Loudspeakers

Given the 46in height of the Revival Audio Atalante 7 Évo on its stands, most seated listeners will be on axis with the 28mm soft-dome tweeter where sensitivity is about 3dB shy of the rated 90dB/2.82V/1m at 87.1dB. On-axis, the response [Graph 1] livens up above 6kHz, rising by 9dB to 20kHz, but otherwise shows a broad droop from 600Hz-7kHz, the combination realising overall response errors of ±5.6dB and ±4.8dB, L/R, respectively. Angling the speakers in by about 15° takes the sting out of the high treble while squeezing the ‘droop’ into a narrower 2-5kHz [grey trace]. Otherwise, this soft dome reaches a very respectable 37kHz and 32kHz, L/R respectively (–6dB re. 10kHz), without the aggressive ultrasonic breakup mode(s) seen with most metal domes. However, those hard-framed grilles bring added disruption to the dome’s output [blue trace, Graph 1].

Despite the size and throw of the woofer, bass distortion is not especially low at 0.6% (60Hz-200Hz, re. 90dB SPL/1m), unlike the dome mid that achieves a fabulous 0.06%. The woofer has a 39Hz-200Hz passband (re. –6dB) and is reinforced by the large, rifled alloy port that’s tuned to 20Hz, delivering a diffraction-corrected bass extension of 35Hz (–6dB re. 200Hz). However, quarterwave and pipe modes also escape the port at 490Hz, 970Hz and 4.2kHz, the latter coinciding with a bump in response [Graph 1] and a mode on the CSD waterfall [Graph 2]. With a 3.7ohm/82Hz impedance minimum, the speaker may not ‘look’ like an especially tough drive but with its –58°/46Hz swing in phase angle pushing the EPDR down to 1.6ohm/60Hz, Revival’s 7 Évo still remains fairly current-hungry in the bass. PM