Now a comment generally on the audiophile upgrade itch, measurements, and endgame speakers. I hope what I am writing here can help you find your ultimate speakers as I believe I have. Edit: I got maybe carried away with too much detail — here is a summary:
TLDR: I’ve been down your path and I hope my advise and findings helps you. Here is what I find: I think there is a place for both wide and medium (and perhaps even narrow) dispersion, depending on your use case scenario. I find that:
- For stereo playback in larger rooms, the ultimate speakers are those with the widest dispersion, as long as the CEA2034 spinorama plots are "good enough" -- because in these rooms, the effects of dispersion width are extremely audible, and this becomes the dominating factor in preference (not counting bass response differences, which also matter a lot).
- For stereo playback in smaller rooms (or perhaps for multichannel playback in any size room), the ultimate speakers are those with the best spinorama plots, as long as the dispersion width is "good enough" -- because in this case, additional dispersion width won’t really benefit the sound as much, and might even make it worse if your room is too acoustically 'hot' (has a tendency to echo mids/highs).
Some background: I used to like B&W speaker until I tried buying Ascend Sierra RAAL Towers which blew them away (as long as the Ascends had a mild bass boost). Until about a week ago, I have been a victim to the audiophile upgrade itch disease
Until about a week ago, I still hadn’t found a speaker better in every way vs my Ascend Sierra RAAL Towers. I have found them — the Revel Salon2’s — but you may be surprised that their CEA2034 is not clearly better than the KEF R3, which I did own and which lost in blind tests to the Ascends. So why is this? I think I know quite clearly why this is from the measurements, and it’s a hypothesis I and many others are finding more and more evidence for. More on this below.
I bought the KEF R3 back even before ASR measured them because KEFs published measurements (which we now know to be absolutely accurate) indicated it to be one of the best speakers in the world perhaps second only to the Genelecs and Revel F208 from measurements we have now. Yet I and many others have not reported particularly amazing experiences from them.
I now have two of the best speakers in the world, the Genelec 8351B’s and Revel Salon2’s. But purely from the CEA2034 spinorama, the Salon2’s don’t really look as amazing as they sound. From CEA2034, the Genelecs should destroy the Salon2’s, right? The KEF R3’s should too, for that matter. But they don’t. And I’m not trying to push subjectivist nonsense here — many of us have very strong hypotheses for why this is: Only when you look at the detailed horizontal off-axis response does it become clear where the Salon2’s are truly exceptional (other than just bass).
Subjectively, the Salon2’s are unlike any other speaker I’ve heard aside from the Ascend Sierra RAAL Towers: until now, no speaker I’ve owned has been able to beat the Ascend’s soundstage and beautiful airy gentle treble sound. The Salon2’s are the first to do this, but they also manage to do so without the other compromises the (much less expensive) Ascend makes to get there.
The secret is quite simple and really not that surprising: ultra wide dispersion.
The Ascend does it as well or better than anything I know of in its price range, but with some compromises: the extreme off axis response is not as perfectly matched to the on axis response. But this compromise is arguably the right one to make if you look at blind listening tests I did between them and the Revel F206, where the Ascend wins almost every time aside from when the Revel’s more midbass weighted sound signature overpowers this. But even when the Revel F206 wins the description is never “higher fidelity sound” but “fuller more satisfying bass”. In non blind tests I’ve done, boosting the Ascend bass leads it to win most of the time over the F206, but this is also a double edged sword if you want to listen very loudly because the F206 deserves credit here as it will have more bass power headroom.
The Genelecs do sound incredible. So did my Neumanns. I attribute this to their fantastically flat frequency response, low distortion, and consistently smooth off axis response.
But the way in which the Genelecs sound utterly exceptional is very different from the Revel Salon2’s, and I’m pretty convinced that dispersion width explains it.
Trying to correlate what I’m hearing to measurements, there are ways in which the Genelec sounds better than the Salon2’s. But at least for me and the music I listen to, it’s mostly a technical victory where something sounds slightly more accurate/neutral tonality on the Genelec. Most of the time though, this difference is quite subtle and so the only obvious difference is the Salon2’s soundstage and open ”surround” effect from the wide dispersion.
Note that in a smaller room and at close listening distances I think the wide dispersion is no longer and advantage and may even be a negative. In such cases the Genelecs dominate. They are perfect for what I use them for (PC speakers for music while working or for video games).
And the Salon2’s are perfect for what I use them for: reclined music listening across a wide couch in a larger room