Does Time alignment and Phase coherency make for a better loudspeaker?

Little snarky there holmz...I was referring to the sound of multiple musicians playing the same music with space between them. I attend concerts I don’t mix, and ones I do mix I listen to unamplified sound from various areas during sound check including right in front of or on the stage. If you can’t understand my posts, why are you here?

An argument I've heard for time/phase alignment is that it relieves your brain of the burden of reconstructing the sound as it originally was.  The various frequencies that make up any sound are normally all related in time and most speakers don't preserve the relationship.  Your brain is good at fixing this before you perceive the sound so you don't exactly hear the difference but you can sense the relief of your brain not needing to do the work.  

I don't know if it's true but there are sure a lot of people that like Thiel, Vandersteen, etc.  If I perceive it, and I think I do, it's a relaxing quality that other speakers don't have in my experience.  It sounds more correct and I can just relax and listen.

it does seem that snippy and snarky are in fashion, unfortunately - i fall into the rut occasionally as well

as for time alignment allowing the brain to work less hard, maybe so, dunno, but while i would agree that vandy's are very relaxing to listen to, my recollection is that thiels are less so, in fact they are quite dynamic and can get edgy, so not sure time alignment is behind their characters (more likely the metallic tweeter used in thiels)... other speakers are lovely and relaxing - harbeths, spendor classics, grahams... those are not time aligned

actually the major difference is the Jim T objective to be flat at the listening position vs at 1m for Richard V. One can debate the merits of both. Until recently i owned both and while i prefer the Vandy, I can understand the allure of increased treble energy inherent in the JT approach.

For those interested , no violin in flat at both 1m and 3 m...... of course if your reference is 32 track studio stuff, keep chasing your tail....

Most of Thiel's speakers have demonstrated to me how a single aspect which I think is incorrect can sour the entire speaker and the listening experience. I could never get past the aggressive/forward quality of the treble. To me JT efforts to achieve time/phase alightment did so at tremendous expense. Check out the complexity of many of his crossover designs.