The Devore has a sexier narrative (Brooklyn artisanal construction with exotic "natural" materials, idiosyncratic driver choices and crossover by a maverick designer). These narratives all too often serve to legitimise/excuse backwards - or outright bad - engineering under sighted listening conditions. If the market was truly "meritocratic" there would be no space for continued success of the Harbeths and Devores of the world in the DSP crossover era. Retail hifi is never about the sound. Its about entrenching a narrative of one's superior/enlightened taste in esoteric equipment that eludes any criticism.
Posts like that really get at the heart of my own struggle with web sites which have members fully devoted to measurements/technical/scientific vetting.
My rational side is all in for decrying b.s. technical claims and audiophile woo-woo and ignorance. And for defending the use of measurements and a scientific approach (e.g. blind testing, correlating measurements, etc).
And yet....
....I can't feel totally comfortable with where it seems to lead insofar as it is represented by posts like the above. Because as soon as the examples start coming up of "bad design" - some of my favorite speakers pop up!
I truly enjoyed the sound of the Devore speakers, and I LOVE the sound of the Harbeth speakers, which are high among my favorite brands. I work in pro sound so I hear million dollar studios. I've carefully auditioned the Revels and many other such speakers. I own speakers that measure quite well. So I'm not unaware of what "good measuring systems" sound like. But I still adore many of the qualities I hear in the currently derided speakers.
So on one hand - yay science, down with b.s.
On the other, I'm soooo glad that one mindset doesn't totally prevail, the
"THIS IS THE RIGHT WAY TO DESIGN SPEAKERS and if you are departing from this you are just doing it WRONG."
Thank goodness there are all sorts of speaker designers carving out their own route, even against criticism. That leaves a lot more choice for those of us who appreciate something different. (And I don't know about 'retail hi-fi' but having owned Harbeth speakers, and having auditioned many times at length Devore speakers, it certainly was quite a bit about the sound, at least for me).