home_theatre_man
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Interesting theory crafting question for the forum...
My father has had a pair of Revel F206s for a number of years. He has never been entirely happy with them, which has always kind of surprised me because of Revel's standing and the fact that he is not usually particularly critical of sound quality. Frankly, I didn't pay much attention until recently, when he apparently got annoyed enough with them to decide to replace them and asked me to help him find something else.
When I shopped the idea around to my industry contacts (including Revel competitors), they mostly had the same reaction I did - surprise. Especially when we got to discussing the specifics. Someone finally floated the idea that one of his F206s is actually...broken. There is some interesting evidence for this theory:
-- He uses Audyssey to correct his system. Audyssey intermittently flags one of the F206s (always the same one) as polarity reverse. It's done this with the speakers in more than one room and multiple positions in those rooms. I popped them for him with my Gold Line APT2, and all the drivers in both units register (+) for (+) voltage on the red terminal.
-- Audyssey consistently goes to work boosting the treble (tweeter range) in that same unit, while it leaves the treble in the other unit almost entirely alone. Again, he showed me his Audyssey results, and it flips sides when he swaps speakers, and this tracks consistently through different rooms.
-- One of his chief complaints is poor imaging, and he's right; based on my quick listen they don't. Definitely not in the same league as my M105s. He complains of having to stack sofa cushions to raise his head or move forward and backward to acquire the center image. I've never heard the F206 anywhere else, so I don't have a reference point for how they're supposed to image.
-- When you listen to narrowband noise bypassing EQ (the AVR internal noise), the speaker that throws the polarity error sounds slightly "hollow" compared to the other one. It's not something I would call out if there weren't other evidence. Comparing to external noise through the EQ, that speaker does sound a bit more forward - but remember the EQ boosts its treble.
-- He's got the F206 in a surround system now with other Performa3 models, and the speaker in question is the oddball in terms of timbre. I just gave a quick listen to cycling narrowband noise, and it's definitely a "one of these is not like the others" scenario. It doesn't smack me over the head as being a broken speaker, but considering the other evidence...
Other diagnostics I ran spur of the moment were to listen to swept tone at various levels, which revealed no audible distortion, rub, or buzz in any of the drivers. In fact, it was one of the cleanest results I've ever heard.
I can haul my analyzer over there and look at it. I thought before I did that, I would take a quick survey here and collect theories about what to look at. I have my own ideas, but speaker diagnostics isn't my specialty. When I find a speaker in the field that I suspect is broken, I just kick it back to the company and have them take a look at it or replace it. But those are all under warranty. This one is long out of warranty.
My father has had a pair of Revel F206s for a number of years. He has never been entirely happy with them, which has always kind of surprised me because of Revel's standing and the fact that he is not usually particularly critical of sound quality. Frankly, I didn't pay much attention until recently, when he apparently got annoyed enough with them to decide to replace them and asked me to help him find something else.
When I shopped the idea around to my industry contacts (including Revel competitors), they mostly had the same reaction I did - surprise. Especially when we got to discussing the specifics. Someone finally floated the idea that one of his F206s is actually...broken. There is some interesting evidence for this theory:
-- He uses Audyssey to correct his system. Audyssey intermittently flags one of the F206s (always the same one) as polarity reverse. It's done this with the speakers in more than one room and multiple positions in those rooms. I popped them for him with my Gold Line APT2, and all the drivers in both units register (+) for (+) voltage on the red terminal.
-- Audyssey consistently goes to work boosting the treble (tweeter range) in that same unit, while it leaves the treble in the other unit almost entirely alone. Again, he showed me his Audyssey results, and it flips sides when he swaps speakers, and this tracks consistently through different rooms.
-- One of his chief complaints is poor imaging, and he's right; based on my quick listen they don't. Definitely not in the same league as my M105s. He complains of having to stack sofa cushions to raise his head or move forward and backward to acquire the center image. I've never heard the F206 anywhere else, so I don't have a reference point for how they're supposed to image.
-- When you listen to narrowband noise bypassing EQ (the AVR internal noise), the speaker that throws the polarity error sounds slightly "hollow" compared to the other one. It's not something I would call out if there weren't other evidence. Comparing to external noise through the EQ, that speaker does sound a bit more forward - but remember the EQ boosts its treble.
-- He's got the F206 in a surround system now with other Performa3 models, and the speaker in question is the oddball in terms of timbre. I just gave a quick listen to cycling narrowband noise, and it's definitely a "one of these is not like the others" scenario. It doesn't smack me over the head as being a broken speaker, but considering the other evidence...
Other diagnostics I ran spur of the moment were to listen to swept tone at various levels, which revealed no audible distortion, rub, or buzz in any of the drivers. In fact, it was one of the cleanest results I've ever heard.
I can haul my analyzer over there and look at it. I thought before I did that, I would take a quick survey here and collect theories about what to look at. I have my own ideas, but speaker diagnostics isn't my specialty. When I find a speaker in the field that I suspect is broken, I just kick it back to the company and have them take a look at it or replace it. But those are all under warranty. This one is long out of warranty.