Has anyone looked at the link to the Smith Chart....
It is a VERY interesting way to view the impedance curve of a speaker VS phase angles, which is really a much better way to evaluate 'is it a good or bad load?'
I read the article, and it is indeed somewhat interesting, and I don't see anything wrong in it technically. The article does a good job of emphasizing that the magnitude and the phase angle of the speaker impedance, as functions of frequency, must both be taken into account in assessing how difficult a load it represents.
I see two basic problems, though. First, it is difficult to interpret due to the lack of frequency information on the plot. The author himself acknowledges this:
The main drawback compared to the normal, two-plot method is that we lose the frequency dependence of the impedance.
The second problem is general lack of availability of this kind of plot across a wide range of speakers. I think that being able to meaningfully utilize this kind of plot for a specific speaker would require prior familiarity with what the plots look like for a large number of other speakers, of various types.
Thanks for the interesting read!
Regards,
-- Al