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I was quoting the blog post:
View attachment 76794
The preference scale is very small. So 1-2 units is a pretty large effect. The question is, “Will two speakers that measure as similarly as the Revel and SVS likely vary 2 units?” Saying “yes” is a pretty strong claim, given the scale. Going from “recommenced” to “not recommended” is even larger. It may be true! But I think more than sighted listening might be necessary to demonstrate it.
Personally, I trust Amir's ears with the SVS review. He's not the first one to report them sounding harsh. They have a bit of a reputation in that regard. In fact, I was surprised when I opened the review and saw the spin. My first reaction upon seeing the spin was something like "damn, those aren't nearly as bright as I thought they would be. Maybe all those people on AVS are wrong about these sounding bright". But then, we got to the subjective impressions, and Amir's impressions were exactly in line(minus the boosted bass part) with what most people say about them.
Also, I personally don't see a good enough reason why Amir would be biased into not liking these. If anything, I think the bias would be more likely to benefit the speaker, as he saw the measurements before he listened.
You do bring up an interesting point, though. It's a point that I've been thinking about since that SVS review dropped, and that is just how remarkably close the SVS and M106 measure, and yet they sound so much different. They have VERY similar on/off axis response(with deviations in very similar ranges), and very similar directivity indexes(with very similar magnitude errors at the same frequency). Overlaying the responses on top of each other makes this very clear. In fact, I'd go so far as to say that they're *almost close enough to where you could say it's just two different samples of the same speaker. The difference in measurements between the SVS Ultra and Revel M106 are really no bigger than the difference between the M106 and M105. Maybe this is more relevant to the SVS thread, but I would really like to figure out what in the measurements is causing such a drastic difference.
I also see no reason why Amir would be biased towards Revel speakers he has no plans on owning. What incentive does he have?
Maybe Revel is doing something with most of their designs that doesn't show up well in measurements, and maybe Amir prefers that something. Looking closely at the SVS Ultra vs Revel M106, I noticed that the M106(and most Revels measured so far) has - what looks to be - intentionally boosted bass, specifically around 100Hz. The SVS Ultra, by comparison, has more neutral bass. Could be that the boosted bass is softening the highs.
Generalizing a bit more, maybe Revel has a current "house sound" that isn't perfectly in agreement with the older science that Toole and Olive did, and maybe Amir prefers that house sound? Given that his reference speaker is the current flagship Revel, it could be that he's judging speakers based on how close they get to that sound, rather than how close they get to something more neutral(Genelec, for example). I guess you could call that a Revel bias, but I wouldn't. I'd say it's more like a Revel "preference". Bias to me means something outside of sound reproduction that influences the listening result, and wouldn't hold up under blind conditions. In this case, the Revel "preference" would hold up under blind conditions.
I really enjoy the subjective impressions now, and they've changed my view on the whole objective vs. subjective debate. I still lean way more towards the objective side, but they've forced me to give more credence to the typical subjective view that you can't tell if a speaker will sound good or bad just by looking at the spinorama. You really can have a speaker with terrible measurements that sounds good(Canon s-50), and you really can have a speaker with excellent measurements that sounds bad(SVS Ultra).
Anyway, not trying to attack or offend anyone, but just giving some thoughts.