In speaking with Master Guitar Luthier Ryan Thorell a few days ago I mentioned my experience with several luminary speaker designers, and that among them Duke may be the most obsessed with advancing the art. I mentioned this to Debra a few days later, adding that of all the speaker designers I've met, Duke is the least ideological and least concerned with maintaining a prior agenda. His design mind is wide open to any potential that may improve performance. The fact he is a small independent works in our favor here. Huge speaker companies build their reputation over decades with multiple million dollar ad campaigns touting their excellence (a single full color page in Stereophile costs about $8k per issue). They can't suddenly turn around with a different design Gestalt because this is contrary to all marketing purpose.
I'm convinced, especially after hearing the Planetarium Gamma recently, that certain specs considered the holy grail may be undesirable for ideal overall listening performance. Making a speaker actually sound like a musical instrument in a domestic space may contradict some modern accepted goals in speaker design.
Look at the radiation patterns of any musical instrument in the long-out of print "Music, Physics, and Engineering" by Dr. Harry F. Olson, RCA Labs. No instrument has a radiation pattern like most speakers. So how can a speaker replicate the sound of an instrument, if the instrument in the room has a completely different radiation pattern?
The goals associated with room treatments, also considered the holy grail in audiophile land, might also suffer some logical weakness. For instance, let's put a saxophone in your room. First, can the speaker replicate its dynamic envelope? Will the sax sound more or less preferred, or more or less like itself, with or without room treatment? Ditto a violin. Don't be so quick to choose if you haven't heard the difference.
