My pet peeve: "revealing" speakers

@tk21 -

At any rate, I'd expect a "revealing" system to make subtle details audible at normal listening levels, in addition to having a nearly flat frequency response, with little blurring/smearing due to phase and timing issues.

So, instruments and vocals sound natural and realistic;
the soundstage/image is believable;
subtle details are neither masked nor exaggerated.

That pretty much sums up what I thought the term revealing meant in regards to audio too.

Of course it can reproduce the signal fed to it, to reveal a poor recording, loads of distortion, and other negative things as equally as a good sounding system.

Dazzlingmd is the post that makes the most sense.  I have no idea why everyone jumped on the original post as if it were gospel.  My first thought was, "is eric making fun by explaining the opposite of the definition?"  I have both albums that Dazzlingmd described, and many other examples, and what he says is true.  Not only with my current two revealing systems, but with all the many systems I have owned in the past.  BTW, isn't funny how we all say we want our system to be as close to a live performance as possible, when at least half of the many shows I have seen have crappie sound?

Good point that I didn't really think about, that what is revealed in a "revealing" speaker could be more of a focus on certain frequencies as opposed to an overall statement of quality.  As a teenager who bought low quality stuff bought in the 70's/80's (but was better than the offerings from department stores like Sears, Montgomery Ward, Korvette's, Two Guys) and just picked up the hobby again a few years, it was easy to buy entry-level equipment today that was way better than what I had hiding in the closet, so everything I bought added some resolution/soundstage/imaging that I never had before.  I was less choosy when buying new equipment because I was confident it was going to be better than what I had, and it usually was.  The further you go up the quality ladder you start experiencing different flavors as opposed to jumps in quality, but you can perceive an emphasis in certain frequency bands as being "better", if that's the sound you gravitate towards.  I initially started preferring equipment with that high-end "sizzle", thinking that was more resolving, revealing, etc.  because I heard things emphasized that I never did before.  I started noticing my ears were feeling that they were being muffled after a short while (any musician who has had a stage monitor feed back and squeal at them knows the feeling), so I had to back off of the emphasis on the highs and get reacquainted to comfortable listening sessions.  Speakers are something you really have to listen to in your own room with your equipment, once you already have quality equipment.
I've rambled enough - I'm boring myself now.  One more thought: a lot of the music I listened to in my youth and so loved sounds like unlistenable dreck nowadays: compressed to oblivion, cheesy instrumentation, extreme left/right panning, howling mistakes and such.  I pulled out my old copy of "Grand Funk - Live Album", played half a side of Side 4 ("Into the Sun"), and promptly took it back off - just couldn't take it anymore. 

LOVE reveling speakers MAGICO M3/MAGICO Q3s the best of the best.

It seems nobody understand what i speak about distinguishing "revealing" and "resolving"...

Speakers are in an audio chain linked with multiple electronic components, they NEVER exist ideally and "generically" only, they comes from the sky of "generic" design on the earth of your "specific" room, and then they are + or - resolving in relation to the recording source and reveal all that plays against or for a better S.Q. coming from their link to other electronic components, coming also from the mechanical, electrical. and acoustical embeddings...We listen to, not only to a recording, not only to some speakers, not only to our gear, but to our room and house....

Then speaking of different speakers brand name properties had a limit: your house is not mine and any speakers will resolve differently the same files or cd and will reveal in his own way the difference between these 2 houses...

There is differences ,and big one, between different speakers branded name, but not one sound the same in different house and embeddings...

Then, is an absolute perfect resolving of the files or cd possible? No, and it is not desirable at all...

What is revealed by speakers? The " colored" different ways in which they manifest a resolving power in different environments and linked with different gear, rightly embed or not....

Then there is always a trade-off between resolving and revealing....Even if the speakers is specifically designed to be resolving, his embeddings and link with other gear, will manifest this in variable degrees or colors...

The "living" quality of a set of speakers is the result of this trade-off.. Trade-off between his "generic" properties and the "specific" manifested one...

I hope this was clear because this is my experience.... :)

Confusing "resolving" and "revealing" put us in the marketing discourse that sells products and makes no sense at all...

If i say that my Mission speakers are more resolving than your speakers, my discourse made no sense, except advocating for my favorite brand name... Even if this is true by the measured virtues of the "generic" design and conception, this is a half truth, because a less resolving designed speakers will resolve better in a better embedding sometimes, than a more resolving designed speakers in a bad embeddings...

:)

In a last word, "resolving" is only one of the properties of a good speaker, his "revealing" flexibility and adaptability relatively to any embeddings is another one, and a more "musical" one....