F208 first impressions

[Pampero]

Rather than repeat myself endlessly here, I'll simply say that I ordered some Salon2s well over a month ago but haven't received them yet although the rest of my basic system has been in place for weeks. Growing increasingly desperate I ordered up a pair of F208s to fill in until my Salon2s get here. They arrived yesterday (the Performas, that is). My wife and I humped the pair to our second floor listening room and I have only stopped listening since then to collect coffee, MREs and attend to the most minimal requirements of the human body.

My impressions:

As my room is dedicated, there are no constraints beyond dimensions regarding where I put stuff. I'd previously decided to use the short wall for a display flanked by the speakers and that's how I set up yesterday. It hasn't taken long to position the Revels in the room, and in my case they seem a bit more sensitive (in respect to placement) to low frequencies than they do to imaging considerations, but I have given them ample room to breath and they seem to like that. At this time they are symmetrically placed (toed in to the listener) 40" from the rear wall (to rear of cabinet) and 38" from the side walls to the nearest cabinet boundary. In this position they give satisfying low end and a wide, fairly deep and well balanced soundstage with a truly excellent phantom center image for solo voices and instruments.

Since moving here and assessing the room, I came to the conclusion that it was a bit on the dead side. That has not fully played out for these Revels and I have ended up using the F208's HF cut (the full -1dB for now, very useful and non-intrusive) to achieve a balance I like. I find no need for the foam plugs. The balance top to bottom is sweet with no bothersome resonant peaks in the mid and high end (I like it painless) and a refined balance between bass, treble and the sumptuous, detailed and revealing mid-band these speakers are capable of. I am ready to install the spikes, which I'll do today.

The rest of the system (redundant data if you've read me here before) cnsists of MC stuff: C52 and MC452, an Oppo 105 (transport only) and Blue Jeans cables. I'm using the C52s DAC connected by a BJ coax as it sounds better to us than the (same) ESS chip (run as a balanced connection to the C52) in the Oppo that has nonetheless gotten rave reviews.

When I first fired up my new rig last night using my calculated speaker locations my initial sense was utter disappointment. A few minutes spent playing with the Oppo's settings (and switching to the McDAC) resolved a lot of that. Within an hour or so we had a better balance of tones. I soent the rest of the night listening and incrementally nudging the speakers closer to the rear and side walls to optimize bass response (MORE!).

So what do I think? Well, the McIntosh stuff makes a delicious mating with Revels. The end product is plenty of suds, all the resolution of fine detail you could want. There's the hoped for "I never heard that before" in my "I thought I knew you" library, the balance between detail, sound staging, frequency extension and imaging is true high end stuff and I could live with these speakers for a long, long time. Music pours out of them under the firm control of the MC452's silky background It's such a treat!

I do have Ultima 2s on the way so I'm curious just how much better they might do in my room, but I could be happy with these Performa 2s and never feel deprived. They're really excellent. A bravura performance and first impression that has justified my decisions. At least to me

Again, thanks to this this forum that was one of the instrumental data points in
my selection of the Mc equipment. With so many superb options on the market, even an experienced consumer can be understandably bewildered.