Floorstanding loudspeakers — Revel F328Be

The F328Be is a floorstander in the Revel PerformaBe range. This three-way tower combines three 8 inch woofers, a 5.25 inch midrange and a pure beryllium dome tweeter, and it breathes through dual bass reflex ports mounted on the rear panel.

Key specs that matter

All four cone drivers use Deep Ceramic Composite aluminium diaphragms in cast frames, with the woofers at 200 mm and the midrange at 130 mm, while the 25 mm tweeter is driven by 85 mm dual ceramic magnets. The crossover works at 240 Hz and 2.1 kHz. Revel gives a frequency response of 26 Hz to 40 kHz at -6 dB, with low frequency extension of 35 Hz at -3 dB and 24 Hz at -10 dB. Sensitivity reaches 91 dB at 2.83 V and 1 m, impedance is a nominal 8 ohm, and amplifiers from 50 to 300 W are advised. With grille and base the speaker stands 1294 mm high, 341.3 mm wide and 448.5 mm deep, and it weighs 51.0 kg. High-gloss black, white, metallic silver and walnut are the four finish choices.

Engineering and use context

Revel points out that, next to aluminium and titanium diaphragms, beryllium offers 4.5 times the stiffness and three times the damping at half the weight. The tweeter is paired with a 6th-generation Acoustic Lens waveguide, precision-cast in ceramic-coated aluminium, which integrates with the directivity of the midrange driver, and the company credits the combination with greater efficiency, improved dynamic range, lower distortion and higher power handling than aluminium or titanium tweeters. The DCC treatment is a plasma electrolytic oxidation process that builds a coarse ceramic coating on both sides of the aluminium core. Those ceramic layers sandwich the core and provide constrained-layer damping, pushing cone breakup modes outside the passband so the drivers keep pistonic motion across their range, and optimised motor magnetics work alongside them. Film capacitors and air-core inductors populate the steep high-order crossover networks. Grilles fasten magnetically, and foam port plugs and adjustable spikes are supplied.

Pairing

Dual gold-plated binding posts ship bridged by shorting straps. Revel lists single-wire, bi-wire and bi-amp hook-ups, with vertical and horizontal bi-amp layouts, and states that the standard single-cable method is enough to reach optimal performance.

Alternatives

The F228Be is another three-way floorstander in Revel's PerformaBe range, with two woofers and a 50 to 350 W recommended amplifier range.