective and dependent on equipment, room, etc, but I’d welcome hearing about other’s experiences

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Showing 1 response by erik_squires

erik_squires
16,467 posts
 

I had Focals for a while. I liked Revel or Monitor Audio a great deal more. While the Focals had a crisp mid-range presentation, I felt they were cheaply made and often hard to drive compared to their competition. Also a little too bright.

If you like to tinker, Focals use rather harsch film caps. On the tweeter and midrange replacing them with Mundorf MKPs will really make them sound a lot smoother.

Revel is a lot more neutral than Focal.  The other thing they do exceptionally well is create a very wide sweet spot with a very stable image.  Not something a lot of boutique speakers do at all well, including Focals.  Closer to how well Magico does this.

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