Regarding engineers, any piece of audio equipment that sounds good didn't get that way by being poorly engineered.
Marketing and engineering are very different disciplines. Marketing uses emotion(!!!) and engineering uses math (yawn). Anyway, it is quite possible for a speaker to be well engineered but then hyper-hyped by the marketing department. I recall a speaker whose claimed bass extension was an exaggeration by about one octave... but it was still a very well-designed, good-sounding speaker, despite the fantasy claims of the marketing department.
In order to impart directional control of sound waves, a device must be at least 1/4 wavelength long in the dimensions of interest. For example, the baffle step kicks in at the frequency where the edge of the enclosure is 1/4 wavelength away from the center of the woofer to either side, which means the baffle width is 1/2 wavelength. So a horn 2.5" deep will not have effective directional control below 1.3 kHz. Just wanted to put that in the record.
Unfortunately different yardsticks are used by different manufacturers for coming up with their efficiency and bass extension specs... but that would be another can of worms for another day.
Anyway a thread like this is a minefield for a manufacturer, and I've ventured in farther than is wise already.
Duke
dealer/manufacturer/mime in a minefield
Marketing and engineering are very different disciplines. Marketing uses emotion(!!!) and engineering uses math (yawn). Anyway, it is quite possible for a speaker to be well engineered but then hyper-hyped by the marketing department. I recall a speaker whose claimed bass extension was an exaggeration by about one octave... but it was still a very well-designed, good-sounding speaker, despite the fantasy claims of the marketing department.
In order to impart directional control of sound waves, a device must be at least 1/4 wavelength long in the dimensions of interest. For example, the baffle step kicks in at the frequency where the edge of the enclosure is 1/4 wavelength away from the center of the woofer to either side, which means the baffle width is 1/2 wavelength. So a horn 2.5" deep will not have effective directional control below 1.3 kHz. Just wanted to put that in the record.
Unfortunately different yardsticks are used by different manufacturers for coming up with their efficiency and bass extension specs... but that would be another can of worms for another day.
Anyway a thread like this is a minefield for a manufacturer, and I've ventured in farther than is wise already.
Duke
dealer/manufacturer/mime in a minefield