Flat Anechoic Measured Frequency Response Speakers

Shadorne, I hadn't seen your post four up when I typed my reply three up. Congratulations on catching the implications and applicability of that off-axis bump. When working on a design, I place most of my attention on what's happening off-axis rather than on-axis.

Bob, no doubt much of the credit for those impressive measurements is due to a very well executed digital processing system. But signal processing cannot do much about radiation patterns, and the polar maps of those patterns are what I'd give the greatest consideration to (the green plots towards the bottom of the measurements page). You pretty much never see polar maps or any sort of off-axis data becaus it almost always sucks, and the K&H polar maps both look pretty darn good to me.

I recall a thread where there was an argument about the relevance or value of specifications. I can imagine some are rolling their eyes at this current discussion of beautiful looking plots.

For those rolling their eyes, and this is true: Dolly Parton once said that she was best known for just TWO things! Demonstrating so very well that people often see things all too differently. Her answer was, of course,.....her music and her lyrics ;-)

Thanks for that link, Jkalman. I obviously hadn't come across that one.
-Bob

Bob, typically driver interaction has a large effect on radiation pattern in the vertical plane but not much in the horizontal plane. Even with the digital crossover, you can see the results of driver interaction in the vertical polar map.

I use a passive crossover, and my horizontal radiation patterns are as smooth if not smoother than the K&H. My vertical pattern probably isn't a good, but that's less critical (as long as the power response is smooth) because we listen within a fairly narrow vertical window anyway.

I found a website that said the big K&H speakers retail for thirty-six grand a pair, but you can mail-order them for a mere twenty grand a pair. That's actually one helluva discount.

Duke