OK... I will try again, and in no particular order.

No, "moving air" is not taking a chunk of air and moving it across the
room. Using your analogy of ripples on a pond, a 7.5 Richter underwater
earthquake can cause a tsunami. Not that the water at the location of
the quake is the water that floods 4 miles inland. But the energy
applied at one end does reach the other end, the medium being the
water. Air is much the same way. The energy applied in the concert hall
wants to be delivered to the ear in the listening room, suitably scaled
for the desire of the listener. AND------- AND----- the listener should
have several degrees-of-freedom as to position when listening.

Yes, I do want to "hear the room". Otherwise, fer crissakes, we may as
well record all our music in the high-school gym using multiple
point-source microphones and electronics to remove the undesireable
artifacts. So, I want my speakers (and electronics) to be capable of
reproducing the sound appropriately, and, if anything overcome as much
as possible the inherent limitations of putting Carnegie Hall inside a
Wyncote living room... and a smallish one at that.

I can blow out a candle at 20Hz with the woofer. I can make interesting
patterns in that candle at 15kHz with the tweeter... I KNOW it is a
wave-front causing both. But the amplitude of the wave is what is at
issue. Isolated Conditions: Guy, when the bombard pipes kick in, there
is very little 'isolated' in my listening room. And that capacity of my
speakers is exactly as important and valuable as its ability to reach
up to the 6" pipe as well. And _all_ the air in the _entire_ room is
affected. That the higher notes are more directional is a
psycho-acoustic phenomenon, but not the physics involved. Visceral
effects are as much part of the music as anything else, and had better
be there if a system is to be credited as a valid *reproducer*.

A microphone, however designed has as its basic purpose to take the air
that hits it and translate that impact into electrical impulses... And
at the other end of many steps, the speakers are to kick out what the
microphone heard, warts and all. Any artifacts added or removed during
the recording and reproduction process are actually reductions in the
total fidelity of what the microphone heard. Back in the day, when
Horns were the ONLY sort of speaker, they worked both ways. Recording
was mechanical, as was reproduction. Horns concentrated the energy into
the recording stylus, and amplified it on the playback. Fidelity was a
matter of degree... We are better than that now...

As to 2006 vs. the 70s, of course it is. And look what it has brought
us. The typical listener today believes that what comes out of his/her
computer speakers is 'high-fidelity' because the speakers say "Bose" or
some such on them. The actually believe that a Bose wave radio is
capable of 'full fidelity sound reproduction'. So damned-near anything
will sound good with that as a measure. We have trained almost an
entire generation to "Television" sound... it ain't necessarily so. As
to electronic amplification, not much has changed in the last 60 years
for tubes and 35 years for solid-state excepting around the edges. So,
a solid, reliable, 'flat' amplifier made in 1963, or 1971, or 2006
remains a solid, reliable, 'flat' amplifier today. Speakers will use
better materials (sometimes) and tighter tolerances (sometimes), but
their essential function is unchanged. That the better materials and
tighter tolerances make them more efficient is a very good thing. But
we should never be fooled into believing that efficiency is the
sole-and-only driving force in speaker design. What should be the
driving force, then, now and into the future is a given speakers's
ability to RE-produce sound as closely as possible to the
live-and-on-site experience.

Oh, Arny... you haven't revealed what you use as a test-source for
speakers. That would be fascinating to know.

Peter Wieck
Wyncote, PA