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In mid-February, we issued another home test at HIFI.NL. After we got started with the Revel M ourselves 100 bookshelf speaker we challenged a reader to do the same. From the many responses, we chose Time van Bers, partly because he announced that he would work for Muziekgebouw Eindhoven, a concert hall with a worldwide reputation for excellent acoustics. B these are review!

Text and picture: Time van Bers

Whole what hours I was able to listen to a set of very nice speakers full of amazement and enthusiasm. I had the pleasure to gain (listening) experience with the Revel M 16, from the Concerta2 series.

My name is Time and I have been reading HIFI.NL for years with love and above all a lot of fun. A review or a visit to a manufacturer, I am happy to take it. I dive a lot in the newsletters and I also ran the call ‘Revel M 16: Home tester Wantedâ ???? bump. I had really never heard of Revel, but I have been looking for a new set of speakers for a long time – and very carefully, about which in a moment. So I was definitely interested!

Home-situation At my house is a Rega Elex-R amplifier â ???? who have been a WhatHiFi- award on her gorgeous pants â ???? in combination with the Rega Saturn-R CD / DAC, with two Wolfson WM 8742 converters on board. I stream with the Bluesound Node 2 directly via an AudioQuest Carbon coax to that beautiful DAC from Rega. And sometimes there is even an ‘old fashioned’ ???? CD set up. Especially by my girlfriend, who does not know that a Van Den Hul D 422 III Hybrid interlink between player and amplifier.

My girlfriend loves music at least as much as I do. But to a lesser extent she finds good sound important. Where music straight from her laptop makes me cranky, the elegant M 16 her up right away. The duo is, as may be expected from a bookshelf speaker model, small in size and stands on accompanying stands that have a beautiful matte black with a light textured powder coat finish. The design of the tripod matches the speaker very well and fortunately makes a refined whole of the set.

The speakers themselves come in high-gloss white and each speaker tapers to the rear in a somewhat round shape. Importer Reference Sounds loaned me Hardwired speaker cables from Transparent. The speaker terminal is built in such a way that nothing protrudes from it. Since banana plugs need to be inserted at an angle from above, I think spades are more convenient. Even if only to ensure that the cables do not kink over time. The speakers look nice from the front. No frills, no big logo, the two drivers neatly and tightly incorporated in the cabinet and in light connection with each other. No screw, nut or bolt to be seen at the front. Just Tight, clean and simple .A What is particularly striking is the “horizontal egg” shape around the tweeter. It catches the eye. And, it turns out, definitely serves a purpose â ???? about which also more.

Music In the run-up to the first listening sessions, I intended to start with light music. Not so long ago I attended a concert by countertenor Philippe Jaroussky. He sang, among others, the piece Il Giustino, RV 750, Act 1: “Vedrò con mio diletto” (Anastasio) by Vivaldi and I was really enchanted. So I would like to know if the M 16 also captures me with this.

Here comes that tilted egg around the tweeter right around the corner. The small, fine piece by the Italian composer is full of gentle caresses on the strings of the violins and cellos. And the singer sings in a high angel voice, almost inhuman. These Revels reproduce that very well and it seems, as the manufacturer also claims, that the sweet spot of these speakers is much wider than purely central. My living room fills up very nicely with a transparent sound in which the details of the piece are clearly audible. Both high and low sound very nice and I cannot say that the M 16 has a preference for either. I am really amazed that this sound comes from these small reproducers. That’s a great start as far as I’m concerned.

On Tidal, I’m looking for REM’s song Drive, in MQA format. And that is! As the cello sounded before, the bass guitar is now also nice and warm and especially without bloated madness. Those who cannot have Michael Stipe’s voice so well should stay far away from the M 16ash. The singer presents himself without being intrusive and sounds flawless. When guitarist Peter Buck starts his distortion a little later, the story is complete. If I were to hear this blindfolded, I would most likely think that the sounds are coming from bigger cabinets. And with a higher price tag, too.

Then we set also just press TOOL. Well, for a moment â ???? the first song of that last album Fear Inoculum lasts about ten minutes. The eponymous opener has an intro that is not only tasty, but also lasts a long time. And here again a cello by the way. Or something that continues before that, because it has been put through a sampler. But this one also just sounds great! Danny Carey’s Toms â ???? is that with no uncertain probability – the world’s best drummer of the moment? a???? sound great. Without frills. If the record was mastered a little differently, Carey could well be sitting in my living room with his drums.

As a final test, I want to listen to these 2-way speakers with the separate tweeters again very carefully. That’s why I put on the album Foghorn, by the Dutch band Wolfendale. I know a few band members and I know how refined they build up layer by layer in their studio. It always takes them years and their work is often so complex that they can barely play it live. So there is a lot in this, and you can only hear that if the reproduction is really good. There, the Revel M 100, however, no qualms. The beautiful Ending Up sounds very clear and detailed. The polyphony in combination with the bass loop sounds crystal clear and yet has the warmth that I know Wolfendale likes to bring. I hear things I didn’t notice before. If we weren’t in the middle of the corona crisis, I would be more than happy to invite the band to let them experience with their own ears how their music sounds outside their own studio. And here too, the speakers have a beautiful radiation, thanks to the strikingly tilted egg shape around the tweeters.

Finally, I would come back to my careful search for a set new speakers. I like speakers that bring as little coloring as possible. So transparent, with an unadulterated ‘this is how it’ s made ‘view. For a long time I have enjoyed speakers made and assembled by a friend for a project at the Technical University. These really sounded fantastic. But the format of those things … it was actually impossible. And when I started living together and half of my furniture was not added at all! Because we wanted to live bigger quickly and I really wanted to make a choice in the new house, I opted for an interim solution that also sounded good from a budgetary point of view. That became the DALI Zensor 3, also a bookcase speaker. And that also sounds fine, but I really missed the â ???? fillingâ ???? in the living room. So I started looking for floorstanders that would make us happy in the temporally and ended up with the Aeromax 6 from Cambridge Audio. Cambridge Audio? Yes they make â ???? or made it seems, because so far no model of the British has been releasedâ ???? also speakers. The Aeromax 6 was the flagship. And believe it or not, they sound lovely!

Conclusion Why such a long story? Well, because I just want to indicate that I believe in affordable speakers that offer quality. Certainly if they are controlled by the right material. At the time, I paid € for the Aeromax 6 at the time. more than what this Revel M 16 â ???? s left the store. And I don’t like that. Because even though the M 16 â ???? s are smaller in every way, I just think they sound better than my floorstanders! There is more in these Revel models. Especially in terms of clarity and detail in combination with the â ???? unadulteratedâ ???? low they win. The filling in the living room of over fifty square meters and three and a half meters high leaves nothing to be desired. The duo also looks attractive on the accompanying stands. So there are only winners for this prize. Compliments to Revel for convincing me!

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