Hi-fi's vintage-tech revival feels like a Don Draper fever dream. You know Draper, right? The smooth-talking ad man from Mad Men? In one episode, he pitches a new Kodak slide projector, but instead of focusing on the science and the specs, he calls it a "carousel"—think bouncing painted horses—and says it will take people back to a simpler time.
For its early-'60s moment, that slide projector is high-tech—and "technology is a glittering lure," Draper tells the assembled group of cigarette-smoking suits around a conference room table. Draper mentions Teddy, a Greek former colleague Draper says taught him the ropes years ago. Teddy says that "new" is the most important idea in advertising, but he also talks about a deeper bond that can sometimes be established with a product. "Nostalgia. It's delicate, but potent."
Teddy went on to tell Draper that in Greek, nostalgia means "the pain from an old wound." Someone (Teddy, Draper, or the scriptwriters) was being sloppy here—νοστοξ, nostos, means not "old wound" but "coming home"—although Teddy got the other part right: αλγοξ, or álgos, means "pain." Either way, nostalgia is, as Draper says, a longing for a "place where you felt loved." "It's a twinge in your heart, far more powerful than memory alone."
In Draper's world, nostalgia is a marketing ploy, Back to the Future bait-and-switch. Lure you in with the comforting musk of nostalgia, get you misty-eyed over touchy-feely knobs and analog vibrations. Then BAM! You're shelling out top dollar for a gussied-up relic or—worse—a generic modern device with no resemblance to the original past the faceplate. Which is not to say that a nostalgic link cannot have substance. I'm a sucker for nostalgia, though I also enjoy new experiences including sonic ones.
Enter the Revela 1
Vintage comes naturally for International Audio Group (IAG), home to Castle, Leak, Mission, Wharfedale—and Quad HiFi, all brands with vintage appeal. At High End Munich in May, Quad introduced three new products, all of which had real vintage associations: a new ESL electrostatic loudspeaker and new versions of the original amp and preamp intended to drive the original ESLs. Introduced a few months earlier, in late 2023, the Quad Revela 1 standmount loudspeaker ($2995/pair including stands) also makes a vintage pitch but defies the faceplate-only approach: Indeed, the Revela 1 doesn't look much like a vintage speaker, and its technology, though it echoes that in classic Quad, is mostly new. The Quad Revela 1, though, traces its provenance all the way back to the late Peter Walker's 1949 Corner Ribbon, which utilized a pulp-cone 12" bass driver in an acoustic fiber–lined reflex enclosure, crossing over to a Quad-designed ribbon tweeter. "The [Corner Ribbon's] crossover featured high-quality coils and capacitors in a second-order circuit with Butterworth characteristics," Peter Comeau, IAG's director of acoustic design, told me in an email. "However, the acoustic roll-off of the drive units also came into play, resulting in a steep slope on either side of the crossover frequency of around 2kHz."
"Revela 1 echoes this arrangement," Comeau's email continued. In the new speaker (and the Revela 2, its floorstanding sibling), those technologies are "elevated to new heights by use of modern materials and advanced contemporary design." The Revela 1 is much smaller than the Corner Ribbon, with a bass diaphragm just over half the diameter (and 30% of the surface area) of the one on the larger, older speaker. Each Revela 1 measures 15½" high × 10" wide × 11" deep and weighs 24lb. It mates a new, 1.6" × 2.36" True Ribbon tweeter to a 6.5" mid/bass driver, which uses a new cone material. Considering the much smaller midwoofer, it's hardly surprising that the crossover frequency is considerably higher, at 2.9kHz, allowing the midwoofer to handle all the fundamentals of all vocals and almost all common musical instruments. The Revela 1's rated sensitivity is 86dB/2.83V/1m, its nominal impedance is 6 ohms with a 4.1 ohm minimum, and the bass extension is specified as 40Hz (–6dB).
The key to the new speaker is the improved ribbon tweeter, formed from "ultralight aluminum foil with a thickness of slightly less than 6mil (0.1524mm)," Comeau stated. "It's mounted behind an aluminum front panel and has a diecast rear enclosure fitted with cast-aluminum heatsinks to conduct heat away from the ribbon. The front panel is screwed to the speaker baffle using a sealing gasket. An ABS trim forms a short horn extension in front."
The cone in the mid/bass unit is made of a new material that Quad calls Reveal, an "advanced fiber composite" mixing para-aramid fibers—generic Kevlar—with wood/paper pulp. The new material is said to produce a diaphragm that's stronger and better damped than earlier Quad diaphragms for "superior bass control"; it is also said to smooth out upper-midrange resonances. Also new: The rubber surround of the mid/bass cone incorporates a damping layer, a ring of thick vinyl with a specific density and elasticity that damps the edge of the surround where it contacts the cone, absorbing reflections that would otherwise cause resonances in the upper part of the frequency range.
