Bloated speakers/weight wise

Another advantage of having the full-range driver mounted to the cabinet top is that the "baffle" is thus made really small, while none of the larger-area cabinet surfaces are excited directly by a driver mounted in the middle of the panel. BTW, I thought Walsh Ohms had fairly low sensitivity, since their sound is radiated equally in all directions. Anyway, you can tell a lot about the cabinet sound of a speaker just by doing the knuckle-rap test at different spots on the various panels and listening critically to the results, no test equipment needed.

Zaiksman: "sonically significant unwanted contributions from the cabinet"...."a 4 ft floorstander @70 lbs is almost midweight for this size cabinet"...
I think its fair to say 95%+ , honestly I'd put it at 90% of the audible sound comes from the drivers. Besides many speakers, B7W's have baffels, which release any excess energy, so the cabinet has minimal resonance.
70lbs "mid-weight" are you saying average for athat size cabinet ot mid weight in general terms?
Sure I guess B&W's and others with the dimensions of your Theils, Tylers, Zu's all average 70-90 4 ft floor stander. But there are 4 -6 ft floorstanders like Wilsons and others that go into the hundreds of lbs. I think people identify heavy with good. Gee if it weights this much, it must be worth the price. Anything I'm not comfortable moving by myself, I'm not interested. I'd did say 150 lbs was my top limit. I've just lower that to 125. btw Tyler offers on 2 of his models a dual cabinet/stack option for each cabinet. Which is unique and pretty cool. I bring up Tyler often here on the board not because I've heard them and know how they sound, but for his innovativness, look at his models, no lab even comes close to what he offers. and the fact he uses Seas' drivers. How he has the xovers will determine just how great a value they are. But just on my knowledge of his component costs, its the best bang for the buck in speakers. By far.

Bartokfan: I assume that what you're referring to in B&W speakers, which is shared with many other speakerers, must be their internal bracing? If so, yes, internal bracing is pretty much mandatory for any speaker that asipres to minimal resonance, but the need for it can be lessened by employing curved outer surfaces, an approach which reduces weight.

I don't know what the percentage range would be for typical audiophile box speakers in terms of cabinet contribution to their total output, but you have to remember that energy reradiated from the cabinet has been shifted in frequency and time -- in other words, it's heavily distorted in relation to the desired goal of the output signal closely matching the input signal. As we know from various kinds of distortion is our electronics, if the effect is musically unconsonant or obscuring, distortion can be audible at very low percentage levels. True, within the signal chain speakers in general have much higher overall distortion percentages than do electronics, but if you want to make a better-performing speaker, you need to address these limitations wherever you can.

I'm in agreement with you that for me, any speaker I can't hump around comfortably by myself is just something that I'm personally not interested in owning, but I do think imposing such a limit probably puts a ceiling on the performance that can attained with typical speaker designs if part of what you like to play is full-range, dynamic music at higher volume levels.

Zaikesman, true for those interested in high SPL listening, then cabinet resonance may be an issue. i rarely listen with my amp vol at more than 1/4 - 1/3. Plenty of muisc going on. These audio club meetings in New Orleans with high/super high SPL listening sessions make no sense to me. But the group seemed (past, not sure where the New Orleans club is now scattered to) to get a kick out of it.

Bartokfan: I was saying that for those who like to listen at higher volumes, the smaller size that usually goes along with lower weight may put a limit on performance. But I don't agree that cabinet resonance, as its own issue, is a problem only for listening at higher volumes. IMO cabinet talk makes its unwanted contribution at all volume levels, and minmizing it, whether through brute-force construction or something more weight-efficient, pays sonic dividends no matter how soft or loud you like to listen. (I also should mention though, that I'm one of those who feel listening at unnaturally low levels, while sometimes unavoidable, does constitute its own form of distortion that renders reproduction less lifelike. Of course the same thing goes for listening too loud as well.)