what would you do?

Maybe you can exchange them for the f206? The bass from the f208 is in my opinion their weak point. As with most stand-amounts that tries to play full-range with small woofers. The Spendor D7 gets a lot of praise on the Audiogon.

Thanks for the suggestions. I paid about 2,800 for the speakers 6 months ago.  I'm getting offered 2250, so it's not a huge loss but even if I sold everything off that I owned and started from scratch I'm not sure that I could got a better system for only three or four grand.

I had a similar experience with Revel F36s - different speaker model but they're actually quite similar. My local Revel dealer admitted that they upgraded the Performa line to the Be models because the new Concerta series is too close in performance to the F208/206.

 Anyhow, I found the bass was overpowering, even in my largish room (15.5 x 26'). I also noticed the somewhat clinical midrange character - some music was stripped of its soul. Revel support told me it's safe to plug the ports - they recommended 3" deep foam. Unfortunately the bass was still difficult to enjoy. 

As for room treatments, there's not much you can do in a small room to tame the bass. The Revel 208s have an elevated frequency response in the upper bass, near 100Hz. Bass traps would have to be  very large to alleviate that region and they'd be totally impractical. Wall treatments that absorb mid and high freqs can actually worsen the clinical character.  

I recommend finding a pre-owned or demo pair of Spendor A4s - can probably be had for ~$2500. All the detail and imaging anyone should need while preserving the music's verve.

Helomech,  thank you for the input. It's reassuring to know that somebody else has experienced the same things as me when those are speakers got such rave reviews. Made me wonder if I never learned what to listen for

Helomech, thank you for the input. It's reassuring to know that somebody else has experienced the same things as me when those are speakers got such rave reviews. Made me wonder if I never learned what to listen for

With the exception of the elevated bass (probably intended to impress during auditions), they're good speakers when judged by the NRC/Floyd Toole school of speaker design. Those who enjoy that type of sound tend to also like Paradigm, B&W and Focal. I've noticed patterns with owners of these brands - they tend to change speakers like socks. That or they continue to upgrade until they reach the pinnacle of such design: Wilsons/Magicos/802D and company. 

It seems to me that those who listen to music more than sounds tend to get off the merri-go-round with the likes of Spendor, Harbeth, Graham, Devore, Audio Note, Vandersteen, and generally, speakers of less conventional design. I suspect you might find yourself in this latter camp in the future. It's where the music lives IMO.