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

well, it's simple. If you purposely have some of the drivers, even one, out of electrical phase with the other drivers, then there is no way all the harmonic content of timbre will be produced because, by design again, out of phase firing of part of the frequency response will actively remove content. Those step reponse measurements are, in my opinion, accurate and revealing of what a speaker is and is not capable of doing. A 30,000 Hz bandwidth pulse reveals what is going on in the time domain and it is simply a matter of when that speaker manufacturers finally realize this is a gotta have spec. Nuff said.

Nuff said.

As long as you don't choose a speaker by actually listening to it, you're dead right. Nuff said.

Good point, Evita.

Do we choose our audio system components on electrical and physical properties/theories or because they bring us closer to the event? And we all have enough experience to know immediately when something sounds natural or artificial.

Stevecham: You seem very obsessed with Thiel and Vandersteen speakers and bash every other speaker when you get the chance. Do you honestly feel you can hear the results of the "perfectly phased" designs of Thiel and Vendersteens in your system? And what other speakers have you brought home and put forth much effort to try in your system directly compared to the Thiels and Vandersteens?

After seeing your setup listed on A'gon, I suspect there are a number of tonality, resolution, frequency extreme, dynamics, etc., weaknesses that would easily mask anyone hearing whether or not drivers are within the last half a millimeter out of alignment with the others in your speakers vs. any other dynamic-driver-based speaker design.

I owned Thiel 3.6 and 2.3 a few years ago. They were replaced by Talon Khorus and Peregrine. The Talons had so much more harmonic content, decays and dimensionality that made the Thiels sound sterile and lifeless in comparison.

I think we benefit a lot more if we pay more attention to our ears and not the latest EE text book.

John

(((Do we choose our audio system components on electrical and physical properties/theories or because they bring us closer to the event?}}} I think we need both to keep it strait. (((And we all have enough experience to know immediately when something sounds natural or artificial.))
Even the best designers will say ears can be fooled. For example you have a guy who loves Piano music
installed in brand x a tweeter that rings at 12k like a bell.
Listening Panel says ""wow"" amazing its like we are there! Ready for sale!
Had Brand X they taken the right mesurments they would see
it was off the mark and some things are too good to be true or could it be maybe they want it this way on purpose?
Then some poor guy who buys em plays a close mike mature Female voice and the grain hits you in the forhead and blames the recording. Is it Ok to excuse these kind of products and call them High resolution?
Isnt It great that Stevecham is having fun with his audio experience? I think its great.
Cheers Johnnyr

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?"