Thoughts about the Magico A3, Revel Salon2/ Studio2

@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.

Harman, I mean Samsung, spends months teaching their employees to pick out the Revel sound and then they do these tests and the employees pick Revel from extensive training training. It’s complete an utter horse manure. 

seasdiamond wrote:

Both the Salon 2 and F228Be have more bass extension than the A3

Huh?

The Revel F228Be is spec’d from 27 Hz - 44 KHz

The Magico A3 is spec’d at 22 Hz - 50 KHz

When I auditioned the Magico the bass sounded very deep and full, so I’m not sure where you are getting your specs.

@prof 

Did you look at the anechoic measurements that you yourself linked? lol