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The Splendid Riva Festival Speaker - REVIEWED!
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May 29, 2025
If you evaluate speakers by portability, you're not going to like the hefty Riva Festival. But if you're an audiophile or just seek the best sound and room filling volume, with crisp details and a gorgeous soundstage, you're going to really fall hard for the Riva Festival speaker. With a ton of connectivity options including Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, Chromecast, DLNA and support for Hi-Res audio, there's a lot to really like about the Festival speaker. Tech expert Dave Taylor of https://www.AskDaveTaylor.com/ puts the Riva Festival through its paces and finds that while the audio quality is splendid, there's some work left to be done on the connectivity side... Learn more at: https://www.RivaAudio.com/
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can this monster of a speaker change the
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way you listen to music let's check it
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out
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[Music]
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[Music]
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Dave Taylor here and I'm looking at the
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Riva festival that's this guy and
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there's a big speaker Oh check it out
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it's 14 and a half pounds it is a
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substantial speaker but there's a reason
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that it is so much weight and there's so
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much going on because it has amazing
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sound so the Riva festival supports
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Wi-Fi bluetooth airplay DLNA I don't
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know if anyone uses DLNA anymore but
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whatever chromecast Spotify Connect you
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can get to it from your Google home
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there's a zillion different ways you can
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connect and it supports high res audio
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heck you can even plug into it with
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optical 3.5 milimeter aux or USB so you
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could even use this with your television
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how cool is that now it is pretty big it
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is 14 inches by 8 inches by 7 inches and
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like I said 14 and a half pounds and
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it's a wood enclosure though you don't
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really see it because there's a plastic
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top and then there's this metal grill so
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the whole design of it is really nice
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but you know what let's give it a listen
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so I'm gonna but just push some music to
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it and and let's make it loud cuz this
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thing gets crazy loud
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so you have no way of knowing how loud
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it is but this is like bothering the
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neighbors loud and it gets louder than
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that so how does it get so loud how does
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it get so much sound it's because it has
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three woofers three tweeters and four
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passive radiators all put into this
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thing and they have a six channel amp
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pushing out 200 watts on a single
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speaker that is a lot whether you're an
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audiophile or not there's a lot going on
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with this speaker and you know it works
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with a lot of different input sources
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but I will say that as much as the sound
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is beautiful I mean this is really
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really nice if you have this in your
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dorm room then I can promise you you are
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gonna be the life of the party however
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when we get to the price you might think
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I don't know if I want to have this in
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my dorm room welcome back to that this
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is a really great single speaker audio
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system with a ton of flexibility a lot
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of different input options there's just
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so much about this that's really cool
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but I will admit that when I tried to
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configure it it was a bit of a bear to
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configure it would show up on the Wi-Fi
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it would vanish from the Wi-Fi it would
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show up needing a password then a minute
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later it didn't need a password I got it
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on Bluetooth that worked and now it's on
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bluetooth so suddenly it's on airplay
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which I never really realized that they
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work together like that but be that as
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it may Google home still can't figure
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out how to connect to it so it has all
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these capabilities I don't know maybe
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it's my phone maybe it's my Wi-Fi
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network whatever the deal is if you can
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figure out a way to push music to this
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thing you're gonna love it it has an
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amazing soundstage it's just a really
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rich full sound and for something that's
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this small this is literally the size of
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a breadbox but this can definitely fill
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even a pretty big room you could put
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this in the middle of an indoor
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basketball court and have music that's
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gonna keep those basketball players
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happy for hours so really nice and not
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only that it has an away mode that
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actually lets you work with it in
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different ways than you would at home on
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your own Wi-Fi network so lots of
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capabilities it also has a Revo wond
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application which makes it easy for you
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to
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we get to all the settings and that's
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nice although occasionally I'd go into
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the Riva wand application and it would
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say there are no devices and then I'd
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wait and after a couple of seconds boom
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it would show up and here you can see
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this is the main configuration screen so
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there's lots of stuff you can do really
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cool really though it's all about the
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sound like I said if you can get music
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to push to this thing through whatever
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mechanism or means you want you're gonna
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be really really impressed it's very
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nice sound I mean I can't say enough
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about how this is probably one of the
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very best sound units we have even here
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at ask dave taylor and we got a lot of
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gear so really cool and it's heavy so
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really you don't want this in your
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backpack when you're traveling unless
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you're like testing you know trying out
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for the Ironman or something probably
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you're not so only thing left is the
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price and before we get there let me ask
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if you can click on that subscribe
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button and if this is useful and
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informative thumbs up is always
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appreciated
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so the Reva festival you can get for 499
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dollars at Reva audio comm this is not
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something that you want to have for your
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high school kid unless you have a lot of
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money and your IPO just went amazingly
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well but if you can afford something
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like this this is really premium
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audiophile gear and you will be really
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impressed with the sound and of course
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it has a lot of different inputs and so
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that makes it really nice for you to be
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able to maybe hook it up to your
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computer to have really ground-shaking
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audio from your games and then just push
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your favorite music to it it also works
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with spotify connect so it can actually
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run spotify even if the device you
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launched it from then leaves the room so
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you could actually have this running
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forever on spotify through your Wi-Fi
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network and that becomes a really nice
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device you could put this in like your
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office or something and now you have
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music for everybody so really really
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like this the Riva festival connectivity
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is a bit tricky but once you figure that
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piece out holy cow it's a really nice
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sounding speaker so Steve Taylor I'm
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going back to my music and I will
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you in my next video
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[Music]