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On 1/23/05 10:35 AM, in article , "John
Matheson" wrote:

I concur with Floyd Toole's findings that a speaker needs a smooth power
response declining with rising frequency for naturalness in sound
reproduction in a general sense. In his papers he gives a very thorough
dissertation on what is important to get right and what doesn't matter in
speaker design and although I haven't read his papers for some time I
remember feeling that my experiences were in line with his findings. I am
not a fan of the dipole / bipole school. I believe in most instances a
monopole with flattish on axis frequency response, smoothly declining power
response and relatively free of colouration (or self-signature) is an easier
speaker to live with for most people, given the variability of recordings
and people's listening rooms. Linkwitz's claims on the dipole behaviour of
speakers does not bear too close scrutiny - acoustic behaviour in real rooms
is much more complex than his arguments assume.

Interesting then that nearly all the speaker divisions Floyd oversees at
Harman make extensive use of high order crossover networks and metal cone
drivers. This includes Infinity, Revel, and JBL.In fact, if you look at the
top of the line Revel products you see 4th order networks, titanium midrange
cones, and aluminum dome tweeters. Yet the spec sheets and product
descriptions make strong claims of extremely smooth on and off axis response
and very low distortion. What's going on here? Does Floyd not understand
that such claims are simply impossible? How can he allow such "hash
generators" to be released into the market?