FWIW...since the O/96 speaker became one of the subjects in this thread from early on....
To balance out the positives I experienced with the Devore
here are some of the negatives
1. Like John Atkinson, I heard some
unevenness in the sound. I don't know if it was the lower treble resonance cited by JA, or something about the driver config/crossover...but on a few tracks it was like some notes were being slightly obscured or pushed back in volume. I remember noticing that on a harp piece, where some notes seemed to "step in and out" volume wise, and with some pizzicato strings.
2. The bass could occasionally be too much for me. The occasional track exhibited some bloat and loss of control with really deep bass notes.
3. Very directional. As predicted by measurements, yes it's one of the first things I noticed. I'm used to listening to speakers with wider, more even radiation in the upper frequencies, and it was clear this speaker was more susceptible to tonal balance changes with horizontal head movement (I know I checked vertical head positions above/below tweeter axis too, as I always do, but I can't remember the results). Not exactly head-in-a-vice listening scenario, but..a bit finicky.
4. Needed distance for coherence. I tend to listen somewhat close to my loudspeakers, often between 7 1/2 and 6 1/2 feet away. The O/96s did not handle this well. And it was a really sharp cut off point. I had a tape measure and as soon as I moved closer than 8 feet to the speakers, I could hear some of the coherence start to break apart, the highs would start to dull somewhat, and it felt like I was hearing the crossover points with music. That was one of the major reasons I decided not to buy them, as at the time getting the right distance to make them cohere would be difficult. (Devore recomends at least 8 feet from the speaker, so my experience certainly supports that recomendation).
5. Finicky set up. You really need to get them just right. One time I tried to compensate for a closer listening distance, and not lose highs, by toeing a pair in and moving them a bit closer together, and it just did not work. The sound sort of collapsed both tonally and in terms of imaging and the sense of size to the sound. I've read in reviews, and from owners, similar accounts, where you have to make sure they are a certain width apart and angled right, to get the best out of them. Not to mention you need a fair amount of room from the back wall so as to not overload the bass.
And along those lines, there have been owners of these speakers who just couldn't get them to work in their room. They'd say "loved them in the store, just couldn't get that sound in my home" or "loved the sound for the most part, but couldn't get them to fully work in my room."
So these are not speakers I'd go recommending to just anyone to be sure. And all the above speaks to the wisdom of what a Revel is doing (and good actives and others), and the measurements people are looking for here, in terms of making a speaker more likely to sound good in various rooms.
Of all the speakers I auditioned, the Devores were the ones I was most unsure about working in my room, and I never did get a home audition.
So, not like I wasn't aware of any negatives. That doesn't change the fact, though, that I friggin' loved the vast majority of what I played through those speakers when auditioning them, since it seemed the dealers knew how to set them up properly (in both audio stores I visited, each of which had totally different types of rooms).
