Hi Dr. House,
Yes, I've heard the Revel Ultima in a demo at the Consumer Electronics Show, but never in the same room as the M80. When I heard the Revel, it was very neutral, wide-range and natural, much like the Axiom M80, and I'd wager that in a double-blind comparison, the two would receive almost identical scores and the "similarly good" ranking.
The Revel loudspeakers are generally very fine, and given Kevin Voecks's years spent in Canada (designing for Mirage)and his familiarity with the NRC program and the "family of curves" anechoic measurements, that's no surprise. The speakers he designed for Snell were among the best-sounding US speakers at the time.
As to the B&W at Abbey Road, that's expected, as B&W is a British speaker company and perhaps the most prestigious, highly marketed and expensive. I knew the late John Bowers (the "B" of B&W) and certainly the top-of-the line 801 and its various iterations were very good speakers and did fairly well in double-blind comparisons when I was a magazine editor, but not as well as several Canadian brands including Axiom, Energy Veritas, Paradigm and PSB.
I don't know what to make of the speaker configuration you describe seeing in the video.
Cheers,
Alan
