Revel Salon 2 versus WP 8

If you are aware of their shortcoming, why are you posting them?

The in-room measurements show how inconsequential a flat frequency response can become once the speaker is placed in an actual room. A speaker that is slightly off of flat can sometimes measure better in-room in certain areas of the frequency response than a speaker that measures perfectly flat in an anechoic chamber as long as the speaker that is slightly off the flat response is placed correctly. So a company can design a speaker for wall placement, bookshelf placement, or close to boundary placement by designing it a certain way and it will still sound correct if placed well according to its design parameters. Go figure... People design speakers for particular kinds of room placement all the time.

I'm not wasting my time on this guy any longer. People can validate what I have been writing themselves by looking at the Stereophile graphs, my graphs and NRC measurements via Soundstage.

Both measure very similarly in-room. The problem with people who only look at graphs to judge things is that they tend to see the music and never hear it. As I mentioned previously, those people lack balance in their approach to this hobby. Those people tend to forget that people don't listen to music in anechoic chambers, but rather in a room. So if a speaker is designed for specific placement in rooms, whether by shelving or not, there is nothing wrong with that. That is not "wrong on wrong," that is intentional design with good reasoning behind it. Unless of course you are just looking to bash a brand, which this guy admits is his goal. I'm not at all surprised, it has been obvious almost since the beginning. At least now people know to take what he says with some grains of salt.

This is also a subjective hobby, so the only "wrong on wrong" is buying something you don't like listening to. There are a lot worse measuring speakers out there than either of these speakers, and both of these speakers measure good in-room with proper placement (albeit different placement) and PEQ. one of the speakers just happens to have some minor room correction and high frequency correction built into it (though not enough to deal with 200-300Hz range issues, so if you need closer wall placement you will likely still need another one anyway), while the other one does not...

Jeff,

Just one question-why you toe-in Salon2 so much?

Salon2 is equiped as you already know with 24db/octave crossover and according to experienced Revel dealer in Germany needs only moderate toe-in(max. 15 degrees), otherwise Salon2 will sound little bit too-entusiastic in treble. When I audition Salon2 toe-in degree was much smaller then in your setup...

You keep mumbling and I will keep telling you that there is very little value in assessing speakers based on their in-room measurements. Particularly you’re in-room measurements which are not even averaging/sampling approximates area measurements.Also, since we all know you are a good reader, I suggest you read some books about loudspeakers design. You may understand why Wilson depress midrange is simply bad XO design and nothing else. Wilson, apparently never heard of the 6db baffle step issue. Speaker building 101.

Just one question-why you toe-in Salon2 so much?

It is what they recommend in the Salon2/Studio2 user manual for "optimal imaging and timbre."

I do plan on playing around with it more in early March when the speakers have finished burning-in.

i still would like to know after all of this sophisticated verbage and back and forth if one (or both) of these very expensive speaker systems sound like real pianos, violins, guitars, voices, etc. in a moderately (or a bit larger sized) room with actual furniture in it, some pictures on the walls, and some coffee-table books with artwork in them to browse through (but not during brahms of course!). if neither of them is convincing then the graphs might be of some help in explaining a "lack of overall balance" or even serious problems in the upper-mids/lower treble (too bright which drives everyone crazy), or a boomy lower-mid/upper bass (which is unacceptable unless you are a cerwin-vega fanatic). in any case $20,000 (or in this case quite a bit more than that) should sound so good it will quite often move you to tears of joy. if not then this hobby is specifically for people who are by-in-large tone-deaf, eh?