Since there are 18 passive speakers ahead of Focal 906's preference score of 5.6 and below their price.
I appreciate this list and the other lists you've made Sweetchaos, so thank you. But I'd just like to point out that if you limit the search to passive speakers (only stand mount or tower) and you add a subwoofer then there are only 5 speakers that measure better than the Focal 906. One, the Philharmonic, is discontinued. One, the Revel F208, is a $2,500 each tower speaker. The SVS was not recommended by Amir, despite good measurement scores. If you remove those you're left with just the Revel M106 and Kef R3. The Revel, by Armin's own admission, could be have reviewer bias, since his company sells Revel. If you compare only bookshelf speakers, you add a sub, and you remove discontinued products the Focal 906 is at worst the third best and (removing potential bias) the 2nd best bookshelf reviewed. And they all cost $1,000 per speaker.
I only bring this up because #1 I'm a Focal fanboy and #2 depending on how closely you read the recommendations a speaker can go from 18th to 2nd.
Thanks again. Keep up the amazing work. It benefits us all and I've personally used your lists in the past to help make decisions, so I appreciate it.
*As a side note I'm not sure why anyone wouldn't add a sub. As can be seen in the scores an $80 speaker with a sub outperforms the best non-sub score that came from an $8,000 Revel tower speaker. You'd have to go down the list over 50 speakers to get a speaker sub combo that doesn't outperform the best non-sub score. So listening without a sub is IMHO a horrible idea! Bang for your buck a sub will improve even a medium to poor speaker above the results of the best of tower speaker, score-wise.
**Since IMHO speakers will always sound better with a sub the scoring without a sub is of less importance as I'd never run a system without a sub anyway. I mean based on the results a random high-schooler with bookshelf or tower speakers from Wal-Mart with a sub might give a lot of other speakers a good run for their money.
***I guess if someone were to ask for my advice on buying speakers (and they probably shouldn't as I'm not a professional or even super well informed) I'd probably say:
#1 Get a sub. If I'm reading your totally awesome index correctly even basic speakers with a sub will outperform well designed, high-end speakers without a sub.
#2. If you're using this index and you are already using a sub you basically have a few Revel, Kef, SVS, and Focal speakers to choose from. If you value Amir's subjective opinion the SVS are out. If you're bothered by the potential bias for Revel then they're out too, which leaves Focal and Kef. If those things don't bother you you can pick from all four.
#3. You can get 90%+ of the way to great sound without the perfect speaker as long as you use a sub (reinforcing #1)
#4. If you want to take performance to the absolute top you'll need to spend about $1,000 per speaker and get a sub.
*#5. This is my humble opinion, but if you want to get the most out of your system after doing all of the above, you'll need some sort of mic to use with REW (probably a Umik-1) and some sort of DSP. Make sure to have both so you can get the positioning as good as possible and then use the DSP to improve things from there. That's going to be more important than the best possible SINAD.
*#6. I think this is the least important, but still important, get your DAC, AMP, AVR, whatever to have the best SINAD/measurements etc. possible.
Thanks again for your contributions, you're famous around here!