SPATIAL Revelation Series Owner's Manual

Owners Manual for the Revelation Series Raven & Blackbird
Congratulations on your new Raven preamp or Blackbird power amplifier! They are both precision
engineered products, and take just a little care in set-up and use to give you many years of listening
pleasure.
The Raven and the Blackbird are the perfect match for any speakers of medium to high efficiency,
anything from about 89 dB/meter/watt or higher. They can shrug off reactive loads without any "protection
circuits" getting in the way, and true (thermal) Class A operation is completely free of crossover notches
or other artifacts, regardless of load or dynamic conditions.
Unpacking
Raven Preamplifier - Raven chassis, 6' power cord; vacuum tubes - 6SN7 signal tube (pair, matched),
6AX4 rectifier tube (pair), OD3/VR150 voltage regulator tube (pair); remote control (batteries included);
spare tubes (OD3/VR150 and 6AX4)
Blackbird Monoblock Amplifier - Blackbird chassis, 6' power cord; vacuum tubes - 300b power tube (pair,
matched), KT88 driver tube (pair, matched), 6SN7 signal tube, OC3/VR105 voltage regulator tube (pair);
spare tube (OC3/VR105); 6' trigger cable
Tube matching - although not required, your system will provide better bass and imaging if these tubes
are matched across both Blackbird amplifiers - 300b (matched quad), KT88 (matched quad), 6SN7
(matched pair)
Please save all the packing materials. If they are discarded for some reason, contact Spatial Audio Lab
for replacement boxes so they can be safely shipped. When shipping, always remove all tubes from their
sockets, and insert them in the tube cartons they came in.
After you unpack the preamp or amplifier, gently rock the chassis from side to side, just make sure
nothing has worked loose in shipping. They are very well built, and we do our best to pack them securely,
but they may have experienced a shock during shipping. If any parts are loose internally, do not attempt
to repair it yourself. Please contact Spatial Audio Lab for return instructions.
Installation and Setup
Place the Raven preamp, or Blackbird power amplifier, in the system rack you intend to use. Do not place
them on a rug on the floor; there are vents on the bottom of the case that must have free air flow. They
also require a minimum of 2" (5 cm) of space on the left and right sides and 2" (5 cm) above the tops of
the vacuum tubes.
It's generally more convenient to connect the Raven or Blackbird to the rest of the system before installing
the vacuum tubes. Do not power them on if they are not connected or if the tubes are not installed.
The Raven preamp supports both balanced (XLR) and unbalanced (RCA) inputs. DACs often sound best
using the XLR connection, if the DAC supports that connection. Similarly, if your phono preamp has an
XLR connection, use that. The Raven has an internal studio-quality transformer that supports the RCA
connection, so there is no loss of quality if the source component only has RCA outputs. The preamp
presents a 47K ohm load, which should not be a problem for any well designed source component, either
tube or solid state. Do NOT use RCA to XLR socket adapters to plug an RCA source into the XLR input
jack on the Raven. It will not work and will ground one half of the circuit resulting in very poor sound
quality. Only fully balanced XLR signal sources should be used with the XLR input to the preamp. The
same is true for the Blackbird amps.