Back on enclosure materials - doesn't Albert Von Schweikert use a layered differing material approach on his current designs? Maybe hinting at the Vapor's secret sauce regarding varying the speed of sound passing through different materials (and I'm making a guess on this one but if a few of those materials also act as heat sinks as a double up approach to the energy dissipation. . .)? The layers making up No-Rez along with the outer cabinet materials pulling off a similar trick, minus directly addressing the heat problem?
I also wanted to throw one more example out there. The Daedalus Audio DA-RMa. Not exactly a "mini" monitor, but I think suitably "high end" for the discussion, maybe a little iffy on the "pedigree" of the drivers (?), but I think the cabinet designs are signature-unique and right in line with the discussion. If this thread catches Lou's eye, maybe a few words on his thoughts regarding choice of cabinet materials and construction techniques?
So, that aside, a little summary:
Regarding Enclosures - many different ways to skin the cat, a top-shelf speaker being exemplified in that the cabinet design goes above and beyond the norm to either eliminate the problems caused by the necessity of the cabinet as part of the overall speaker design, or alternately actively engineers the speaker as part of the design to leverage/take advantage of the characteristics of the specific speaker's cabinet design. Short version being that none of this is either simple (engineering) or cheap (materials).
Regarding wire termination/binding posts - Strictly from a performance perspective, in a perfect world in a vacuum, bare wires would run straight from crossovers (or drivers if no crossover is used) to amp. Reality leads us down two roads. One, in which there is solid engineering and design brought to the table in making a more "user friendly" implementation of the ideal. The biggest challenge in this case being that even in the face of data and evidence up to and including a direct demonstration to a prospective customer, the designer/manufacturer/dealer really needs to invest quite a bit at this point in time in "selling" the idea to the prospective client - again translated into cost (call it advertising, marketing, time/labor in direct person-to-person contact of some kind, etc.), this is not cheap. The alternate road is more straightforward. Accept as fact that whatever termination used will somehow affect the overall design, account for it best you can, invest in whatever materials/components it takes by way of binding hardware to minimize the negative impact (read: throw money at the problem in big ticket but easily marketed as a "feature" component materials), and make sure the solution is both high in status/pride of ownership mindshare and at least works just as hard for the speaker as jewelry in selling the premiere status of the speaker's fit and finish. Short version: spend money in putting the best spin possible on an otherwise negative mark, making a conscious decision to pick your battles as a designer elsewhere.
I'm sure there is more to come, but it looks like the conversation is now starting to sneak up on discussing drivers - tweeters in particular got called out first, I think? We've also skirted talking open baffle and coaxials.
Cheers to all!