Competent amplifiers, electronics etc have "frequency response".
Loudspeakers have frequency responses.
A critical difference
Indeed.
Remember back in the day when JohnK and I would butt heads over speaker design? JohnK, the "I have simulated so it must be magnificent sounding with all of the conjugate networks flattening responses in a 4th order crossover alignment" and me "choose drivers with exemplary performance in their passband and minimal slope" guy?
You are so right about the summation of drivers with great frequency response, appropriate power and impulse response. All of that matters. I sometimes wonder if would be speaker designers ever leave the computer or the sweet spot.
Things that I have always admired about your speakers is that they sound "right". Right is hard to describe for me. Soundfield speakers are always musical all over the room. Some of your driver choices have been not what I would choose, but that just tells me all that I still don't grok about speaker design.
I hope that you will take some time to expound on what Charles asked.
I know a few things that are true for me, in my unique room with my unique biases. I am sick and tired of detailed presentations that miss the life in the music. Chest pounding bass is worthless unless it is tuneful, expressive and well integrated into the lower mids. I find this one of THE challenges in speaker design. Hard to get in concert without being overblown or, conversely, too taught and fleshless. Mid driver choices are getting easier with drivers with the sensitivity, Xmax and passband performance 2-3 octaves beyond crossover points to be manageable without strangling networks...
Things are so much better with all of the driver and component choices today. Even so I have gone to the simplicity of the high sensitivity, coherent, single cone driver with swarm LF augmentation in my old age. Part of this is because it is easy. I have only a modicum of energy these days that demands most of it to service my business. The other reason is the emotive, directly connected quality of a great single cone driver. They speak to me...
I digressed mightily because we don't communicate often enoug these days. Alas...
So. AJ what do you have to say about frequency response and musicality?