Floor Loudspeaker Reviews

It would be interesting to find out how two HomePods will work in stereo :-) ...............

I've got a set of Gradient Revolutions and when I read this review and hit the diagrams, it felt like I'd seen them before. The Revolutions have a similar unique dispersion pattern, with the cardioid treble and midrange, and the open woofer. I got them to solve a specific problem - an absurdly live apartment that I was living in, in Singapore. Curved walls, marble floors, a wall of windows. Awful. I'd tried several speakers and couldn't get any kind of decent sound and imaging. When I tried the Revolutions, it took about 10 minutes to realize they were staying. As opposed to a "sweet spot" (which none of the other speakers could achieve in the crazy space I was living in) the Revolutions had a sweet zone. They imaged almost no matter where you were in the room.

Since coming back to the US and having them in more normal rectangular spaces, I continued to love them for their easy placement, and imaging no matter where you are in the room. They are power hogs... when my Krell integrated died, I bought another brand that claimed 150wpc, and learned that their watts per channel weren't the same as Krell watts per channel. Finally found an integrated that can put out the necessary power. Continue to enjoy them in my photo studio, where they fill the space with sound despite the poor sound absorption and dispersion characteristics of the space.

https://www.stereophile.com/floorloudspeakers/616/index.html

Was very impressed. What a cool bit of nostalgia. We seemed to have moved away from a more diffuse soundfield to one of hyper detail and microscopic pinpoint imaging. Not sure that we took the correct path, maybe people like Roy Allison, Walsch and Dick Shahinian had the right idea. I guess MBL has continued down this path with their omni-type speakers.