We are delighted to be presenting a product from the young Alsatian brand Revival Audio for the first time. From its catalogue of four loudspeaker models, we have selected the beautiful Revival Audio Atalante 3, little sister of the more dominant Atalante 5, for a listening pleasure shared by most of the music tested during the few weeks we were able to enjoy this model.
Created in 2021, Revival Audio is the fulfilment of a desire that its designer Daniel Emonts has had for over 30 years: to make the best loudspeaker possible at a price that is still reasonable. After many years’ experience in hi-fi, the Frenchman has decided to team up with Taiwanese Jackie Lee to put all his knowledge to good use and offer new products designed using the most advanced materials and technologies.
To complete this partnership, the two engineers have called on the Franco-Japanese designers Aki and Arnaud Cooren, whose Paris-based agency A+A has been involved in numerous collaborations with leading modern furniture brands, including Roche Bobois.
The smaller of the two Atalante models, the 3 has many qualities, starting with its deliberately retro but superbly constructed look. Its appearance is complemented by an indisputably top-of-the-range finish and construction, with no visible joints or screws on the body, except of course on the speakers. A fine laser-cut border has been used to create a demarcation between the tweeter at the top and the bass-midrange underneath, with the addition of the brand logo, also very finely crafted. Two grey magnetised covers, also separated by the border, can be placed on top, each covering one of the two drivers.
A true two-way speaker, the Atalante 3 certainly looks to the past in visual terms, and to some extent follows this style in terms of sound, but it uses the most recent and innovative technologies available. Rather than being bought from competitors, the speakers are therefore purely in-house design and benefit from many of the brand’s patents. The 28mm RASC™ tweeter is made up of nine elements, including a soft dome aluminium voice coil preceded by a small component called ARID (Anti Resonance Inner Dome).
Placed in close proximity to suppress potential standing waves and conduct almost all waves to the rear chamber, it results in 95% resonance absorption (manufacturer’s rating). The BSC (Basalt Sandwich Construction) bass driver is just as important and well thought-out, being constructed from twelve elements, with an aluminium basket and a copper ring, and above all with the visibly unprecedented contribution in high-fidelity of basalt in the design of the cone.
Found in lava flows, basalt is extremely light and more resistant than Kevlar or glass, which are often used in hi-fi. The cones are made from fabrics impregnated with this stone, with a sandwich construction that is well known for its damping properties. The ferrite magnet uses a less noble material than neodymium, but which offers very similar or even better performance in some respects, while keeping the price down.
In order to combine the two channels, a crossover is integrated on a single card, hand-assembled with capacitors and copper coils made for Revival Audio, connected by Skyline Hybrid cables from the famous Dutch manufacturer Van Den Hul; it offers a cut-off around 2.8 kHz. At the rear, a round port reinforces the bass, while two WBT terminals allow for the connection of forked or banana plugs.
The set up
Available in a single colour, Atalante 3 has its own dedicated Stand 3 legs, also designed by A+A Cooren. Built on four iron columns, they are completed by a base on four spikes or rubber, depending on the floor on which you wish to place them. Delicately retro, these speakers actually blend just as easily into old furniture as they do into a modern flat, where their natural wood finish adds an ever-flattering touch to the object. Despite a rear port, distance from the wall is not a real problem when it comes to getting the most out of the bass.
With their musical approach and 87dB sensitivity, the Atalante 3s are easy enough to match, as long as you have a relatively comfortable amount of power upstream, at least 50W in class A/B and 15/20W in class A. Tube amplifiers can also be perfectly adapted to their sound, as demonstrated by a test on the Luxman SQ-N150 (although only 10 W in class A at 6 ohms) and the Jadis Diapason (15 W in class AB at 4 ohms).
As for the source, here again we’re leaning towards analogue and the pleasure of trying out our best vinyl records, particularly jazz, but a fully digital system on the source and transistor amplification also enabled us to listen to a wide range of music.
The sound of the Revival Audio Atalante 3
The name of the brand is obviously not a haphazard choice, and while Revival Audio, as we have seen, displays a visual style of the past, the sought-after sound also tends to hark back to the great moments of hi-fi. Immediately, the Atalante 3’s sound is full-bodied and balanced throughout the available bandwidth, with no desire to over-amplify the effects of brilliance or brightness that can be heard in some recent speakers.
The choice of components and the most modern technological research have made it possible to combine the sound of yesteryear with all the characteristics of today, particularly in the reduction of noise and the quality of filtering. More interestingly, the basalt bass-midrange develops lightness for the benefit of clarity of message, and a quality of timbre that is rare for a product in this price range. The Atalante 3s are highly accurate both in the upper and lower registers, and do superb justice to pure recordings such as Bis’s 14th Symphony by Shostakovich, where Nicolas Stavy’s piano benefits from well-defined nuances across the entire keyboard.
Even more captivating, the percussion, and more particularly the bells, stand out singularly, with a marked resonance time right to the very end of the wave. The vocal flesh of the great soul singers benefits just as much from the rendering, the relatively wide image not locking them into a box, but giving them plenty of room to blossom, and still allowing Nina Simone to cast a spell on us (‘I Put a Spell on You’), even though she died twenty years ago.
Less full in height, the soundstage reminds us that we are in the presence of bookshelf speakers, available to be listened to relatively loudly in a large living room, but better suited to relatively close listening in small or medium-sized rooms.
In the same way, they are particularly at ease with small ensembles, but retain their versatility in large ensembles with choirs, without blurring the information, even when these are very full. Switching to R&B also means that the bass is very stable, clean and never unpleasant, even when listening for long periods at high volume levels; here again, the grain is deliberately old-fashioned, adding a real charm to the sound.
Our conclusion
Flattering to the eye with their impeccable finish and wooden cabinet, Revival Audio’s Atalante 3s are a fine entry into the new world of this young Alsatian brand. Deliberately turned towards the past, like the grey covers that can be affixed to the front panel if you wish, these compact speakers manage to offer a sound that is both old-fashioned and at the same time perfectly modern in everything we can expect today, as much for the quality of the crossovers as for the precision of the details and the clarity of the soundstage. At €2,490, these French-assembled speakers from Daniel Emonts are a real success.
Author: Vincent Guillemin
Technical sheet: Revival Audio Atalante 3
- Origin: France
- Price : €2,490
- Dimensions : 390 x 240 x 270 mm
- Weight : 11 kg
- Type : 2-way bookcase
- Option: Stand 3 feet
- Impedance: 4 ohms
- Sensitivity: 87 dB/2.83 V/1 m
- Frequency response: 44 Hz – 22 kHz ; -3 dB
- Filter frequency: 2.8 kHz
