Revel Studios for half price?

I owned a pair of Studios, now I own a pair of Salon's. Previosuly I woned a pair of Revel F30's.

If your looking for the sonic qualities of the Studio, then get the Performa F30's(Stay away from the F50's they perfrom poorly compared to the F30's). THe F30's use the same basic crossover points and 24db steep slopes and really high quality drivers. Tradeoffs are in the basic cabinet, and the drivers. But even the Performa drivers are amazing and actually mimic the Studio's(Uses a single 1.1 inch aluminum tweeter,5" midrange,single 10" bass driver) but use a single 10" instead of twin 8's and has no rear tweeter. But you get 98% of the performance of the Studio. When I AB'd the Studio and the F30(this was about 5 years ago when I bought the F30's when on a budget)after hours I found that the F30's sounded almost identical to the studio's. Midrange voicing was almost identical,and the bass driver and tweeter did a great job too.

If you are looking for a cheap pair of "studio's" get a pair of F30's. Great speaker. Can buy a mint pair for just under $2k too.

Green mountain speakers = home built Vandersteen's with less quality control. I dont even think they match their drivers and crossover components to within db tolerances.

I have personally heard the C-1's. Nothing special, another Vandersteen clone that uses basic off the shelf drivers from different companies, basic 1st order slopes.If someone is gonna recommend this style of speaker, I would rather recommend the 3A signature if were going this route.

A hybrid speaker, if you want to go this route, go with a pair of Magnepan 3.6's. I have heard them, quite laid back sounding from my impressions. Good speaker nonetheless.

Seriously though, if your looking for "Studio" sound, look at the F30. If you AB these speakers with the Studio's on the same equipment you will be hard pressed to tell the 2 apart.They are that good. Save that extra $1500 towards other upgrades like room treatments or something........

Songwriter72:If GMA's match their crossover tolerances to what you claim they do then their frequency response curve would be much more linear between each unit. We put a few of the older Continuum's up on an RTA. We could never match the response curve between ANY single unit under identical circumstances or even get em close. And if the blame is on the drivers themselves(which I wouldnt doubt) then there would be no reason to match em to begin with. Cant believe everything you read. GMA speakers use average drivers and minimal components(just like Vandersteen), too bad the price doesnt reflect that because they should be alot cheaper. You can get a pair of Vandy 3A sig's much cheaper than the 1.5's or the 3's both of which are grossly overpriced.

Yep, room interactions do play a MAJOR part of how good a speaker sounds. I have always told folks to allot $500-$1000 for room treatments. If you have a drill and a stapler and a pair of scissors you can keep the number well below $500 to EQ out the room properly to make the best of those speakers.

Any speaker will sound "so what" in a poor room environment, but I wouldnt use that as an excuse not to get em. I spent 2 days and $380 bucks(high frequency absorbers on all main reflection points,DIY tube trabs in the corners and to the sides of the speakers) on my "so what" room and turned it into a room far superior for a pair of floorstanders than from where I originally heard em.

Worldcat: The guy is looking for sonic characteristics of the full range Studio, not the sucked out midrange that all Aerial's(AKA generic Wilson Audio clones except for the 5B's which are excellent monitors but not full range) are known for.

GMA quotes : "We do indeed match to tight tolerances as stated above- always have. I personally have re-checked drivers and crossover parts from customers' speakers we made going back 20+ years, and seen no remarkable changes. Your measured differences don't agree with our tests, or those published by Brent Butterworth, Andrew Marshall or John Atkinson. So there must be a wiring error inside, if the speakers weren't abused. I'd encourage that owner to contact us to make it right."

Im sure you do under circumstances. But the 2 pairs we had(this was 2-3 years back btw)wouldnt match up and the soundstage seemed to shift with moderate power amplifier loads. We did do basic checks for polarity, but everything did seem in order. The speakers were in the posession of a BA rep at the time. They seemed to be in good condition. But I didnt physically break the speaker down either.

GMA quotes: "BTW, our drivers are not "average", but it's understandable how you'd have a negative opinion after getting such weird measurements. The drivers we've used over the years are the most linear, and many times not flashy-looking. Linearity is not an opinion- it's a set of measured quantities, and you should have been able to see linear behaviour in your measurements. This is why I suspect we screwed up or that the speakers were abused."

Yes, measurements do give a first impression(along with sound quality of course). And our first impression sure wasnt a sparkling review(but thats not to say they sounded bad, as I felt they did sound very good with a definete "Vandersteen" quality to them). And I am know your drivers have to be linear to implement the crossover slopes used. This is a given. Drivers sure dont need to look "flashy" to be a quality driver either. I dont want to give off that impression. But I still felt that for the money they represented that better drivers or crossovers could have been used but then of course that cuts into profit margin, and of course trade-offs need to be made Im sure you will agree at least to some extent. In high end speaker design, I feel that the biggest offender is the passive crossover set though.

Just out of curiosity what tolerance parts are used in your crossovers?

$1295 back in 95' to what now? Dont want to under sell em by all means, just dont go to the other extreme(Like Wilson Audio) either if you know what I mean! =)

Id be very interested in hearing a pair of the C3's, Ive heard a few people make claims on them,I would also like to see a speaker that truely is +/- .75 DB in its specified response range as the GMA's claim to be(along with parts tolerance and pair matching,phase response etc, alot of the specs seem to be to good to be true). The first ones I heard were not that regardless of possible reasoning. I have a pair of 5A Vandy's at my disposal just after Xmas too. Would love to hear a pair of them with my Salon's and the 5A's. Im very skeptical on alot of the claims, but would love to eat my words as I do like seeing small business's compete with bigger mfg. Alot of the times though they just dont have the equipment or R&D to compete.