What is the point of point source?


I often read reviews of equipment that praise whatever is being reviewed for being a point source. I read this as a focused narrowly defined area that the music eminates from. I prefer the image of an "outside the speakers" soundstage that is often referred to. So why is point source a positive attribute?
mechans
Don't confuse point source with a narrow soundstage. A perfect point source would give you a great soundstage and cause the speakers to 'disappear' in theory.
The larger the area of a radiator the more directional it is. This is why tweeters are made as small as possible. An infinitely small sound source would radiate equally in all directions and have perfect dispersion; this is why small speakers can "disappear" more easily than large ones. The smaller the drivers and the closer they are together the more they act as an ideal "point source". On the other hand the smaller the speaker the less air it moves so all speakers are a compromise. Low frequencies are essentially non directional so woofers can be quite large but the farther the drivers in the speaker are apart the farther away you have to be from them for the sound to properly integrate from the various drivers.
Perhaps it might be better to consider a point source as the starting point rather than as a tiny narrrow beam? Though somewhat unusual, perhaps the Quad ESL's might be a good example of what I'm trying to express.
I think one way to look at what people conceptually like about point source speakers is that microphones used to record music act in general like point receivers. There are various pickup patterns and multi-miking is common but you don't record a sound event with treble, mid, and bass microphones arranged top to bottom.

So the general idea with a 'point source' speaker being that it acts like a microphone in reverse. Whether this sounds good to you in your room is up to you.
WHat Nik said + speakers that approximate a point source (coaxial or OHM CLS drivers, or even smaller two way designs with more closely mounted drivers for example) tend to have advantages in general in regards to phase coherence at typical listening distances. For small or even modest sized rooms in most peoples homes, this can be very advantageous in regards to the music being delivered smoothly. Having the sound emitted from approximately the same location at the same time also often results paradoxically in a bigger soundstage along with more accurate imaging in that your ears are able to triangulate location of specific recorded sounds within the stereo soundfield more accurately. Its like an image being more in rather than out of focus enables your eyes to exactly determine the location of details better.

If you listen from farther away, speakers tend to approximate a point source more so you get a lot of the same advantages. Line arrays can also work very well in larger venues listening from a distance.