17-May-2019, 17:17
It’s been a few weeks since I posted on this thread and said that I would report back after the REL open day I attended.
The open day was at Nintronics in Welwyn Garden City with Rob from REL present to do the demonstrations. They had two REL No.25 subwoofers paired with Focal Maestro Utopia Evo III speakers for the Hifi demo and not surprisingly it sounded great. Even with these £45K speakers the subs added detail to the music across the whole frequency range plus the expected low end extension. The effect was subtle but instantly noticeable with sub on / off listening.
With special trade in deals to be had on the day it was easy to get carried away. I went there with the intention of possibly buying one sub but after hearing them in action I wanted the stereo pair. The No.25 is massive and I’d struggle to fit one beside my speakers let alone two, not to mention the fact that they cost £6.5K each so after a lot of procrastination I opted for two of the reference line G1 Mk2 which I reckoned I could just about fit in. So I traded in an old pair of Castle speakers and the deal was done. Over the next few days I started to have purchase regret and asked myself what the hell I was doing? But I decided to hold on and see if these would make much difference to my my system.
About a week later Danny from Nintronics and Rob from REL turned up at my house to do the install. Rob recommended using the pre-outs on the back of the Devialets so I did the configuration for this but at first we couldn’t get it working. After a bit of head scratching it turned out that if you program the Tone button on the Devialet remote control for Sub On/Off it doesn’t work properly and we were getting odd results like one sub would work and the other would not. After changing this setting to Pre On/Off instead the second sub burst into life. I found this a bit odd and was also surprised at how little ‘help’ information in the configurator and on the Devialet website there seems to be for setting up subs, particularly if you are configuring a dual setup. Once we had solved this technical issue I left it up to the REL expert to position the subs for me and set the phase, crossovers, and levels. I was surprised how little adjustment was needed in the positioning to make a huge difference to the sound in the listening position. A couple of centimetres at a time made all the difference. As my system is now dual purpose Hifi and Home Theatre we tested the configuration in both modes and it seems that Rob got it just right. The installation was supposed to take about an hour but in reality it took more like 4 until Rob was happy with the setup and I was too.
That evening I decided to give them the proper Hifi test to see if it had all been worth the expense and hassle and what I experienced was very surprising. The whole musical experience was transformed throughout the entire frequency range, the soundstage was increased massively around the whole room with much better imaging. Instruments and voices were all much more lifelike, warmer, and there was detail on the recordings that I had never heard before! It is hard to put into words how much better these subs make the entire experience and can only say of all the Hifi gear I’ve bought over the last 20 years nothing has had such a profound effect on my system as adding these 2 subwoofers. Needless to say the purchase regret has vanished. I have no idea how these can affect mid and high end sounds but they do and my system now sounds amazing and puts a big grin on my face every time I listen to it!
The open day was at Nintronics in Welwyn Garden City with Rob from REL present to do the demonstrations. They had two REL No.25 subwoofers paired with Focal Maestro Utopia Evo III speakers for the Hifi demo and not surprisingly it sounded great. Even with these £45K speakers the subs added detail to the music across the whole frequency range plus the expected low end extension. The effect was subtle but instantly noticeable with sub on / off listening.
With special trade in deals to be had on the day it was easy to get carried away. I went there with the intention of possibly buying one sub but after hearing them in action I wanted the stereo pair. The No.25 is massive and I’d struggle to fit one beside my speakers let alone two, not to mention the fact that they cost £6.5K each so after a lot of procrastination I opted for two of the reference line G1 Mk2 which I reckoned I could just about fit in. So I traded in an old pair of Castle speakers and the deal was done. Over the next few days I started to have purchase regret and asked myself what the hell I was doing? But I decided to hold on and see if these would make much difference to my my system.
About a week later Danny from Nintronics and Rob from REL turned up at my house to do the install. Rob recommended using the pre-outs on the back of the Devialets so I did the configuration for this but at first we couldn’t get it working. After a bit of head scratching it turned out that if you program the Tone button on the Devialet remote control for Sub On/Off it doesn’t work properly and we were getting odd results like one sub would work and the other would not. After changing this setting to Pre On/Off instead the second sub burst into life. I found this a bit odd and was also surprised at how little ‘help’ information in the configurator and on the Devialet website there seems to be for setting up subs, particularly if you are configuring a dual setup. Once we had solved this technical issue I left it up to the REL expert to position the subs for me and set the phase, crossovers, and levels. I was surprised how little adjustment was needed in the positioning to make a huge difference to the sound in the listening position. A couple of centimetres at a time made all the difference. As my system is now dual purpose Hifi and Home Theatre we tested the configuration in both modes and it seems that Rob got it just right. The installation was supposed to take about an hour but in reality it took more like 4 until Rob was happy with the setup and I was too.
That evening I decided to give them the proper Hifi test to see if it had all been worth the expense and hassle and what I experienced was very surprising. The whole musical experience was transformed throughout the entire frequency range, the soundstage was increased massively around the whole room with much better imaging. Instruments and voices were all much more lifelike, warmer, and there was detail on the recordings that I had never heard before! It is hard to put into words how much better these subs make the entire experience and can only say of all the Hifi gear I’ve bought over the last 20 years nothing has had such a profound effect on my system as adding these 2 subwoofers. Needless to say the purchase regret has vanished. I have no idea how these can affect mid and high end sounds but they do and my system now sounds amazing and puts a big grin on my face every time I listen to it!
