Who does not know Revel? Owned bay the big Harman International, home to JBL, Mark Levinson and many other brands.
In my little DIY inspirational series of “What Drivers Do They Use?”, I this time turn to Revel.
I’ve heard their speakers and many HiFi shows, and they always sound outstanding. There is much knowledge going into making a good speaker. The enclosure, for one. Some uses “simple” MDF others go all in and uses all aluminum like Magico, others heavy composite materials a la corian like Wilson Audio etc.
I think for a passive speaker probably the most important thing is the crossover. Not meaning whether it is made of ultra expensive components, but that it provides the right basis for the speaker units and that the overall result is a flat frequency response, in my view the most important feature of a speaker.
But well the driver units of course plays a big part in reaching the overall goal, and choosing drivers with an inherent good, flat and broad frequency response, together with high power and loudness capability isa good starting point.
Revel uses as far as I can tell different driver brands for their different series, and here I’m only gessing about the Performa 3 series.
The even more praised Ultima series uses a range of different drivers which I’m pretty sure does not come from the same manufactory as for the Performa.
The Danish / Indonesian company SB Acoustics delivers speaker units to a lot of different high nd brands (like Wilson Audio) and of course also to a lot of DIY’ers around the world. Known for a very high price performance ratio, but also just know for a very high performance.
Looking at pictures in the review by 6moon it’s actually not that diffisult to guess the drivers used in Revel 3. They are all from SB Acoustics
Tweeter
As can be read on the Ravel homepage all drivers are aluminum, in particular the tweeter is described as “1” (2.5 cm) Aluminum Tweeter with Acoustic Lens Waveguide”. As I’m pretty sure the mid and woofers are from SB Acoustics, then it’s a fair guess the the tweeter is too.
There is only one 1″ alu tweeter in the SB program, namely the SB26ADC-C000-4, and looking at the picture it’s a very fair guess. It of course has another Revel proprietary waveguide front plate, which in itself is a very good idea, and also in line with the older siblings in the Performa series.
The SB26ADC-C000-4, is known for its extremely low distortion which is not rivaled by many. Take a look at Troels Gravesens DIY pages with measurements, or measurements done HiFiCompass, to see for your self. Does that make it the best tweeter …. probably not, but try finding a tweeter like this by any other brand selling for as little as 50 Euro! I’m actually listening to a pair right now here at my PC, and I don’t think I missing much 😉
Midrange
The midrange is unmistakably the SB Acoustics SB15NBAC30-8 (or -4). Easily recognizable by the groves, or Geometrically reinforced aluminum cone as it is called on their web page, but also the chassis with the dual struts.
A driver again known for it very low distortion.
And also these I’m listening to right now in my small PC speakers.
Woofer
To round it all up, the performa 3 uses 2 x 6.5″ woofers to give the right bottom or low frequency. Again it is the SB Acousrics NBAC series with alu cones, SB17NBAC35-4 (or -8)
Conclusion
For sure the Performa 3 series uses very, very capable drivers to achieve the high performance. Ans as said it’s not just choosing the right drivers which makes the high end sound, it’s much about putting in the right knowledge and using the ears and an enormous amount of time for fine tuning.
Hope this can give a bit od inspiration to you next DIY project. Happy building 🙂