Quad Revela 1

The Quad Revela 1 is a standmount loudspeaker of the highest order — a compact two-way design that represents the culmination of more than four years of research and development by Quad's Director of Acoustics, Peter Comeau, and sets a new standard for resolution, tonal accuracy and musical authority in its class. Built around a True Ribbon high-frequency unit of extraordinary refinement and a purpose-engineered Reveal™ bass/midrange driver of equally uncompromising performance, the Revela 1 delivers a listening experience that transforms the standard of what a standmount loudspeaker can achieve — recovering details from recordings that lesser designs leave permanently buried, and presenting the full emotional and spatial complexity of music with a clarity and naturalness that is, quite simply, without parallel at its price.

True Ribbon High-Frequency Unit

The True Ribbon tweeter at the heart of the Revela 1 is the product of over four years of dedicated research by Peter Comeau — a transducer of extraordinary lightness, speed and resolution that delivers a high-frequency performance of genuinely transcendent quality. The True Ribbon's diaphragm is a single corrugated conductor suspended in a powerful magnetic field — a moving mass so vanishingly low that the ribbon responds to the most demanding transient detail in the musical signal with an immediacy and accuracy that no conventional dome tweeter, however well engineered, can approach. The result is a high-frequency presentation of exceptional openness, air, delicacy and three-dimensional imaging — a top end that resolves the finest spatial and tonal detail from every recording with a smoothness and hear-through transparency that redefines what is possible from a loudspeaker at the Revela 1's price point.

Reveal™ Bass/Midrange Driver

The Reveal™ bass/midrange driver paired with the True Ribbon tweeter is the product of an equally rigorous development programme — a 6.5-inch driver whose advanced fibre composition diaphragm is purpose-engineered for seamless integration with the True Ribbon's extraordinary resolution and speed. The Reveal™ diaphragm combines exceptional rigidity with outstanding self-damping properties — a combination that suppresses the cone breakup modes and colouration that afflict conventional driver materials, ensuring that voices, instruments and the complex harmonic textures of acoustic music are reproduced with purity and accuracy across the full midrange bandwidth. A newly developed custom rubber surround provides greater excursion than conventional designs, while a new high-power motor system delivers bass performance of extraordinary power, depth, speed and articulation — a bass presentation that is at once authoritative and precisely controlled, with none of the overhang or boom that lesser designs mistake for low-frequency extension.

Phase-Compensated Acoustic Butterworth Crossover

Uniting the True Ribbon tweeter and Reveal™ bass/midrange driver is a phase-compensated Acoustic Butterworth crossover — the product of not only Computer-Aided Design but hundreds of hours of critical listening tests using every type and flavour of music. The crossover ensures that the two drivers integrate with absolute seamlessness across the crossover frequency, producing a coherent and phase-accurate soundstage of genuine width, depth and precision imaging — a performance that honours the full resolution of both drive units and presents the complete spatial and tonal picture of every recording with an integrity that is the defining characteristic of the Revela 1's musical character.

Cabinet Engineering

The Revela 1's cabinet is a furniture-quality piece of craftsmanship that is as technically accomplished as it is visually striking. Available in a polished real-wood veneer with seamless polished-paint finish or an all-black gloss paint finish, the Revela 1's cabinet is hand-finished to a standard that far exceeds anything comparable in its class — a precision-fitted baffle seamlessly joined with a polished finish for a presentation of the highest order. Internally, a purpose-engineered bracing structure is connected to the cabinet panels in a manner that dissipates unwanted vibrations and resonances with extraordinary effectiveness, maintaining structural rigidity under the most demanding musical conditions and ensuring that the cabinet contributes nothing of its own to the musical signal. The port tube is precisely positioned with the optimum diameter and flaring to eliminate longitudinal resonances entirely, allowing the low and midrange frequencies to perform with a free-flowing purity and complete absence of unintended boominess or colouration.

The Revela 1 is the ideal partner for Quad's own amplification. The Quad Artera Stereo provides a natural and synergistic match — Quad's Current Dumping amplification paired with the Revela 1's ribbon tweeter resolution for a complete system of extraordinary coherence. Those building a complete Quad valve system will find the Quad QII-Forty or Quad QII-Eighty an outstanding partner, while the Quad Artera Play+ provides a digital source of the highest quality to anchor a wider system around the Revela 1.

Buying from Martins Hi-Fi

Martins Hi-Fi has been in Norwich since 1968. Elizabeth Gould runs the business today, and we stock only brands we have heard properly and stand behind. The Quad Revela 1 is available to hear in our Norwich showroom — speak to Dave or Chris to arrange a demonstration with Quad's own amplification or your existing system.

Contact us at info@martinshifi.co.uk, call 01603 627010, or WhatsApp on 07554 687137. You can read more about how we work on our Why Martins Hi-Fi page. We are at 85–91 Ber Street, Norwich, NR1 3EY.