Stop reading this and visit a nearby REL dealer now please. You see, while we work very hard to educate our customers with all kinds of insider information, the simple truth is that you can read every blog we’ve published, watch every video we’ve produced and read rave review after rave review, and you still won’t get it. RELs must be heard and experienced to understand why people are blown away. RELs don’t just make bass, they make music. And film. They make these everyday experiences memorable and immerse you in the moment. They come alive.
And the very best place to hear one is at your friendly neighborhood REL dealer. In England we have around 100 REL dealers; even small to medium-sized towns have a REL dealer. In the US we have over 250 independent dealers (sorry, we’re picky, we could have many more) plus over 100 Magnolia Premium Design Centers, plus the best online retailers for audio in the world. Folks like Crutchfield, who have only been with us for a year but have thrown themselves into learning about REL and pepper our team with questions in an almost rabid effort to understand why we do what we do and how we achieve the results that we do.
As with so many of life’s great aesthetic experiences, I’m thinking of great cooking, the perfect novel, a fantastic bottle of wine, your partner’s face. All these leave an immediate and lasting impression and with it an emotional reaction that stamps itself into your consciousness. And as I am fond of saying, once heard, you can’t unhear it.
I know, I had the same experience, though it was likely a lot longer ago than most of you reading this. One day (early on in my tenure at SUMIKO, still the high point in value added, limited distribution of great audio into North America) the phone rang. At the other end was the serious but almost always humorous voice of one of my favorite Australians of all time, Josef Reidiger. With his unique accent of Australian English mixed with his native German that always put a smile on my face, he told me he’d just experienced the most amazing single improvement he’d ever heard to an audio system. He went on to regale me with all the things it touched and improved, which was pretty much everything. Naturally, I was curious, but he cleverly shied away from telling me exactly what it was (back in the early 90’s, subwoofers were seen as the work of the devil to “real” audiophiles). Eventually he told me the name of the company and that these were subwoofers, but unlike any I would have experienced.
A couple of weeks later, I found myself on the phone speaking with Richard Lord, the R. Edmund L of REL. Even more intrigued I asked for and shortly received two samples. I’ve told this story here, so I’ll deliver the short form. Raced home the night they arrived, taking the smaller of the two. Hey, they were heavy even back then. Plugging it in and turning it on expecting a miracle, I was initially underwhelmed and disappointed. First REL lesson, RELs have big power supplies. Why does that matter? Because great power supplies take a while to seat, to allow the capacitors to fully form. Everything must be brought up to speed over a few days. Just like pretty much everything good or great in audio that uses electrons. Like DACs and streamers and amps and preamps and…cables. Forgetting I’d left it on the next day, I was wholly unprepared when I unlocked the front door and was greeted by a warm, almost liquid mass of deep, effortless bass flowing out through the front door.
If you’re reading this and own a REL, think back to your first REL experience. Maybe hearing about us from a friend or reading one of the hundreds of reviews that kind high-end audio reviewers and YouTubers have written or spoken about. However great the review was, you still had to hear one. Then and then only then does it all begin to make sense. How the term imaging suddenly made sense, and dimensionality suddenly became a significant part of your audio vocabulary. How the midrange and high end suddenly came together to render even middling-quality mass market recordings so much better. Is that even possible your left brain asked? “Yup” answered your right brain as it reached for another CD or LP.
And that was before I knew to connect using REL’s High Level connection which is as simple as it sounds. Connect to a REL just like you would every other speaker you’ve ever owned, by connecting to the speaker terminals on the back of your amp or receiver. Why? Because this is the only way to have the same signal driving your speakers inform our subwoofers. For example, I just bought a legendary Conrad-Johnson power amplifier from back in the stone ages of the early 80’s. No matter, time hasn’t reduced its superiority a blink. It still has instantaneous micro and macro dynamics that are breathtaking and beautiful tonal colors, with imaging to make one weep. This is all revealed because it and everything else upstream of it is subtly, or not so subtly, shaping and informing what the REL receives. The bare truth is that you can’t wear bifocals and not notice that the world looks one way looking at it through the top lenses and totally different looking through the lower lenses. It’s always best to have a single, clear view of the world and that is what REL does with its high-level input.
I know it’s popular in an age of online trolls and chat rooms that exist to bitch about audio dealers. But they matter, retailers do. That this form of retail still exists some 75 years after audio became a thing is simply because nothing else can deliver a shorthand version of what owning one and hearing one in your own home might feel like. Will it sound better in your own home. Almost certainly. But can it give you a big slice of what ownership feels like? It can.
REL dealers are among the best trained dealers in audio. We know, our teams spend the entire year training, demonstrating and inspiring. Folks like Troy Hanson of Hanson Audio Video in Cincinnati and Dayton OH, or Albert Sportis of Precision Audio Video in Chicago, smart as a whip, he knows more technically than almost any dealer I’ve met. And he puts it to good use for his customers. I could go on. Too far from a local retailer? Try Upscale Audio in California. Call in for a DAC and you’ll likely hang up having bought a REL over the phone. Why? Because they still can’t shake that first (and every subsequent) impression of a REL. The Carolinas have their fair share, from Big Kids Toys (love that name for a store) to Audio Advice who look to be making a run at becoming your local, friendly national chain soon. There’s Scott Walker Audio in SoCal who carries only the best and says “REL must be my favorite addition in years. Nothing else makes every system sound better, makes my best speakers sound much better “(How do you guys do that?”) and quite literally has my customers calling to thank me for selling them a REL.” And 3MA in Houston, who once they hear a REL that makes sense for a speaker they sell, won’t stop until you take a listen. They’re like (the nicest) terriers going after a rat. Because they want the best for their customers and RELs are the best. And don’t be surprised if they don’t offer to share a cigar and a glass of whiskey while you’re there.
We’ve got great dealers in Canada, in Germany and in the UK; wonderful people who exist solely to serve their customers. Visiting is like joining an exclusive gentlemen’s club except you don’t have to pay an entry fee to join.
Lately, we’ve been making a lot of noise with our new-ish range of HT, for Home Theatre, subwoofers. These follow the same priorities as our well-established T/x, Serie S and Reference lines but eschew our High Level input because they are designed to do one thing perfectly; deliver the fastest, most realistic theatre .1/LFE bass you’ve ever heard. At that task, they’re even better than some of our bigger models that are tasked with doing everything exceptionally well. Just as a German sport sedan can be a far better overall automotive experience yet be beaten in stoplight racing by a 5-liter Ford Mustang in a street race. When a product is only tasked with one requirement, it gets very good at delivering it for less money.
REL’s difference can’t be explained, it has to be experienced. When a system is properly set up with a REL subwoofer, something profound happens; music sounds more alive, movies become more real, and the listener becomes part of the moment. No spec sheet, review, or YouTube video can capture that. You just must be there. And that’s where REL dealers come in, they’re the next best thing to hearing at in your home. And they’ll be properly set up which means that same dealer can be your front line for guidance setting up your own REL. That’s when it all starts to make sense, when it all comes together.
Enjoy!
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