I'll just throw in my two cents here: I know and consider both John Atkinson and Kal Rubinson to be friends. In fact, Kal and I were supposed to give a talk together on the importance of surround sound for accurately reproducing acoustic spaces. On speakers, Kal and I have probably never agreed, and that's fine. We take a different approach to reviewing.
He relies solely on his hearing I suppose and how a product speaks to him. I'm very analytic, I focus not only on it's measured performance, but subjectively listen for things like tonal balance and bandwidth deviation, bass extension, imaging accuracy, etc. Subjective impressions of measurable attributes. I've heard lots of "bad" speakers that are fun to listen to. I won't say they sound good, but they can certainly be entertaining. I still don't want to own them.
In my opinion, this is a flawed speaker that is badly engineered. Now, in their defense, they did it on purpose. They aren't incompetent. They just prioritize what I think are the wrong things. It measures this way because the crossover is very simplistic with shallow slopes.
Having said all that, i will never fault someone for liking something I don't. I think there is too much anger and energy put towards peoples who like objectively flawed products. At the end of the day, to each their own. I'll do what I do and try to educate my readers. I will hope it leads to a focus on good solid engineering and high sound quality (consistent with those principles).
I can say this about Kal, he has done Harman's listening tests and accurately picked the better sounding speakers.
I will also say, it's hard reviewing flawed products. Especially because rarely is a product just total garbage. At Audioholics we try to tell it like it is. We have lost advertising contracts routinely because of it. And there in lies the rub. If a product is flawed and we are really negative, we are guaranteed to make an enemy of the manufacturer. You might say that is how it should be, but what happens is eventually nobody trusts you and nobody is willing to send you products. You then are stuck relying on buying products or consumers sending you products (which both have big limitations and is not a great model to operate an audio magazine by). That is the consumer reports and Rting model and one of those is nearly out of business due to lack of funds and the other doesn't review audio anymore. What then happens is that you have to be open and honest about a products flaws while also sharing what it might do well. Often really ugly measurement flaws are not as audible as one might think, especially with music and when you aren't actively looking for those flaws.
I'm doing a lot of work on a testing protocol for soundbars and as a result doing some reviews and measurements of various $1500 or less soundbars. Do you think those measure well? Nope! Do you think they sound good? Not really. Can I say that? Kind of, but I better sandwich it with something positive, like its a nice convenient package. Or it sounds ok binge watching on netflix while distracted on my phone.