The goal of all the midwoofer changes was to achieve an optimal sonic match with the new tweeter. The crossover, too, has a hand in that.
The Revela 1's crossover is more sophisticated than the one in the Corner Ribbon, though they share a steep slope. The Revela 1's "phase-compensated Acoustic Butterworth crossover" is the result of "not only Computer-Aided Design but also hundreds of hours of critical listening tests using all types and flavors of music," Quad says. To better blend the drivers, the crossover is asymmetric; the low-pass filter on the bass unit follows a Flat Delay (Bessel) slope up to a crossover point of 2.9kHz. The Revela crossover utilizes "high-performance polypropylene capacitors, an air core coil [inductor] for the ribbon section, and a low-loss silicon-iron core coil for the bass section." It's wired up with multistrand Hitachi LC-OFC copper wire insulated with polyethylene and jacketed in vibration-reducing soft-PVC. Amp connections are made via a single pair of chunky, copper-plated Chinese binding posts.
The cabinet itself is a sandwich construction with alternating layers of high-density and medium-density fiberboard (HDF and MDF) "to reduce panel resonance to below the level of audibility." The baffle is 25mm thick, the cabinet walls 18mm. The Revela 1's rounded corners and edges help control edge diffraction, minimizing unwanted sonic artifacts.
The cabinet is internally braced "using a purpose-engineered structure connected to the cabinet panels in a manner that dissipates unwanted vibrations and resonances, thus maintaining structural rigidity," the website states. "The bracing is a cross-brace formed from MDF designed to increase the structural rigidity of the cabinet while moderating the major resonances of the side, top and rear panel vibration," Comeau wrote. "We have found that too much bracing breaks the cabinet panels into small areas, which resonate at higher frequencies, which is subjectively disturbing."
Internal damping is achieved with a mixture of acoustic foam and synthetic fiber, chosen to behave acoustically like matted long-hair wool and placed to absorb internal reflections and standing waves. The 4"-long port uses a flared tube of die-molded ABS with a minimum diameter of 1"—"the optimum diameter and flaring to prevent longitudinal resonances from coloring the speaker's performance." The surface of the port tube is covered in longitudinal spines. "The spines help streamline the central high-velocity airflow through the port tube, resulting in low turbulence."
Enter the Revela 1Vintage comes naturally for International Audio Group (IAG), home to Castle, Leak, Mission, Wharfedale—and Quad HiFi, all brands with vintage appeal. At High End Munich in May, Quad introduced three new products, all of which had real vintage associations: a new ESL electrostatic loudspeaker and new versions of the original amp and preamp intended to drive the original ESLs. Introduced a few months earlier, in late 2023, the Quad Revela 1 standmount loudspeaker ($2995/pair including stands) also makes a vintage pitch but defies the faceplate-only approach: Indeed, the Revela 1 doesn't look much like a vintage speaker, and its technology, though it echoes that in classic Quad, is mostly new. The Quad Revela 1, though, traces its provenance all the way back to the late Peter Walker's 1949 Corner Ribbon, which utilized a pulp-cone 12" bass driver in an acoustic fiber–lined reflex enclosure, crossing over to a Quad-designed ribbon tweeter. "The [Corner Ribbon's] crossover featured high-quality coils and capacitors in a second-order circuit with Butterworth characteristics," Peter Comeau, IAG's director of acoustic design, told me in an email. "However, the acoustic roll-off of the drive units also came into play, resulting in a steep slope on either side of the crossover frequency of around 2kHz."
The cone in the mid/bass unit is made of a new material that Quad calls Reveal, an "advanced fiber composite" mixing para-aramid fibers—generic Kevlar—with wood/paper pulp. The new material is said to produce a diaphragm that's stronger and better damped than earlier Quad diaphragms for "superior bass control"; it is also said to smooth out upper-midrange resonances. Also new: The rubber surround of the mid/bass cone incorporates a damping layer, a ring of thick vinyl with a specific density and elasticity that damps the edge of the surround where it contacts the cone, absorbing reflections that would otherwise cause resonances in the upper part of the frequency range.
Internal damping is achieved with a mixture of acoustic foam and synthetic fiber, chosen to behave acoustically like matted long-hair wool and placed to absorb internal reflections and standing waves. The 4"-long port uses a flared tube of die-molded ABS with a minimum diameter of 1"—"the optimum diameter and flaring to prevent longitudinal resonances from coloring the speaker's performance." The surface of the port tube is covered in longitudinal spines. "The spines help streamline the central high-velocity airflow through the port tube, resulting in low turbulence."
