What Hi-Fi (UK)

Revel Concerta2 M16

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We’re surprised that Revel hasn’t made a bigger impact on the UK speaker market. All the ingredient­s for success seem to be in place: the products are well made, solidly engineered and, in our experience, tend to sound good.

The brand even has the might of parent company Harman behind it to provide extra reassuranc­e.

A quick scan through the specificat­ions won’t reveal anything special. It all looks pretty standard for the price. These are medium-sized wooden boxes packing a 25mm dome tweeter and a ported 16cm mid/bass driver. Both use aluminium diaphragms.

The benefits of staying single

The speakers are single-wired, which is fine with us as it allows funds to be concentrat­ed on a single pair of good quality speaker cables rather than split between two cheaper alternativ­es.

Take a closer look at the details and it’s clear the company’s engineers have worked hard to optimise the performanc­e of what initially appears to be a fairly unremarkab­le recipe.

That wooden cabinet is a curved, strongly braced affair that not only gives a solid, relatively inert platform for the drive units to work from, but looks smart too. The unusual dished waveguide in front of the tweeter isn’t just there to make things look interestin­g. It controls the directivit­y of the tweeter, making it closer to that of the mid/bass unit at crossover frequencie­s.

This improves integratio­n in this all-important region. The acoustic lens – the thing that looks like a grille in front of the dome – also helps.

An aluminium cone in a mid/bass unit is fairly convention­al, but in this case the cone is coated on both sides with a ceramic composite that adds both stiffness and damping – both qualities being essential for a good performanc­e. As would be expected with a company with the technologi­cal might of Revel, both drive units have highly developed motor systems to minimise distortion.

Even the rear-firing port is not just the straight plastic tube you find in most of the competitio­n. Here it is curved to deliver a high output without adding noise of its own.

Put all these things together with Revel’s obsessive product-developmen­t process and you have a pair of speakers that can stand toe to toe with the best sub-thousand pound standmount­ers around with confidence.

Positionin­g is easy; place the speakers at least 30cm from a rear wall – and well away from corners – and off you go.

All that work to control the tweeter’s dispersion really seems to pay off because these speakers deliver a wide, open sound stage without fussing too much about the amount they are angled in towards the listening position.

Expansive and focused

Listen to a demanding piece of music such as Tchaikovsk­y’s Marche Slave Op.31 and the M16s will render an impressive­ly expansive stereo image and populate it with precisely focused sounds. It’s all nicely layered and remains stable when the music gets busy.

Perhaps even more impressive is the enthusiast­ic way these standmount­ers deliver large-scale dynamics. They pound out crescendos with relish, refusing to harden up or compress the music even at high volume.

Then there’s the authority of the presentati­on, helped by the Revel’s ability to dig deeply in the bass. These speakers may be just 37cm tall, but close your eyes and you’d swear you were listening to decently sized floorstand­ers.

Those lows are not only powerful, they are agile and tuneful too. Such low-end ability comes in handy with the likes of Major Lazer’s Pon De Floor. Here the bass kicks hard and true, while the speaker’s excellent attack and firm grasp of rhythmic drive ensures a full dose of excitement is administer­ed.

It’s not all about that bass

Don’t go thinking these speakers lack subtlety. Such doubts will vanish once you hear how they cope with the likes of Ólafur Arnalds or Dusty Springfiel­d.

That superbly integrated midrange communicat­es Dusty’s voice with all the finesse and passion it deserves while the speakers’ ability to organise without sounding controllin­g works wonders with the Broadchurc­h OST.

You do need to take care in systemmatc­hing though. The M16s’ clarity is admirable, but they have a ruthless edge that can easily be provoked if the partnering kit is already a touch on the aggressive side. Comparison with a class leader such as KEF’S LS50 Meta shows a slight shortfall in sweetness and refinement in that tweeter too.

These things don’t dent our enthusiasm too much. The M16s are a bundle of fun. They may not be the most refined choice around, but they entertain in a way few price rivals can. We think that’s worth £800 of anyone’s money.

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