Revel Salon vs Vandersteen 5A

Which Salons? 1 or 2? Personally, I think time and phase coherence are just marketing hype. Some of the best speakers in the world are time and phase incoherent. My advice is just listen and choose that way.

So, Mcreyn, the Revels (Salon2s, I assume?) are accurate, but have "no soul"? Does that mean a speaker has to be inaccurate to have soul?

"So... Here's a question.
How many of you guys have really enjoyed a speaker that sounded amazing to you but on paper had poor measurements? Freq response, etc."

During a demo, I unfortunately have to answer - a lot. Exaggerated bass, especially, can sound great on some recordings or in some rooms, even though the measurements look bad on paper.

I'm guessing from the responses that 5A owners like to use the bass section controls as a tone control, and that's the source of the "soul".

Raquel, the negative feedback argument is so yesterday. If that were true, digital sources would always sound lifeless, because every IC op-amp circuit has negative feedback. And digital recordings don't always sound lifeless.

If there really are the audible differences you describe, it's much more likely because the tube amp produces a non-flat frequency response when confronted with the load of the speaker.

I think, Raquel, you've been reading too much VAC marketing hype. To read the web sites from VAC, Atmasphere, etc you would think solid state amps have no bass definition, high distortion, that you can't hear acoustic decay or detail, and that it is impossible to create a great amp with feedback in the circuit design. That is all such silliness. I especially like the discussions about higher-order distortion that are at least 80db below the fundamental in solid state amps. I don't care what the tube amp hucksters say.

As for digital recordings all being lifeless, then you must be enamored with less bass, less highs, more noise and higher distortion. I don't see how you argue it any other way. The fact that analog sources and tube amps sound different is that they are *designed* to sound different. Look at the VAC web site - they "voice" their amps.

No, Raquel, I'm not thinking like back in the '70s... I'm thinking that the tube amp community needs to get off of the bogus negative feedback, high-order distortion, you-can't measure-it / you-don't-know-what-to-measure bs. Paraphrasing Einstein in this context is just silly; this is audio, not dark matter or the cosmological constant we're talking about. It just might be that the DHT 300B is indeed the best amp around, but I don't know since I haven't heard it. (And I probably won't, since I'm not interested in spending $28K on an amp.) I'm just questioning the arguments for why they must be better. I've heard some medium-nice tube amps (VTL, ARC) in one of my systems and, frankly, I never heard a difference (I was running Krells then), other than I could hear more hiss during idling from the Legacy Focus speakers I was using at the time. It's not that I think tube amps are so bad, I think the good ones are just as good for some speakers, I just can't hear the "it's alive" effect, and, frankly, I don't think it exists.

We completely agree on the Harmon International comments. The last time I bought a new Levinson component the CT facility was still open, and I doubt I'd be a customer again.

Mcreyn, give me a break. +/- 2db is almost certainly audible, -80db of distortion almost certainly isn't. Speaker vendors have their own unproven theories, like phase and time coherence. To quote Richard V, "they just sound better". Well, of course they do. :) But then why do speakers that don't have phase and time coherence sound good too? Or am I imagining that too? (Like Wilson, for example.)

Well, Raquel, I guess we're going to have to agree to disagree, because I'm not in the market for a $28K amp, and if that's what it takes to beat a solid state amp I'm going to have to be denied.

Analog... tubes... feedback is bad... high-order crossovers are bad... you fit a pattern. I've heard systems like that. Not yours, obviously, but systems like that. Can't say that I was impressed by the difference. Not that I ever heard one sound bad, just that I didn't see god the way I was supposed to. I guess I just can't drink the koolade.