Just a few thoughts / clarifications:
Box speakers don't sell well in general anymore. The trend started about 20 years ago and it has only accelerated in the last 5 years or so. So the market for a large center - which was already small - has shrunk further. I don't know how much we should complain when a manufacturer doesn't invest in a category that's rapidly shrinking, no matter how much we may wish it were otherwise. I'd be really curious to know how well the bigger centers from other manufacturers are selling. Not at all well, I'd expect.
Toole and Olive did general research for Harman, not for Revel. Look at the previous edition of Floyd's book - what's on the cover and featured in the book? The JBL M2. Floyd was on the fence about Salon2s or M2s for his home remodel; I was honored that he waited for the results of our blind shootout between the two before he made his choice.
As far as R&D, Harman round robins the R&D budget to their various luxury brands. One year it will be Revel, the next year Synthesis, then Mark Levinson, etc. Sadly it's true that Revel did not make any kind of dent into the Japanese and European markets - it's basically a U.S. brand. Hence the Arcam rebrand for Europe. If it does well there, expect more investments into the products. Personally, I've been pushing for an Ultima3 line, even if market realities mean that it will be a niche product and would likely be at a true premium price point (one of the realities Harman dealt with was the perception that the Salon2 was too "cheap" to be considered seriously, so there was talk of a six figure high end Harman "statement" speaker as a response).
RE: KEF. I wish they'd participate in one of our blind shootouts. During previous double blinds at the MLL they were one of very few speakers that didn't do as well as the Spinoramas would have predicted. Turned out the the most likely reason was IM distortion and a perceived lack of openness, both artifacts of putting the tweeter at the bottom of the woofer (this limits dispersion and of course means that the woofer - now the waveguide for the tweeter - is always in motion). To be fair, this was a two way design so more susceptible to those problems.
Following on from the above, Floyd himself went speaker shopping a couple of years ago for his new place up in Canada and auditioned everything he could find. He of course targeted those models with good measurements. One of the models he auditioned was the Blade1, and he ended up writing the equivalent of a mini white paper on the experience. He was really impressed for the most part but noticed some off-axis problems. He imagined the R5 Meta would actually perform better. I have the "white paper" but I don't feel comfortable sharing it publicly; if interested reach out to me privately. Based on that, I would love to get a R5 Meta in here for some comparative listening. Both Sean and Floyd have the utmost respect for the engineers at KEF. Floyd eventually ended up with F226Bes.
I've often wondered myself who would "carry the torch" forward in terms of the general sound reproduction research that Floyd pioneered. I don't have a good answer there, because such an entity would ideally have access to the same kind of massive facilities and almost unlimited budget that Floyd had access to at Harman. I don't see who that would be. Harman still has those resources; it's more a matter of how they are allocated. JBL Pro sure seems to be plowing ahead and absorbing a good chunk of them. If Arcam and Revel are successful with the new models, the whole game could change again.
So here's the Catch22 as I see it - right now only boutique brands are focusing on creating the type of speakers (particularly center speakers) people here are clamoring for. But because the market for those is extremely limited, it also means they are never going to have the funds to really invest in the type of large scale research that Harman did. And those with the resources are not going to chase extremely tiny market opportunities.
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