glupson,
Those Sony's look like dream loudspeakers. One version of the SOTA.
Yes, I'd say cabinet wood matters.
It shouldn't do, but it always will, as long as cabinet resonances remain audible.
The sound of those resonances will be affected to some extent by the type of wood used in the construction.
Despite the designers best efforts to silence it, every material has its own signature, especially those used in the cone and cabinet.
Once you become familiar with it, you might like it or you might not. Thus many high end designs feature exotic materials to not only silence this resonance, but attempt to render pleasant what's left.
Sometimes, rather paradoxically, a quieter cabinet can make the sound worse by highlighting other resonances which may have previously remained buried in the noise floor.
A bit like that Volkswagen TV ad where the car noise was so quiet your attention is drawn to an annoying intermittent squeak inside the cabin which is finally revealed to be caused by the swing of a hanging toy ornament.
Unfortunately the day of a boxless point source full range loudspeaker still seems quite a long way off - unless AI/quantum computing could get involved.
Maybe we should all lobby Elon Musk to forget this space thing and turn his engineering attention to where it matters most?