Excellent post! I can relate!
So do I like the Revels being biased by the techno-science story behind them? Yeah probably. What I've found about speakers is if you've been fooled or they have genuine deficiencies you are always fighting to fix their weak points. Some that at first blush seemed good were fatally flawed and over time you fell out with them. Maggies prior to them using ribbon tweeters being a good example. Others might always have their own little deficiencies, but were so good otherwise you could live with them. Quad ESL-63s being good examples. With JBLs and Revels if used within their reasonable capabilities with regard to room size and loudness, you set them up, you adjust them some to get them working with the room, and they just stay good thereafter. They don't negatively bring attention to themselves. They might not be the sauciest partner in a positive sense, but they do what a good speaker is supposed to do by playing the music and getting out of the way. When you are used to going thru speakers and looking for the next thing that can be boring in a sense. So good they are boring. They still aren't perfect, but pretty competent all the way around. I would like to hear the largest Genelecs at some point. Genelecs generally seem too small and overpriced for what you get.
Words of wisdom.
Though in the end, individual experience is going to be just that.
My wife for instance will be ever satisfied to the end of her days by our smart speaker. But she's not an audiophile. There are audiophiles who have lived for many decades with speakers of all sorts of types - avid "Maggies For Life" or "ESL 57 For Life," or Klipsch, or Spendor/Harbeth or...you name it, there are audiophiles who have found lasting satisfaction. What makes us satisfied is always going to be a complex interaction of our character (which of course fluctuates) and our circumstances over time. That's why I'm ultimately dubious about any claims that "X is the path to happiness and satisfaction with your sound system." Some here feel they got off the treadmill in purchasing a certain type of system; others got off the treadmill with a different type of system.
For me, I don't require a high end system to enjoy music. (I suspect most here don't). I can enjoy music in my car, our smart speaker, the stereo on in the background, my desktop computer. For me to want to sit down and strictly listen to music in front of a hi-fi it takes something extra. Something about the sound that grabs me by the pants and sits my butt down. I'm super sensitive to the timbral aspects of sound, and if...to my perception...it's not right or pleasing me, I have little interest in owning the system for seated listening.
The Revel speakers presented me with an interesting dilemma. I auditioned a couple of them during a very wide-ranging binge of speaker auditioning.
As I said, the measurements corresponded in a general sense with what I heard: an extremely competent speaker. And yet...they didn't have an "it" factor that grabbed me. Whereas certain other speakers had just mesmerized me, making me want to listen to every bit of music I owned right then and there!
(I'm usually able to spend hours with a speaker, if I like, fortunately). So on one hand, intellectually I knew the Revels were engineered to sound excellent and that I'd likely select them from among many competitors in a blind test. On the other hand, I was left with my personal experience of listening as I would be listening if I actually bought them....and in those conditions, they weren't doing it for me, like some other speakers. (Again, this isn't saying the other speakers were "better," only that for whatever mix of reasons, I had different reactions to listening).
I could have said "well, ok, they aren't grabbing me while I'm auditioning them. But they are well engineered so perhaps if I buy them the listening experience will change for me over time in my home, and then they will wow me."
The problem there is, from my own experience, this has never happened to me. I've been able to hear a great many speakers multiple times over the years and I never, ever found a speaker that left me cold at first, later sounded much more compelling to me. And conversely, almost every speaker that has ever grabbed me in an audition, maintained that character on every encounter (or when I bought the speaker). So this "I don't really care for it now, but maybe if I roll the dice spending thousands of dollars in the hope I'll like them when owning them" wasn't really the chance I wanted to take.
I ended up with Joseph Audio speakers which blew my mind in multiple auditions, and have made me giddy with joy as an owner, ever since.
(BTW, consonant with the wisdom in your post, I do look for things that might stick out and annoy me over time. As they say "subtractive" issues can be better than "additive" issues over the long run - you'll notice issues that stick out more than technical issues that aren't so obvious without direct comparison with something 'better.' In that way the "boring" competence you speak of makes sense for many people)
Is it perfect? Not at all, but it does give us a good perspective into what on average makes a speaker a good speaker. it gave loads of good pointers on what to design for.
