Line Source - to toe in or not?

@bdp24 Missed the most common and obvious answer for a lot of speakers:

Some drivers simply sound better off-axis. It’s not uncommon for a speaker designer to take a tweeter that is bright, or rings on-axis and tame it by designing the speaker to be listened to "off-axis" or rather, with little to no toe-in. In my mind, the Focal inverted dome’s are famous examples of this.

It is also quite possible that speaker designers realize that speakers look better flat to the wall and voice accordingly. Some combination of these two accounts for most of these situations.

Erik has a point, but it raises a couple of separate but related issues.

A driver which is bright on axis, though not as bright off axis, will still be putting out too much high frequency energy into the room. It is the total power response of a loudspeaker which dictates how balanced octave-to-octave it sounds. If the tweeter is basically "flat" (putting out close-to-the-same SPL at all frequencies over the bandwidth it is employed), the designer uses a resistor to bring it into balance with the other driver(s). If however the tweeter exhibits a, for instance, rising-with-frequency output, that alone will not cure the problem. In his excellent series of Tech Talk videos on YouTube, Danny Richie (GR Research) explains how he compensates for this type of tweeter failing in the speaker crossover.

And a driver which "rings" does so not only on axis, but off axis as well. Ringing is a time-domain issue, though a driver which rings commonly does so more at certain frequencies than others. That’s why Danny Richie considers the spectral decay (aka waterfall plot) the most telling measurement a designer has at his disposal. There is no cure for the time-domain performance characteristics of a driver; if you want better performance, you need a better (one that rings less) driver. Makers and users of metal dome tweeters---notorious for their propensity to ring---sometimes dope the metal with some kind of damping compound. That is a help, but not a cure.

Many dipole planar loudspeaker (one type of line source) lovers hold in very high regard the ribbon tweeter Magnepan uses in their 3.7i, 20.7i, and 30.7 models. It exhibits very little ringing. The Magnepan ribbon tweeter is extremely good at the reproduction of, amongst other things, the sound of cymbals. The old Magneplanar Tympani T-IVa (a pair of which I own) contains the same tweeter, one reason that 3-decades old design still sounds so good.

By the way, Magnepan in their instructions for some models covers the subject of panel toe-in. Certain Magnepan models are designed to be listened to with the physical position of the panels at a certain angle relative to the listening position. That angle is related to---as I stated in my original post above---the phase relationship between drivers. 

There is no cure for the time-domain performance characteristics of a driver;

I’ve seen good evidence that notch filters not only can damp the ringing, but also reduce overall tweeter distortion. Having said this, I’ve never purchased a tweeter with significant ringing, so I can’t argue the point much with first hand information. See if you can find the old threads at DIYaudio on this.

A similar argument is made in rooms, something about linear phase systems can be damped by reducing the input. In any event, I won’t argue this point, but thought it was interesting.

What I can say is that there’s a lot of metal dome speakers out there with measurable ringing in a lot of reviews and living rooms. While personally I prefer to have tweeters with little to no stored energy, lots of people have no problem with them at all.  They may even give the listener a euphonic sense of air. 

So separate enclosures for the different drivers is a good idea? Is that the reason why subs or woofer columns are separate from the mid panel or drivers and the line of tweeters? I had 123s 15+ years ago. They were a nightmare. I did everything GR said to do.. They got better but they were horrible. It took a basketball court to make them sort of work. 123s made you want to put headphones on..

The owner Danny didn't like them either. His OB design is an acquired taste. They are the best I've ever heard though. I'm no expert but "Toe in" or "OUT" is pretty important.

A lot of bass columns are toed OUT while the mids and highs are toed IN. It's always "the room" anyways and what you like. Bright is usually a room issue. The lack of mids? On and off axis is important if your dancing? I sit when I listen, so I adjust accordingly. When many people are listening I toe my Hybrid LS out. They aren't glued to the floor. :-) 1/4" difference in tow or tip helps with "Bright" too.

The answer to the question is "it just depends on what you like". Getting speakers away from walls is hard for some people to learn too. Treat the room like it's part of the speaker and you'll be fine..

@erik_squires: Yeah, Danny Richie uses a notch filter to "tame" the ringing in the tweeters (and even midrange/bass drivers) in loudspeakers he is sent. Driver ringing is often also related to frequency response issues, so a filter addresses and helps with both issues.

Stored energy remains a significant failing in many (most?) drivers and the loudspeakers they are used in. I believe that is one reason why I was SO shocked when I heard my first ESL tweeter---the RTR used by David Wilson in his original WAMM, and in the ESS Transtatic I, a pair of which I also own.