Anyone launching a new loudspeaker brand these days faces a Herculean task of differentiation. With so many speakers in the world of every shape and size, using materials traditional and exotic, how can a newbie make a dent in such a densely populated market?
Enter Revival Audio, from France, although very close to the German and Swiss borders in picturesque Mulhouse, Alsace. It may be an entirely new operation, but it’s one co-founded by industry stalwarts with significant experience — what they call “nearly four decades of ‘savoir-faire’ behind many wel-lknown flagship models among top tier brands”.
Revival has now released its first two models, both fully designed, engineered and assembled in France using all ‘inhouse manufactured’ components, the company declaring firmly that “we DO NOT buy off the shelves!”.
Both feature new technologies which go a long way to explaining the company’s belief that it can find a place among so many global speaker brands, too. We are listening here to the smaller (though hardly petite) of the two models, the Atalante 3. So what’s the story and how’s the sound?
SPEAKERS FROM SPAM
Firstly, the French speakers are being brought to Australia by Audio Marketing in Sydney, and we asked the Aussie business’s Tim Wallis what persuaded them to take on a new and as-yet-unknown speaker brand.
“Brave?”, we suggested. Wallis laughed. “One of the things that appealed is that this is such a small, focused offering,” he told us. “That’s refreshing, given some of the trends at the moment are to offer so many SKUs and so many colours and so many prices. So that was one of the attractions. And we found them originally almost by luck — an email that went into ‘Spam’, that thankfully we
