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On Loreena McKennitt's glorious The Book of Secrets the F208 impressed not only with tonal balance but a bevy of subtle acoustic detail. Be it a moving choral member triggering some creaks in the wooden stage, physical noises of the singer or key clatter of woodwinds, such location cues so important to musical realism integrated seamlessly into a believable performance. Without matching the coherence of a true panel speaker (impossible for conventional box speakers), the point-source accuracy of individual vocals and instruments on "Dante's Prayer" and the casting of space did remind me of Martin Logan electrostats. The Revel built an equally large breathing stage for their actors but did so on a far more substantial lower-reaching foundation.


It's this foundation which explains their incorruptible and—if called for—downright mighty behaviour. For such big powerful full-range boxes fleetness and clarity as well as intensely saturated timbred meanwhile were surprises. At higher levels one nearly expects to drown out in low-bass pressure waves. But exactly that happened not! The F208 rather astonished me with their precision, speed and agility which didn't obscure or cloud over the upper bass or lower midrange despite buxom 4 x 20cm woofage.

Even if the Performas couldn't completely deny that they were running on bass reflex fuel, the unpleasant inner-ear pressure such designs often cause was thankfully MIA. The F208 was poster-child neutral, civilized and nuanced. With it she did her best to counter perceptions of American bass monsters fit only for palatial expanses. Infrasonic remixes like Massive Attack's "Angel" didn't devolve into mud but maintained form and balance even at high levels. Where many speaker shut down around 2:30 minutes into it when electrical guitars and crash cymbals enter to distort and get bitterly nasty, the big Revel instead invited me to tax the mono amps even more.


These things can play unbelievably loud without breaking up. Even so their overall voicing despite its high magnification power and tonal neutrality remains pleasingly relaxed to avoid the high-maintenance diva habit. Even on Portishead's eponymous second release with its notorious tweeter-killing analog samples particularly on the "Cowboys" opener, the natural reflex to turn things down didn't twitch since there was no trace of brightness. Even if the tweeter might round over the spikiest peaks rather than cause listener discomfort, its resolution seemed stellar. And though David Wilson's creations play in a different price bracket, I'm not going out on a limb feeling reminded a bit of his Sophia which also combines subtlety with raw power – even if his goes even farther in the treble.


I'll have to repeat myself saying that these speakers' willingness to oblige and my own enjoyment thereof rose exponentially with volumes. Be it Filter's alternative metal comeback album The Sun Comes Out Tonight or the Sneaker Pimps' "Low Place Like Home" Trip Hop from their Becoming X album, any music asking for high decibels was raunchy fun. Björk's disturbing if bizarrely beautiful Medúlla and its "Where Is The Line" sparked, pulsated, exploded and triggered goose bumps until my wife appeared in the living room door shaking her head.