WOW, A New Environment Can Make All The Difference

[willland]

Again, my wife and son left the house for a few hours so I got that wild hair again.  As many know my beloved RSW-10d took a dump a month or so ago and I have been listening to the RB-75s in true stereo since then.  Though they are kick butt "bookshelf" speakers by themselves, the RSW-10d was the missing link.  And it sure is missed. 

 

So an idea came to my gourd to move my 105 lbs Revel B15 into the living room for the time being.  It has been a very important part of my main rig in my family room and helping pressurize it for HT and sounded pretty decent for music but did not seem to have the tightness and musicality that these $3300.00 Revels have been long known for.  I always assumed that was due in part because my room is wide open with a 12ft ceiling, ceramic tile everywhere, and few soft cushy "treatments".  I just could not get that perfectly tight, punchy, fast, and rhythmic integration for music that I had in spades with my RSW-10d.    

 

The Revel B15 was state of the art with a plethora of integrating and EQ features when it came on the scene in the early 2000's and was a huge hit with the "audiophile" crowd.  It and a handful of subs, Velodyne HGS-15/18, Paradigm Servo 15, to name a few, were some of the best available at the time.  They excelled with HT and music. 

 

Well back to the wild hair story after my tangent.  I dragged on a carpet runner my solid chunk of wood, MDF, and metal B15 from it's left corner placement in the family room to it's temporary home slap dab in the center between my RB-75s in my living room.  Plugged that baby in, changed the low pass filter to 60Hz with a 24dB/octave setting and fired up the Yamahas and loaded the player with the bass line heavy Natalie Merchant Tigerlily CD.  WOW, WOW, WOW!  What a difference a room makes.  As mentioned, my family room is very "lively" with hard surfaces but the living room has few parallel boundaries, only ceiling and floor, well carpeted, thick drapes, cloth sofa, love seat, and chair, and no room correction to interfere with the Revels onboard adjustments.  

 

I will eventually send the RSW-10d's amp board in for repair to Edward's Electronics, but in the mean time, I will keep enjoying the Klipsch RB-75s/Revel B15 combo until that happens.

And yes, my family room HT system will suffer a bit for high impact action movies with just the SVS SB-13 Plus going at it alone.

 

Bill