Any in depth Reactor reviews or users here?

[WesCrackin]

There are some interesting comments from some very respectable forum members, comparing Stereo Reactor vs Stereo Phantom Gold and not hearing much of any difference. The thread is from May June below.
That speaks to me as certainly high end. 

I am just sharing my findings. I think I made it clear that I personally can't compare my Reactors to Golds as I don't own the latter. What I can and did say is my Reactors can't hold a torch to my main system. My wife can hear it, so can the kids and my friends. But then neither of us is a "respectable forum member" so we probably just don't know any better..

[Mr_Bill]

Wes, Thank you for sharing your findings. I should have said that better initially so sorry about that. You have a really nice system and great observations!
I'm really interested in the new Stereo Reactor pair but have never heard them. I thought the other Gold vs Reactor comparison was really interesting too to share.
Great to hear the different perspectives from the members and we are all respectable members!
Thank you for your contributions to the forum!

[ogs]

I had a brief listen to a single Reactor on Saturday. A shop in town had it on display together with the three Phantom models.

I now understand what the 'missing' midrange is about. The front 'full range' is actually just a rather large tweeter. So very little real mid range there. To compensate the side woofers produce parts of the (lower) mid range. I put an ear close to one of the woofers and could hear quite a lot of mid range from it. The woofers are not ideal mid range drivers and as mids are more directional the side placement create a strange effect on some recordings.

In comparison a pair of Golds had a proper mid range reproduction. Of course it is not fair to compare a single Reactor to a pair of Golds, but it also made the difference quite clear.

Attempting to define a cross over frequency for the Reactor without measurements will be just speculation so I'll skip that
I still think Reactor is good. The tiny size and prodigious bass output is really impressive! With the right placement (much better than in the shop) and maybe stereo I am sure one can get good results.

I wrote this back in March 2019. We finally know the crossover for the front driver:a high-ish 525Hz at 24dB/okt. (from a review in Soundstage: https://www.soundstagesimplifi.com/index...udspeakers )
A different posting on ASR https://www.audiosciencereview.com/forum...ost-269112 shows the step response of the Reactor. https://www.audiosciencereview.com/forum...png.39247/ Apart from the fact that the front driver is connected with inverted polarity, the step response is very nice...

[torikelz4545]

the step response is very nice...

Looks better than Phantom Gold. Mitch Barnett measured Gold (CA Forum) and the woofer was slightly lagging behind other 2 drivers. Not sure why this wasn't DSP time aligned by Devialet when they have the chance.

[ogs]

Reactor is not time aligned either unfortunately. Devialet seems to ignore this (in my view extremely important) aspect. The internal DSP should have plenty capacity to make Phantoms time coincident. That is one reason room correction is effective. Most solutions correct the impulse response to create a proper wave front.

[torikelz4545]

Reactor is not time aligned either unfortunately. Devialet seems to ignore this (in my view extremely important) aspect. The internal DSP should have plenty capacity to make Phantoms time coincident. That is one reason room correction is effective. Most solutions correct the impulse response to create a proper wave front.

Agreed, such a wasted opportunity given all the other DSP that is already happening in there.

I would use digital room correction to sort this but it should be 'perfect' out the box - many other DSP speakers do this.

KEF have this figured out - even their cheapest LSX:

https://www.stereophile.com/content/kef-...asurements

[ogs]

Yes + D&D, Kii, Dynaudio...

Roon could handle a separate convolution filter (supplied by the speaker manufacturer) for near field (echo free) impulse correction followed by a amplitude-only correction for the listening position (from REW for example).
Bernt of Audiolense does not believe in this method, however. Better to do it all from the listening position in his view