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REL vs. no REL
The REL Difference: A Virtual Subwoofer Demo Like No Other
The below text is a transcription of the video.
Hey folks, John Hunter with REL here. Listen, we’re gonna try a somewhat brave experiment. Stick with us. We are actually going to try and let people who are stuck at home, who have headphones, for example, don’t have a huge audio file system, who are maybe thinking about getting into a very basic REL, for example, give them a sense of what it’s like to hear this. We’re gonna start with the REL and speakers together as an ensemble so you can hear what it should sound like. In the second cut, we’re gonna take out the REL and you’re gonna hear exactly the same recording levels on the microphones, everything identical. We’ll cut at exactly the same point in time, and then we’ll restore the REL for you so you’ll have it in/out, no REL. Then in again. So that’s the structure we’re trying to do, and the purpose of this is really simple. There’s a lot of folks that are curious about what does a REL sound like? They may not have the means to go to a dealer, maybe they’re too far away to do it quickly and easily. So our hope is that this opens up a sense of what a REL can do for a system.
To do this, we actually brought you into our development studio. This is where Justin and I develop all of the RELs that have come out since 2013 or so. It’s produced a lot of great product and it’s an important tool for us, a developmental tool. This is a great sounding room. We can get into a video some other time about how we built it, but this is a medium sized room. It’s not a huge industrial studio. It more mimics what a traditional living room sounds like, but it’s built in very specific ways that very few sound systems have ever had the privilege of working with. We’re actually recording with mics on speakers. You can see these two that are on the speakers. And there’s a large microphone down here that’s on the REL. We worked for probably the two of us, a total probably 20 man hours going back and forth working to create the real sound.
And we were listening and dialing in for the REL in the room as though we were just gonna be doing a live acoustic demo. All of these things are mixed at exactly the same levels. We don’t monkey with the volume on the pre amplifier. The electronics are the same all the way through. Nothing gets changed at any point other than the take the REL in and out of circuit. This is a really straight recording. We’re trying to let you hear what a nice sound sounding system in a really good room sounds like with and without the REL. That’s it.
We selected a really nicely recorded piece of acoustic jazz with an electric bass. This is not a melt your house down bass track. We did it on purpose. That is not difficult to do, you know, if you have a cut like that with and without a subwoofer, you should be ashamed if everybody in the world can’t hear it. The purpose of this is for prospective REL customers to be able to hear music that is relatable. That’s an open, articulate, delicate soundtrack that has some bass to it. And the purpose is not to melt the house down with bass on this cut. The purpose of this is to let you hear sort of natural music in a real acoustic in our room being picked up with real microphones. This is you know, sort of REL unplugged. This is really intended to be used with headphones.
And I’ll tell you straight up, the better quality the headphones are, the more you’ll be able to hear exactly what a REL does. This is not intended to be listened to on your iPhone, your Android phone, transducers. The speakers in those things are completely incapable of resolving any of these details. You’ll never hear the effect. I’ve tried it. Don’t waste your time. I’ve done it with good headphones. It smacks you upside the head. You cannot not hear it. If you’re into this stuff and you’ve been curious, you can import that into your own system. You can play it back through speakers, real speakers, not a little tiny compressed Bluetooth, you know. This is specifically not to be listened to by systems that have RELs in them. You’ll probably skew to way too hot. So we have no intention of this being something really awesome and cool for a REL owner to experience in a new way. This is really for beginners to be able to get a chance to kind of get a crude idea of what it’s like to have a REL.
[Music]
Listen, thank you so much for participating in this, for giving us a chance to try and share sort of the experience of having a REL in a system going through the whole phase where we take it out and then restoring it. We hope it was educational. We hope it was helpful. As we said earlier, this is just a precursor. If you like this, if you heard it, now you’re curious, please go to a good REL dealer, ask them to do a similar demo with similar, really simply produced music. I just want to say this is a wonderful opportunity for us too. We’re able to support some musicians that don’t get a lot of airtime. There’s so much talent out there. I’m sure they would love for you guys to go and be able to listen to more of their music. So thanks to those guys and we really hope that this was a fun educational experience.