I could never understood what it really mean. Also another term commonly use (forward).

Revealing=accurate. As in they are so revealing they make well - recorded music sound live and badly recorded music sound like...well...bad.

Forward=vocals sound like they are in front of the speakers rather than behind. This is due to a bump in the midrange.

Thanks for the knowledge.. So when speakers are too forward is that a bad thing?

It depends on the individual. Some like them forward and others laid back. Yet others like them accurate so they sound exactly like what the recording engineer had in mind. Some recordings are laid back and others are forward by the way.

The trouble is, there are many recordings that have been mixed very poorly or are overly compressed.

These often sound really bad on a revealing speaker, like the Axiom lineup. Often the speakers get the blame when it is mostly the source material. Some of my many CDs from several decades ago I just don't play anymore as they have no low end & really no soul. They sound flat & not dynamic at all - sort of like a small portable radio. Cranking up the volume or adding EQ often does not help much.

So when you get new speakers, make sure initially that you run good source material or you might be disappointed...

TAM

What about for movies? Does this applies as well?

I've found that the sound quality of movies is often a mixed bag as well, even with fairly recent releases.

Most are quite good but for some reason dialogue is sometimes hard to follow because ambient type sounds (L, R & LFE) are simply mixed at too high a level. Why I don't know because some movies exhibit just the right balance. With a HT setup, it is easy to bump up the CC a couple of DBs in your AVR if required to make the dialogue stand out more.

From what I've read elsewhere, & my experience seems to bear this out, in the last few years the CC has been taking on much more importance in the mix whereas the L & R are more for ambiance & are often just idling while the CC does most of the work. That is why I upgraded to the more powerful VP160 from a VP100 in my system...

TAM