Kenjit, I appreciate your question, but could you keep it to that - a question? And not make it into a battle where you know "the truth"? Is spherical always best? If that was the case, why are high level speakers showing an amazing variety of shapes and forms? Imagine if our forks and knives were subject to the same variation, we would hardly know how to eat! B&W Nautilus, for example, is partly snail shell shaped, partly spherical, partly other complex forms. A violin is partly straight, partly curved, part thin part thick. A stradivarius is not a globe! Nor is it made with cement! And why is that? Because sound doesn't behave to simplistic rules like 'spherical always best'. There are lots of people out there trying out new forms and shapes, and broad statements like 'wood is bad' or 'box is bad' won't help them. You think a speaker should not sing? It should have no sound of its own, and be absolutely inert? I remember that philosophy in the 80s, but it didn't conquer the market, for good reasons. You cannot avoid the sound from the drivers interacting with their surroundings. So another way to go about it, is to design cabinets that sound musical, and / or speakers designed to play "with" the room instead of trying to attain no interaction (impossible).
On another level, the main speaker marketplace, I think you have a point, but you could make it without being fundamentalist about it. Yes, cost considerations may drive parts of the industry into 'sleepwalker' mode, repeating the old box designs, only in slimmer 'modern' versions (usually sounding worse). Yet the consumer market has rounded or spherical designs in active satellite systems too, I think, at least a midlevel company like Gallo. Very "lifestyle" and if you can get a good deal with a metal maker you can make it. They seem to work well for treble and some midtone (snailhouse construction = trying to extend the mid downwards). But these globe-like speakers have not replaced the box type standmounts (or floorstanders). Why not? Imagine if your rule was true, Kenjit, and we all changed to speakers looking like spheres. Putting our old square boxes, panel speakers etc into the garage. I think we would all go to the garage, after awhile - something has gone missing. I don't know. And this is just to illustrate my point. Your question is good but don't make it into a sermon.
