Revel or Vandersteins 3A's /Which is better?


I'm thinking of moving from Vanderstein 3A's to the Revel Performa M20 or M22 or F30. I'm using Proceed CDD, Levinson 28 preamp, Threshold S500, Goldmund Memisis 12 DAC. Any help is appreciated. Dave Taylor
strad549
Good points made here by all. And yes, I can hear the difference. I traded Thiel 7s once for a pair of Dynaudio Contour 3.0s, thinking I needed to downsize, and within 6 months regretted I gave up the Thiels, so I replaced the Dyns with Thiel CS6s and am happy again, have been for almost three years now. And four months ago I added Vandersteen 2Ces to my second system. And no, I am not bashing other speaker manufacturers, bashing is not what I am about here. But I can hear the difference, call it a curse or whatever, but the clarity and accuracy of the source and amp conveys the truth of the music to me and that's what I like. That's how I get lost in the music and forget the gear. It's just how it works for me. I do hear the inaccuracies in other designs. I have enjoyed other speakers but eventually I hear the smear in time and the little things in the timbre that make them inaccurate in the time domain. Could I do this double blinded A/B? I don't know, it would be fun to try. But brittle, dry and lifeless are not what I would ever call Thiel or Vandersteen speakers. That's silly because it's just simply not true. But I still maintain that future eveloution of speaker design will take this into account, and manufacturers will strive to make speakers that are accurate in the time domain. Hey music is about this as much as it is about dynamics and frequency response. And speakers that give you what the partnering amp (and pre and phono and CDP etc) sends is simply what I want to hear, or at least as close to it as possible. So if I spend hard earned bux on components that in the end, screw up a part of the harmonic content, by design, e.g. speakers that invert the midrange driver relative to the woofer and tweeters because of phase angle deivations caused by a third order crossover, then it's not or me. Engineering and art strike a fine balance in this hobby. For me it's a fair target to try to hit both to reach a satisfying musical experience. Go to a music instrument museum sometime and look at all the early versions of the woodwinds and horns, there's a good reason why the current designs have "landed" where they are, art and engineering striking a logical balance.

Maybe we should be asking other manufacturers that don't seem to care about the time domain. Too expensive to engineer? They don't think it matters? Not enough expertise in electrical and acoustic design? All of the above? Why hasn't anyone asked the so-called "top manufacturers," like Wilson, Revel, Sonus Faber, JM Lab, B&W, and others why they don't do this? Could it be that only Thiel and Vandersteen are "wrong?"
Usually when people say "Attacking speakers" I find they mean "lack of transient detail" or in fact what makes music sound "alive". I agree some of the up market speakers sound ugly, boomy, unpleasant, but perhaps accurate. I don't think most spaces in which I have heard them have been designed to show whether the speaker was good or not, but instead to make a point about how cool audio gear looks in a showroom. This is not a good test, and neither is an EE guide; I agree. Why does point to point wiring sound more natural? I don't know, but I know it can when it's good. Other things, like cryo have real answers; some are more of a mystery. But phasic problems, especially when you look how crappy the response of ANY speaker is when compared to a waveform baseline, is basically an academic problem no matter what. And time delay echoes around the room seem more likely to crop up than a room in which you WILL hear the differences in cone phase. Let alone gear, and interconnects, and current from the wall.