It's true that there is a slight Revel bias(other than the 708p, I don't really see evidence for a JBL or Infinity bias) when looking at it objectively. Revels do receive more a subjective praise, despite measuring worse than Neumann, Genelec, KEF(?). I'm not sure I'd call it "bias", though. Is it "biased" to praise a speaker more that you like more? isn't that just being honest? I think it's important to remember that the subjective portion(and panther score) are not based on what measures the best, but what sounds the best to Amir's ears. Amir rates Revels subjectively higher than KEF, ELAC, Genelec, and Neumann because they sound better than those speakers to him. Yes, Revel speakers don't measure quite as well as some of those other brands, but they get a higher panther score(and more subjective praise) because Amir
subjectively likes them more. Key word there is
subjectively.
Also keep in mind we're talking about 1 person here. With a sample of that size, objectively great measurements don't mean subjectively great sound, and the two can often deviate wildly. Ex: Revel M55XC - 2.2 Olive score, 5/5 panther score. Genelec 8341a - 6.8 Olive score, 4/5 panther score. Measurements are there to guide us toward what will be most preferred on average, but they can often be very wrong for any one individual, and this is normal. It's the nature of statistics and extremely small sample sizes
.
I also think it's important to understand Amir's personal preferences as well as your own, and understand where they differ. His preferences are slightly different than mine, and he often praises speakers for characteristics that I would be docking speakers for, or complains about characteristics that don't matter at all to me. Doesn't mean either of us are wrong, but rather we just have different preferences. I can't expect his subjective impressions to perfectly match my own when we don't have the same subjective preferences
Understand your preferences and filter his subjective comments through that lens. An example of filtering his comments through my own lens:
"As a way of comparison, I put my Revel M16 next to the Triangle on a stand. While tonality and to some extent clarity was better on the Revel, the sound was clearly localized to a smaller source vertically, leaving a preference for the Triangle for the larger, more realistic image it portrayed."
My personal preference is exactly the opposite of the bolded, as (other than for symphonic music) I find a smaller source to be both much more pleasant, and slightly more realistic sounding. Filtered through my own lens, that sentence would read more like this:
"As a way of comparison, I put my Revel M16 next to the Triangle on a stand. It was clear that Revel was a much better speaker. Not only did it have better clarity and tonality, but the image was clearly localized to a smaller source vertically, and there for sounded much better and more realistic"
See how things like that can make a huge difference? That's just personal preference. One of the main reasons I went for the Genelec Ones is because of their (imo) best and most unique attribute, which is their true point source design. Amir actually sees this attribute as a negative, though, and would probably prefer if they split the 4 drivers up vertically.
Amir also doesn't like using subwoofers, so he cares deeply about how good the bass is. This makes sense for someone who wants 2.0 as bass accounts for 30% of the overall rating. For someone like me, though, who always uses 2-4 subwoofers in every system, it's mostly irrelevant. Deeper bass for me is actually almost a negative, as it often means they had to sacrifice sensitivity.
He also has a huge $25,000 1000 watt amp, which kinda skews the results in favor of passive speakers a bit. Usually(for most people) actives will tend to have the volume advantage over passives, since they usually have more power than most AVRs and entry level amps. Very few active amps can match Amir's amps, though. Many passives likely wouldn't have scored as well with an 80 watt amp, as he really penalizes speakers that don't have enough power to play loud and deep.
He also prefers wider dispersion(Revel), even if the directivity is not quite as good (Genelec, KEF, Neumann). I'm not entirely sure on my own preferences for this one. I prefer a wider soundstage, which comes with wider dispersion, but I also prefer a smaller image, which comes from narrower dispersion. I probably prefer more narrow for multichannel and wider for stereo, and even wider for mono.
Btw, he's not the only reviewer who rates speakers based on his own individual preferences. In fact, I'd argue that all reviewers do. No reviewer that I'm aware of rates speakers based entirely on objective measurements.
@napilopez for example knows that he likes slightly wider dispersion, even if it means sacrificing some "objective performance", and he sometimes rates speakers as such.
So...while I think it's fair to say
"endorsements are given more on how close a speaker gets subjectively to the Revel Saloon 2 sound rather than the objective measurements."
I don't see anything wrong with it. The endorsements have never really been about or correlated strongly with the objective measurements (see Revel M55XC, SVS Ultra, Elac Uni-Fi 2.0). They've always been more about how good they sounded to Amir. Given that the Salon2 is the best speaker that Amir has ever heard, it seems perfectly logical to subjectively rate speakers based on how close they come to that standard.
P.S. Now I'm kinda interested to see what kinda panther score patterns we might find in the data based on say brand, type, bass extension, beamwidth, etc. I might do some exploring.