KEF's meta material gimmick?

@seanheis1 I think we’re on the same page. The “clinical” sound of the LS50 is very desirable actually. I can’t fault it. This is what people expect from KEF. The modern industrial design gives it away. The LS50 delivers the goods. 
 

if that’s not your cup of tea then the OGY cost just a hair more. They’re not necessarily “gooder” but noticeably different. 

It is possible for manufactutrers to reduce distortion and breakup through the use of different cone materials.  In the case of KEF Meta they put a maze shaped pad behind the tweeter to reduce back wave reflection.  Car audio guys do the same thing on door mounted woofers to reduce the magnitude of the back wave. 

Probably does some good but likely subtle. 

The biggest change for the Meta series is the smoother, tapered frequency response.  Voicing changes through crossover tweaks.  Made a big difference.

The new series do seem to minimize brightness and metallic overtones, possibly at the expense of detail from what I have heard during demos.  

Is there embelishment in the Meta marketing? You bet there is.  

It's a valid technology. Been talking with Celestron about doing such for the ax2050 driver.

seanheis1,

Typical conventional tweeters are sealed in the back, so Revel (and most other speaker companies) are doing nothing about the energy radiating from the back of the tweeter diaphram. 

The new series do seem to minimize brightness and metallic overtones, possibly at the expense of detail from what I have heard during demos.  
 

My guess is that the loss of detail would be due to frequency response shaping…less metallic sounding would imply lower distortion.