Two-channel Mode

It has been about two years since I reviewed the F50s. I still remember quite fondly how impressed I had been by them when I first set them up, and this lasting impression continued through the review period. I was eager to review the successors to see just how high the bar could be raised!

The front speakers were set to full-range on the MC12, and level adjustment/Room EQ were performed by the MC12's auto-calibration procedure. The speakers were toed-in slightly. During the first couple of weeks, I played with the tweeter level control, going back and forth between the default, 0 dB, setting and +0.5 dB setting. I finally settled on the default setting. I also left the other acoustic controls in their default positions.

Rachmaninoff's Symphonic Dances (Reference Recordings, RR-96CD) is a CD I have started listening to recently. Fellow writer Jason Serinus has extolled the virtues of this recording on more than one occasion, and I can now see, actually hear, why. The effortless dynamic capabilities of the F52s were on display with this recording. From the quiet, delicate passages, to the thunderous drums, the F52s did not display any sings of strain. The impact of the bass drums was deep and tight. The pitch definition was wonderful. There was no overhang; this was certainly aided by the MC12's Room EQ. One would not expect this level of bass from the slim profile of the F52; but the lack of woofer size is more than made up by the number of 6" woofers, six in all. In my mid-sized room, I was able to get usable output down to about 20 Hz.

While the F52s are bold in the bottom-end, they are delicate in the top-end. The treble on the F52s is very special; it is delicate and airy without any hint of brightness. The placement of instruments in space is very precise. This is most likely the result of the new waveguide that shapes the dispersion characteristic of the tweeter.

I spent a great deal of time listening to orchestral recordings on the F52s. String instruments, both bowed and plucked, had a lifelike quality. Vivaldi's The Four Seasons (Sony Classical, SK51352) is one of my favorite compositions. The soundstage was both deep and wide, and the presentation had a tight focus. When the lead came on, the placement of his instrument was dead-center. The precision imaging appears to be a tradition followed by all the Revel speakers that I have heard. Patricia Barber's Café Blue (Premonition Records, PREM-737-2) is a staple disc in my deck of review discs. Track 11, "Nardis", has a percussion solo which spans the width of the speakers. The pans across the front were just superb. The cymbals sounded crisp and once struck, the notes lingered in the air as they decayed.

Lisa Gerrard's vocals on A Passage in Time (Dead Can Dance, 4AD) were reproduced with remarkable clarity. There is so much emotion packed in her voice, and the F52s simply passed that along. Paul Simon's soft vocals on his Rhythm of the Saints album (Warner Bros., R2 78905) were free of any midrange colorations.

In terms of the tonal character of the midrange, I would say that it is voiced a bit on the warm side. If I were to find one small issue with the midrange, it would have to do with the reproduction of deep male vocals. Here I found the vocals to lack the smoothness and transparency which I am accustomed to with my reference speakers which just so happen to be the F52s older siblings (more on this later).

Two-channel plus Subwoofers

As good as the F52s sounded without the aid of a subwoofer, the bottom end had a room-induced peak at 32 Hz. I tried to eliminate this peak through placement experimentation, by adjusting the low frequency compensation control, and by employing the MC12's Room EQ feature, but I could only reduce it a small amount. For those who may be unfamiliar with the MC12's Room EQ algorithms, the optimization process does not target a flat frequency response.

When I initially put in a request for the review samples, I requested a pair of B15a subwoofers. In the e-mail exchange I had with Andrew Clark, he jokingly said that he would not want to be my neighbor during the review! The request for two subwoofers was not so much to generate prodigious bass levels, but to get a more even in-room frequency response. The work done by Todd Welti has certainly been the motivation to experiment with multiple subwoofers. In my room, this is still a work-in-progress. At present, the location that works best for a single subwoofer happens to be just a few feet down from the side-wall mid-point. If I use a second subwoofer, it is best placed symmetrically on the opposite side-wall.

For F52/B15a configuration, I simply opted for the standard 80 Hz crossover setting. At this crossover frequency, the MC12 offers a choice of using either a 4th order low/high pass slope or the standard THX crossover which uses a 2nd order high-pass filter and a 4th order low-pass filter. For a full-range speaker such as the F52, the 4th order selection is the correct option to use. Most of the SSPs'/receivers in the market, unfortunately, do not offer configurable crossover slopes as an option.

Once set up, the B15a subwoofers certainly flexed their muscle reproducing the bottom octave and blended wonderfully with the F52s in the transition region. The cannon fire in Telarc's recording of the 1812 Overture had visceral impact. The same was true of the bass drum on the first track of Symphonic Dances, mentioned above. While the punch was slightly less with the addition of the subwoofer, the balance was better due to the absence of the room mode. Overall, my preference in two-channel mode was to augment the F52s with the B15a.

Surround Sound

Listening to the same music I had heard on the F52s through a synthesized surround mode, I found the C52 to share the F52's sonic characteristics. Voices had the same familiar warmth, as did the air and extension in the treble. Together, the trio produced a cohesive soundstage across the front. Pans across the speakers sounded about as seamless as they can be with a horizontally configured center-channel speaker.

Erich Kunzel and the Cincinnati Pops Orchestra's The Big Picture (Telarc, CD-80437) CD contains an assortment of excellently recorded soundtracks, some of which have some deep bass content. Listening to this CD in a synthesized surround mode was exciting with planes flying by, a bus moving across the front, and some deep, thunderous bass. The Apollo 13 launch sequence is part of this disc, and while listening to it, there was a small mishap: one of the subwoofers shut down. The fuse had blown. Replacing the fuse did not help, as the new fuse blew right away on power-up. I mentioned what happened to Kevin Voecks, and he seemed concerned. He said that this incident should not have occurred and that they would inspect the subwoofer when it returned. He did offer to send an additional B15a, but I chose to continue with the other B15a that I had on hand since I was still able to get good results.

Lord of War (a movie that is far better than the name might suggest) is about weapons smuggling, and there is ample gunfire in the movie. The AK-47s are fairly active, and the S30s mated well with the F52/C52 trio to create the feeling of an enveloping frenzied fighting scene with bullets flying all around. The B15a did its part, providing the deep, tight bass that it is so capable of, except in one scene where it drew attention to itself. At the end of chapter 1, there is a bullet that is making its way towards a boy. As the scene fades out, there is a loud bang, the point of impact, and I could hear some audible distress from the subwoofer. This was the only time my attention was called to the subwoofer's presence. When playing back recordings such as The Blue Man Group's The Complex Project (DTS entertainment), which presents a demanding load for a subwoofer, the bass articulation of the B15a was just superb. The same was true with several rock and pop recordings.

Good Night, and Good Luck is a very dialog centric movie. There aren't any gimmicky sound-effects in this movie. The C52 anchored the setup, providing clear, intelligible dialog. I cannot offer a direct comparison with the C50, but just based on memory, I think that the C52 is a much improved center-channel speaker.

Click Here to Go to Part V.