I used to think high fidelity was the most thing important to me when it came to audio.
Now, I'm not so sure.
I feel the same way. I don't feel like holding myself to some rigorous, scientific purity test. I'm just looking for gear through which I enjoy my music.
That's not to say I hold no value for or interest in how things work or measure. I value measurements insofar as they can tell designers (and listeners) how things will sound and why. And the pursuit of fidelity to the signal tends to yield decreasing distortion which can yield very nice sonic benefits over time.
But I don't feel ashamed or letting down the team if I also happen to like speakers or gear that isn't perfectly neutral or hewing to a single, particular design goal
So, in the grand scheme of things, is the highest fidelity really all that important?
Like I've said: I think that the fidelity one is able to get even from products that stray from neutral is plenty for transmitting the bulk of the artistic intent and sonic information of a song or album. It starts to feel neurotic to me if I'm actually thinking to myself "hold on, am I sure that the final nonosecond of that teeny reverb trail on the distant guitar isn't perfectly rendered?"
Having played many of my well-known test tracks on everything from Revel, to Vivid, to countless different speaker designs, I hear essentially the same sonic information about the character of the recordings coming through all of them.
I just want to address the "good" and "bad" speaker assumptions we see in this forum and this thread as well. As I said, the fact not everyone is going for the HK or Dutch and Dutch (or whatever) school of design doesn't mean they are "bad" or that therefore they are just out duping customers. There exist different niches to fill, and I'm happy there are people filling them, as are many other audiophiles.
I've mentioned before my affection for one of the brands that has been a whipping-boy on this forum: Devore. I LOVE the Devore O/96 speakers and hope to possibly own them one day. I'm a pretty informed consumer in this regard, having auditioned and lived with tons of different speaker designs. I'm familiar with and supportive of the research often cited upon with the Revel (and other) speakers have been designed. I've auditioned Revel speakers. I've heard just about every type of speaker design you can name, many times over, and myself have owned everything from electrostatics, to many different dynamic speakers, to omnis. I don't think I'm naively "duped" in to liking those Devore speakers: they represent a sound I've been zeroing in on somewhat for many years.
And as far as goals, Devore was trying to produce a design that split the difference somewhat between old-school and new school, between the big, round, rich sound of the squatter, big woofer box speakers like the old Snell, but also providing a decent level of newer audiophile virtues (e.g. somewhat more neutral, and able to image well).
Plus he was aiming the impedance/load characteristics at people who like using tube amplification, as well as producing a sort of throw-back visual aesthetic. For the audience he was aiming (which included himself) he nailed it. The O/96 since the introduction in 2012 became by far his biggest selling speaker, and they have been relatively rare on the used market (I know, I've been paying attention) and tend to be snapped up fast when they appear. So the product found, or produced, a niche and has an enthusiastic audience who seem very happy for the most part.
You aren't going to end up with a product like the Devore O96 if you are following the Revel school of design, but I'm damned glad someone was aiming for a design like the O/96, if even for the time I've enjoyed it during auditions.
