REVEL Performa F228Be LOUDSPEAKERS
My heart sank when the editor rang to ask if I could stay home on Friday to take delivery of a pair of Revel speakers for review. ‘Are they floor-standers?’ I asked. ‘Yep’ was the stern reply. ‘What series?’ was my next question. ‘Performa F228Be’, he answered. It was not the answer I had not wanted to hear.
It’s not that I don’t love Revel speakers… I do… plus I am also a great fan of Kevin Voecks who’s still the man in charge at Revel, ably assisted by his right hand man (who’s actually Revel’s principal engineer) Mark Glazer… and no less a persona than Dr Sean Olive rounds out the design team… talk about heavy-hitters in the speaker design fraternity!
No, I really do love Revel speakers… it’s just that Revel’s top-line floor-standers are all so large, and so heavy, that carrying them down the long, too-steep, and too highly-polished slippery wooden staircase to my listening room is always so difficult that I worry not only about my back, but the safety of the speakers.
THE EQUIPMENT
This time around I was in luck. A new courier, obviously out to impress, readily agreed to help me carry each carton down the stairs… or at least he did until he came in and saw the stairs. ‘Have you got a rug?’ he asked. As it happened, I did… and I learned something. He turned the rug over, then laid one carton down on its side on the rug and then, to my delight, slid the whole lot beautifully down the stairs! Then, at the bottom, I didn’t even have to lift the carton up, as it was already tilted half-way to vertical… I just had to tilt it away from the staircase and the carton was once again upright. Ditto for the second carton and we were done. Why had I never thought of this?
Do you think I am having you on about how big and heavy these speakers are? The specifications put them at 1.18 metres tall, 302mm wide and 335mm deep… and that’s just the cabinets. The sturdy dual-box packaging makes them even bigger. As for the weight, each one tips the scales at just over 37kg… and that’s again without the packaging. I found the)
