I don't think one has to forgo classic Thiel virtues to attract the HT crowd. The concentric drivers lend themselves to it.The more recent models might be adapted to the more recent HT formats. Imagine another concentric driver mounted on top of the 3.7's dome? Some of the most expensive budgets spent on sound is by Hollywood. I believe one of the reasons HT hasn't attracted that many audiophiles ( expense aside) is the fact that most of them realize that properly placing two channels is challenging enough adding another 3 to 5 or more is daunting, if not impossible.
I've touched upon this before, but let me bring it up again. If like Thiel the objective is to get everything off the recording as accurately as possible to the listener, no matter how much attention is paid to the system chain the room itself will ultimately impose the biggest hurdles. One way to help ameliorate the problem is with DSP. I suspect that one of the problems with using DSP in the past is that direct sound from the loudspeaker to the listener and the reflected sound from the loudspeaker to the room to the listener has been convoluted. While is it has been estimated that 80% of the sound one typically hears is room reflected (and therefore corrupted), we know that given sufficient time delay (estimates vary from about 5-8 milliseconds, which loudspeakers placed well away from the walls will provide) listeners ear/brains will prioritize the initial direct sound from the loudspeakers over that of the reverberated room influenced sound. That might(?) be fine for symmetrically placed two channel systems, but such symmetry might well be impossible in typical listening environments for multi-channel (and perhaps preferably so for other reasons) but what was once not much filtering/processing on the ear brain has now become greater in amount and more complex from varying room influences. The problem with DSP in typical room set up is that when correcting for the secondary distorted room influence, one ends up correcting the primary direct sound from loudspeaker sound as well. That can become quite unnatural to the listener and especially more so to those listeners not in the sweet spot!
Keep in mind that many recordings already have their original room influence on the recording, now with typical loudspeaker setup we're adding/superimposing more. That might be best be described as distortion. And with HT/multichannel setups distortions that varies from channel position. That's a lot of ear/brain filtering/processing, which might become fatiguing. One way to offset this myriad of convolutions is to minimize them. If the loudspeakers baffle is very close to room walls, then direct sound and reflected sound become more of one, and then the DSP room corrected sound and the reflected sound become more of one and the same, with no or little imperceptible timing issues.
The advantages of such loudspeaker placement becomes more evident in multichannel and HT, especially so now that flat screen monitors/screens are fairly standard with their lack (or close to it) of projecting boxes that previously added side reflections. Placing five to seven channels 3-5 feet will into the listening room with 16-20 feet across from themselves (which would provide 8-10 feet from loudspeaker to listener) would require huge rooms (and perhaps a bevy of potential tripping speaker cables) not readily available to the typical consumers.
Obviously having the loudspeakers close to the room walls could have decorating advantages that can't be undervalued in the marketplace. With such wall placement, perhaps less labor and money(!) might be placed on cabinet beauty. The downside might be an increase in baffle area to compensate for box volume losses. I have some ideas for such a baffle box, but I've probably taken up to much space already. Still, I suspect that such box reduction costs might be somewhat passed on to the consumer for ultimate multichannel affordability and commercial competitiveness.
On some level Thiel has been doing just this for years and with great advantage with their concentric drivers(!), think Powerpoint, Dewdrop, etc.., just without the DSP possibilities.
