Revel is fanatical about blind speaker-testing, using a facility called a Multichannel Listening Lab to test speakers without the listener having any idea what they look like, or whose brand they are. Its R&D team is numerous and the brand has no fewer than three anechoic chambers to play with. Part of the Harman Specialty Group, it clearly takes its game very seriously.

So when it says that it wants to bring high-end performance down to more affordable levels, you need to take notice. Classically proportioned big-box speakers, from the obelisk school of design, its Concerta Series may be cheaper than the top-of-the-line Revel kit, but it's just as imposing; I certainly don't share the brochure's opinion that they are 'svelte'. If this is svelte, so's my butt (which it's not).

There are five models in the Concerta line up. A tower, dubbed the F12, a centre called C12, a monitor shelf speaker called M12 and the B12 subwoofer. Bizarrely, the surround speaker, the S12, looks like it hails from another design house, let alone from the same range. The finish is a vinyl wrapped MDF cabinet available in Cherry, Black Ash or Maple.

The system reviewed here comprises a standard set of S12 surrounds, F12 towers, C12 centre and B12 subwoofer.

The gloriously weighty towers are a proper two-person unpacking job. The boxes comprise two 8in woofers, a 5.25in mid-range driver and a tweeter in a shallow horn-shaped plastic moulding - called a waveguide - which is said to improve the tweeter's output snap and attack. They certainly cut through major action sequences, without being rated to go up to bat frequencies. The woofers are coupled and have great control and linearity.

Downwards in frequency terms, those woofers marry up a treat with a savagely over-engineered metal-coned 10in bass driver living within the B12 sub. A small enclosure for its output capabilities, the sub bass-driver's butyl rubber roll surround is massive and fat. The amount of ferrite hanging on the rear of this pig ugly piston makes it look like some kind of acoustic weapon. It's driven by a serious 650Watt amplifier, and, as well as having the usual phase flip switch, gain and frequency setting knobs, it features a pukka single-band parametric EQ circuit on the back, which you can use to reduce unwanted room resonances.