Why Merlins sound better then Sonus Faber

The Merlin VSM is actually about the same price as the stave-constructed Sonus
Faber Olympica III. If you are looking at high performance 2-way towers, the
bargain in the bunch would be the Odyssey Lorelei, a 90-lb. 2-way that uses the same very expensive woofer as the Merlin, but is only $2700/pair. The second page of 6 Moons Audio's review of the Odyssey makes several comparisons
to the Merlin. I find this paragraph particularly enlightening concerning your original premise of accuracy vs. musical communication:

Compared to the even dearer Merlin? Thoughts on what a speaker should
accomplish would now diverge in opposite directions. Bobby Palkovich's (Merlin)
design is the quintessential and now evolutionary progression of a
recording studio monitor. Its key criteria are honesty and absolute transparency,
the twin poles of the mastering engineer's trade which, incidentally, has made
them very popular with certain writers as a reviewer's tool par excellence. Proac
and Sonus Faber designs -- and now the Lorelei model -- disagree with this
notion. Their designers don't believe that the home-based music lover needs a
ruthless microscope to sift through the molecular layers of the musical matrix.
Hence their creations favor the grande gesture over the minuscule, the overall
flow to the individual ripple. The Meadowlark Shearwater would fall somewhere
in-between these two camps. That first-order design was inherently leaner and
less overtly buff than the Lorelei - drier yet more pellucid.

So it's more a matter of listening goals and taste, not of superiority. I find SF
speakers to be seductive and captivating. They elicit a strong emotional
connection with the music, and for me, that's what I'm looking for when I play
music at home. At the same time, I completely understand if someone were to
prefer the Merlin. But since the Olympica III is the same price as the Merlin, I'm
willing to consider them of equal quality, if not in philosophy. However, I'd tend
to think that a $65,000 Sonus Faber would have noticeably superior dynamics,
bass extension, and room-filling power, even if the presentation were more
romantic than the Merlin.

Does Merlin offer a neutral floorstanding speaker with bass down to 40hz for $3500? The Venere 3.0 screams potential! I heard the 3.0 being pushed by a Integra 125w/ch HT amp, it sounded fine but I could hear the potential lurking. The SF Venere 3.0 is one of a handful of new "affordable" speakers that with careful component matching could create a near "SOTA" system at a very modest price point.

So you were able to do a side by side comparison, in the same room, using the same amp, source component(s), and cables, of Sonus Faber's top model(s) vs. Merlin speakers? Exactly which SF speaker(s) did you listen to, side by side, with the Merlin? The Aida? The Lilium? And where did this happen...I didn't know there were any dealers that sold both SF and Merlin together, I thought Merlins were sold direct.

The title of this thread betrays a bias and presumption that automatically nullifies the neutrality with which I might otherwise approach its content. My first tendency upon reading your heading says "troll alert".

The more learned among us repeat daily in these pages that speakers (beyond the measurables) are a purely subjective matter. So what qualifies you to imply that one speaker is better than another by coyly inquiring why an unestablished assertion is true? Don't you first have to establish it is indeed fact? You are behaving like Fox News.

I have heard most Sonus FAber models and besides eye candy they are hand made one at a time and virtually pieces of art. I have heard them with expensive components. I have heard them sound wonderful and have heard them sound so dry and flat that I thought something was wrong.It is possible with your particular components that the Merlins sound better. Enjoy