Prof Floyd Toole is an engineers engineer and that is certain.
However a common point made is why do all major speaker companies products which are competently designed, still sound different?
The answer is simple there is tunning for flat frequency response and then there is the deliberate adding or subtracting of frequncies and designs to tune the product to what the designer or design team is trying to accheive.
A Harbeth sounds different than an ATC, a Vandersteen sounds different then a Magico, which sounds different than a Rockport, or Wilson.
Each design team has a specific criteria to what "sounds good" to that team and those values echo the design materials and technologies that are being pursued by the respective company.
As per liking or not liking a particualar product that will also come down to tunning and matching of gear to augment the products strengths and ameliorate that products difficencies.
A good example of this is with the Elac Adante’s a well designed speaker that can sound good or bad depending on what gear is matched with them.
Our approach is to try different combinations of electronics, sources and cables with a given set of speakers to tailor the sound to what we like.
If you look at pictures of our sound rooms we don’t have a single system setup we have a room full of different dacs, amplifiers, so we can find the combination that works for our clients.
We found the Adantes to have a slightly peaky top end and a slightly hollow midrange, so we match them with a wamer amp which is a little fat in the midrange and with a smooth top end, such as Naim or a tube amp or a hybrid tube/solid state amp.
Too many audiophiles and dealers don’t see the folly of not working this way, and for this reason many stores have bad sounding demos because they were too lazy to experiement trying to work out what is required, and sometimes that means bringing in a new line of electronics or sources or whatever to make that louspeaker line pop.
We had the exact same experience with the Paradigm Personas and the Polymer audio research line, both very detailed, uber high resolution designs, we tried, Chord, Thrax, Electrcompaniet, Devialet, Conrad Johnson, Manley Labs, until we found the T+A electronics which sounded dramatically better on both of those reference class loudspeakers than the other lines did.
Same with the digital we tried Esoteric, EMM Labs, Aqua Hifi, and then Light Harmonic the Davinci beat all the other front ends by a considerable margin, with the Aqua a good second.
Long story short to create magic in a high end system requires the careful matching of all the parts to bring out what you want to create.
So in the case of the Revels two things might be occuring, one you just don’t like the design choices made by the design team, or two, when you heard them, the ancellory equipment was not working in the way you like to tune the speakers to sound the way you would like them to sound.
Just food for audiophile thought.
Dave and Troy
Audio Doctor NJ
However a common point made is why do all major speaker companies products which are competently designed, still sound different?
The answer is simple there is tunning for flat frequency response and then there is the deliberate adding or subtracting of frequncies and designs to tune the product to what the designer or design team is trying to accheive.
A Harbeth sounds different than an ATC, a Vandersteen sounds different then a Magico, which sounds different than a Rockport, or Wilson.
Each design team has a specific criteria to what "sounds good" to that team and those values echo the design materials and technologies that are being pursued by the respective company.
As per liking or not liking a particualar product that will also come down to tunning and matching of gear to augment the products strengths and ameliorate that products difficencies.
A good example of this is with the Elac Adante’s a well designed speaker that can sound good or bad depending on what gear is matched with them.
Our approach is to try different combinations of electronics, sources and cables with a given set of speakers to tailor the sound to what we like.
If you look at pictures of our sound rooms we don’t have a single system setup we have a room full of different dacs, amplifiers, so we can find the combination that works for our clients.
We found the Adantes to have a slightly peaky top end and a slightly hollow midrange, so we match them with a wamer amp which is a little fat in the midrange and with a smooth top end, such as Naim or a tube amp or a hybrid tube/solid state amp.
Too many audiophiles and dealers don’t see the folly of not working this way, and for this reason many stores have bad sounding demos because they were too lazy to experiement trying to work out what is required, and sometimes that means bringing in a new line of electronics or sources or whatever to make that louspeaker line pop.
We had the exact same experience with the Paradigm Personas and the Polymer audio research line, both very detailed, uber high resolution designs, we tried, Chord, Thrax, Electrcompaniet, Devialet, Conrad Johnson, Manley Labs, until we found the T+A electronics which sounded dramatically better on both of those reference class loudspeakers than the other lines did.
Same with the digital we tried Esoteric, EMM Labs, Aqua Hifi, and then Light Harmonic the Davinci beat all the other front ends by a considerable margin, with the Aqua a good second.
Long story short to create magic in a high end system requires the careful matching of all the parts to bring out what you want to create.
So in the case of the Revels two things might be occuring, one you just don’t like the design choices made by the design team, or two, when you heard them, the ancellory equipment was not working in the way you like to tune the speakers to sound the way you would like them to sound.
Just food for audiophile thought.
Dave and Troy
Audio Doctor NJ