Thoughts about the Magico A3, Revel Salon2/ Studio2

Karl Rubinson of Stereophilerecently visited Harman and blindly listened to the Salon2 and the F228Be, he stated they were so similar in sound that he thought they switched which speaker was which. So, if their new $10,000 sounds almost identical to their older $20,000, I would look into those savings.

I would also look at the KEF Reference or Blade lineup. 
 
I would wager that either Revel would have better imaging than the Magico, but Magico is more than decent.

I haven’t heard the Salon 2 at length (it sounded spectacular at a show), but I auditioned a few lower models (e.g. Performa) and I had a long audition of the Magico A3. The Magico certainly seemed highly resolving of detail, and had nice spacious qualities. But the Revel did strike me as more even, full and neutral, a bit less colored.

FWIW, results of blind testing at Harmon of the Magico A3 against the Solon etc:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/quvk1ffpqw9hmyl/Revel%20F228-Magico%20A3-Paradigm%203F%20%20Test%20Report%...

One may be inclined to say "Well, yeah, sure Harmon employees picked the Harmon model." But keep in mind it was double blind testing so they could not know which speaker they were listening to. As well, a great many non-Harmon subjects (including reviewers) have produced similar results when comparing the Revel models blind to other speakers.

Not that I’m advocating buying simply on the Harmon data, but it, along with information from Floyd Tool, is something to consider.

@invictus005  
  
Calm down there. Also, Samsung only recently purchased Harman, the company is still outputting quality gear (such as the F228Be). I also don’t think Harman would like it advertised that their $20,000 flagship doesn’t sound much different than their new $10,000 speaker. Rubinson likely can’t even hear above 10kHz, so that is a factor, but measurements show they are pretty similar.

Harman’s own research says 35% of a speaker’s weighted preference comes from bass extension. Both the Salon 2 and F228Be have more bass extension than the A3, so that alone should account for a significant amount of the preference. In fact since the Salon 2s have extension down to 30hz, you could argue that might be why it’s preferred over the F228Be, even though the F228Be actually measures flatter than the Salon 2 in the mids and the highs.

If you look at the artists chosen, the one with the least warmth/bass is Diana Krall, which also had the smallest perceived difference in preference between the Revels and Magico A3. The other thing is, we know from Earl Geddes psychoacoustic studies that humans prefer speakers with a wider soundstage/dispersion for live music, and prefer narrower staging from studio music, which probably also explains why the difference in preference was widest between the most acoustic/live music vs something that's closer to a studio mix.