Hi, Saturn. I custom make wool felt pads for the removal of diffraction effects off conventional speakers. Use of the pads does not curtail anything coming directly from the tweeter nor should it. In the graph below taken using some two way bookshelf speakers you can see that the blue line with the pads in place is flatter or smoother than the red line at around 2.5kHz. The bump in the red line w/o pads at the same place is the result of diffracted waveforms summing in at the microphone. What you can't see, nor can I show you, is the insult that diffracted waveforms make to a speaker's time and phase response as they are late arriving. That is cancelled and is the greater benefit to appreciating what our systems are working to deliver. Off axis, with the use of the pads, energy above the crossover and beyond is reduced a couple db. This could be beneficial if a person's speakers were close to adjacent walls.
Lots of people here at AC and around the world use my product, but those with Jim's speakers have reported that they prefer listening with the pads off. Way to go, Jim! That suggests to me that they are going to be of value on some speakers more than others. I offer with a 30 day trial period for this reason.
By the way, Big Red is an exception when he says he has never experienced improvements in imaging using felt. Some of the all time great imaging speakers used or use it like Dunlavy, Vandersteen, Spica, Rogers moniters, and others. Most of my customers say far and away that imaging is improved.
