My impressions of the Revel Ultima2 Salons.
The cabinets.
The fit and finish was rather poor, but we were told that it was because these were prototypes. I'd expect that is true since all of the previous Revels have been well constructed. Aesthetically, the original Ultima series was unique looking... I never particularly liked it, but it was acceptable. These have much less character. With the grilles removed the highly polished lumpy bumpy baffle was not particularly attractive, but purposeful. I had the opportunity to speak with one of the engineers who designed them and he told me that one of the design goals was absolute minimum diffraction. With the grilles on the speakers looked rather generic, but I did prefer it to the glossy lumps and bumps.
The cabinets are built of many layers of MDF and seemed to be quite dense and non resonant. The connectors on the back are high end WBT binding posts and were hidden behind a gasketed plastic door that was handled quite elegantly.
The sound.
The room was about the size of a medium sized living room and there were some sound panels up on the walls to reduce first reflections and reflections off the rear walls. The listening sessions were limited to groups of 6 so that everyone had a chance to sit in the sweet spot if desired. The electronics were top flight Mark Levinson. The sole source was a Mark Levinson CD player. We listened to a wide range of music including classical music with strings, harp, and a variety of percussion instruments. We also heard female vocals, acapella singers, rock, and jazz. Immediately it was apparent that they were quite dynamic and had stage depth for days. The imaging and stage depth were really amazing... very solid and well defined. Sitting in the sweet spot brought the stage into focus... the other seats were perfectly pleasant, but far less outstanding. The most remarkable thing about the speakers was the sheer neutrality... I am usually quite sensitive to tweaked frequency response curves... many speaker designers "adjust" the response curve to mask a problem. If the speakers tend to be harsh they tone down the upper mids... if they are lifeless they may jack up this region... if the bass is boomy they may tone it down or mask it with an upper bass peak and so on. These speakers with these electronics in this room were remarkably free of any peaks or dips. The detail resolution was also very good without any sense of hardness or edginess. When turned up the sound character didn't get aggressive or unpleasant. (Even the much touted LSRs will drive me from the room at much lower levels than we were listening to during the let's crank it up portion.) Even though these speakers use rather tiny 8" woofers the three of them did an excellent job of recreating music... in an HT situation or if you are a serious bass head, you may want to augment them with a sub. That said, they did not sound thin or lacking bass in any way.
Despite my not being excited by their visual appeal like I am with the DD66000, I would be thrilled to own a pair of these speakers. At $22K a pair, I really doubt that I ever will, but for anyone looking for a pair of speakers at this level of performance, you really must give them a whirl. I'd imagine they are superior to the DD66000 in imaging and tonal neutrality, but come up short in the dynamics and maximum SPL department... I didn't find either of these two areas really lacking though... the speakers got loud and had punch.
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