Revel speakers - dealer scuttlebutt

I was wondering why Revel hadn't introduced a new Ultima line after what is now 11 years.  They haven't introduced a top of the line speaker since 2008.  And suddenly you see their Ultima 2 line all over the net.  Curious.

It may be "all of the above".

I have no knowledge about Samsung’s business plans but remember that Samsung bought Harman International mainly for their car audio business. In that way, Revel might have been just bundled with what was an actual interest. In relatively similar cases, companies have tried to sell brands they were not interested in. It would not be too surprising to see Revel being for sale at some point. As Revel salesman in their company showroom told me when we talked about this..."Hopefully not to some hedge fund". A bit more optimistically, he was preparing to go to some meeting in California to discuss some new (?) items. It was some months ago.

Ever since this Samsung acquisition, I have been wondering if the quality of materials and craftmanship will decrease. Kind of like a "they don’t make them like they used to". Does anyone have any comparison?

Harman isn't known for selling off brands. They do have a history of buying brands for tech and then killing off the brand slowly. Samsung is letting Harman continue to operate on it's own much more than many of it's past acquisitions (at least for the foreseeable future). 
But when it comes to "they don't make them like they used to" - Harman certainly does water down products. Most of the flagship stuff maintains the highest quality, but the entry level gets heavily watered down. 

As far as Samsung buying for the car business, that was the big headlines on the PRs because media cycles were pumping autonomous driving heavily at the time, and that was Harman's fastest growing business segment. The fact of the matter is Samsung makes screens and computer chips, and Harman makes audio processors and transducers. It really was a nice pairing as far as owning production and outsourcing less pieces go. 

I never realised how many companies are now in that group.
 Samsung is defiantly a power house in entertainment they seem to have every angle covered now. 

Harmon group: 
AKG, Harman Kardon, Infinity, JBL, JBL pro, JBL synth, Lexicon, Mark Levinson, Revel, AMX, Crown, Martin, Soundcraft, Studer, BSS, DBX, DigiTech, Arcam. 

Studer surprised me the most. 

Starting to be only a few true companies now with all the "groups" buying up our traditional audio companies.  

sort of scary really as most of the smaller Audio companies are a 1-2 person show and when they leave - pass on -retire the companies sputter and die. That only leaves the large groups with their for profit models and their lack of true connection to the products they sell left as a main stays. No wonder products from many of the companies in these large groups are sort of lifeless products that ride on the previous good names of the designers. 

As for the car market I agree there, they seem to be more concerned as to how we can plastering a brand name on a cars audio system to help sell cars make a profit from branding. 

Samsung is defiantly a power house in entertainment they seem to have every angle covered now.

Look at it this way, Samsung now is making all the parts for the experience. Everyone hates on Bixby in their smartphones (because it sucks still), but if they get that right down the road they’ll not only have the software and user data, but also the devices. It’s not hard to imagine having a Samsung smart home (or hotel, or hospital, or stadium, etc) in the future. It might just have a bunch a brands stamped on everything to make you feel like you didn’t give all of your control to one corporation.