Sony G90 manual Revel Ultima Speakers From 2 to 7.1 Channels, Episode One The Ancient Enemy

R E V I E W S

Revel Ultima Speakers – From 2 to 7.1 Channels

Episode One: The Ancient Enemy

t is a conflict as old as good vs. evil. It is the war that came			with the realization that no set of dimensions is perfect. The
before wars between peoples. It is the battle between			perfect room does not exist. Revisit Robert Greene’s “What
humankind and its environment and it is being fought to			You Should Know About Bass” in Issue 24. Every room has
Ithis day in your house.			modes that arise from its dimensions. The most obvious – and
While not so noble as a life and death struggle between a			the most significant – are the axial modes. These are the fun-
Jack London hero and the elements, your battle to extract			damental acoustic resonant modes (and their harmonics) that
good sound from the room in which you listen to			are created between two opposing surfaces, such as front
music and watch movies is as challenging. Your			wall and back wall, side to side and floor to ceiling. In addi-
victory is not to be measured by survival,			tion to axial modes there are tangential and oblique
but satisfaction. And when the tools			modes. Tangential modes arise from four surfaces (e.g.,
of war cost many thousands of dol-			the side, front, and back walls) and oblique modes arise
lars, satisfaction is survival.
Know thine enemy: The			The Revel Ultima Salon
Room. Do not think of it as a help-
ful collaborator or even an inno-			loudspeaker and
cent bystander. It, more than any-
thing else, will determine the			Sub-15/LE-1 subwoofer
overall quality of sound you			system face an implacable
extract from your system. A bad
room will put a foot on the throat			enemy of sound, with
of your speakers, choking off
			some help from the RPG
their musical life.
From hard experience I have			Room Optimizer software
learned these lessons. I built a
			and, at the last moment,
room – from scratch. And I vowed
it would be a great room, unlike			the SigTech T1100 Room
any other. In my hubris, I thought
			Correction System.
this was truly possible and that I
would do it. Now my comfort
comes from knowing that humili-
ty brings education and, with edu-			from all six surfaces. Your room’s modes will create
cation,	satisfaction	is, indeed,	audible gaps within (nulls) and boosting of (nodes)
possible.			the sound at different frequencies, destroying the
This article and the ones that			tonal uniformity that is necessary for uncolored
follow	trace my	experiences	music reproduction. The best you can hope for is to
installing the Revel Ultima speakers			avoid modes piling up on top of one another, since
and Proceed electronics multi-channel sys-			that will greatly exacerbate the non-uniformity of the sound.
tem into this enemy mine. We begin here with the			Programs now exist into which you can input the dimen-
Revel Salon loudspeaker and the Revel Sub-15/LE-1 sub-			sions of your room and calculate the room’s modal character-
woofer system. Future episodes will include the Revel Voice,			istics. A “simple” Excel spreadsheet, properly configured, will
Embrace, and Gem models. Other players in this first episode			do the trick. It’s nothing more than math. But don’t let that
include the RPG Room Optimizer software and, briefly, the			deceive you into thinking it’s simple. Such programs assume
Cambridge Signal Technologies T1100 Room Correction Sys-			accurate dimensions that form a uniform lossless rectangle –
tem. Each of these companies has faced the enemy with their			that is a perfectly rigid room. But building a rigid, uniform room
products, offering hope that victory can be had.			doesn’t solve your problems; it only helps make them more pre-
Meet My Enemy			dictable. There is even some thought that a rigid room isn’t
			preferable because it actually intensifies the low-frequency
Now that you have a blank sheet of paper,			modes because none of the bass can be atten-
what’s next? Choosing the dimensions. Start			uated by leakage through walls that flex.

T O M M I I L L E R