Powered speakers show audiophiles are confused

I won't speak for @donavabdear, but I will speak for myself that the question is essentially irrelevant and is begging an answer. Phase corrected is essential for any working speaker design, time corrected looks much better on a marketing sheet than providing verifiable listener benefits. And yes, I have personally done the testing. Dynamic correctness, dynamic excitement seem to be implying the same thing. How long can you play, and what effects of any concerning dynamic compression. Horn loading / compression drivers is not the only way to achieve this of course. Horns provide, properly designed, constant directivity, but using a standard woofer/mif-woofer and a wave guide tweeter provides similar benefits without the side effects of vertical directivity lobing which can cause unpleasant reflections off vertical surfaces, likely one of the reasons why some people "don't like horns".  I think we can agree that a real horn loaded speaker at 20Hz, even a tapped horn is rather enormous and outside the realistic realm for most people. To achieve true directivity at the frequency is just unrealistic and you are not going to avoid room modes. Velocity/position feedback eliminates power compression issues in subs, and cheap efficient amplification is plentiful. Just put in a bunch of power subs and be done with it.

@donavabdear already wrote he only has one sub for his Genelec system (maybe in a different thread, I lost track).  @donavabdear , I have to expect that is contributing to some of the difference. I would consider playing around with integrating your main subs the the Gens even as an experiment. That or play with the single sub near-field. Not sure why this came to mind, but someone asked what the best sound they could get for a $1000 was. I told them $500 headphones and near field sub for the emotional impact.

@thespeakerdude integrating the subs, that's a good idea, it would be very easy. I'll let you know. Also your advise about the headphones is spot on, exactly right.

 @kingharold Sorry it's been a while since I have listened to horns with respect to accuracy. Time alignment is working ok not great, I have to move the speakers physically to get everything right. DSP seems like a fix but not really. The front speakers are time aligned and they are imaging like I've never heard before the point source nature of the speakers is different than the Tannoy or Uri or older Genelec speakers I've heard in the past I very much disliked those older speakers but these new Genelecs are really different, they worked out imaging, transients, and dynamics to a much greater degree. As far as dynamic correctness, hard to answer that i don't think there is any speaker that can reproduce thunder or a real symphony because no microphone can record it, even our ears don't treat dynamics as opposed to transients in the same way. Probably dynamics will be the last sound variable figured out in sound playback because there is nothing that records the loudest sounds properly. I used the very best recorders and microphones available to record production sound on movies and TV I've recorded 100s of thousands of gunshots but none of the recordings sounded like the real thing. On the movie Pearl Harbor we used the real 50 caliber guns these guns were mounted on steal surfaces the ships they were so loud the camera operators had a hard time physically moving their bodies because of the sound pressure waves the guns created. Real dynamics, impossible. 

That or play with the single sub near-field. Not sure why this came to mind, but someone asked what the best sound they could get for a $1000 was. I told them $500 headphones and near field sub for the emotional impact.

Or aa Butt Shaker(TM).

@thespeakerdude on a side note can you please explain or send me to an article explaining why WMTMW drivers on speakers work at all concerning phasing? Especially the midrange drivers being 1 foot apart is seems to be silly. I'm sure it's something I'm simply not seeing I know many very expensive speakers use this system I just don't know why. Thanks. BTW I've never seen one of these speaker at a high end studio. I think after these Genelecs continue to cause big changes in speaker design you won't see WMTMW designs anymore.

@donavabdear didn't we go over this already :-)

MTM of WMTMW are meant to be listened to on-axis at tweeter height or whatever the tweeter height is based on the total speaker angle. At that height, there will be no phasing issues (assuming I know what you mean). The sound from the two mids-woofers at all frequencies will get to the listener at the same time. The crossover is designed as such that those frequencies all arrive at that same time. This has an advantage over a flat-front MT where the ideal response is not perpendicular to the face but typically tilted down. That can be fixed by tilting the speaker up, setting the tweeter back, or electronically. It can also be fixed with a coaxial driver. I think that is the real advantage of a coaxial driver, consistent dispersion.

The problem with MTM is the vertical directivity is narrow making the listening height more critical. I have not given a lot of though, but the wide spaced woofers in a WMTMW should provide some line source effect and reduce the floor/ceiling mode which is good as those are usually the least treated.

I personally am not a big fan of MTM, and they really are not in favor. We know enough that they do not make much sense any more. Audio Science Review probably inadvertently has given Genelec a lot of press in the consumer market. They have released a great product obviously, but that does not mean other great products not as visibile with similar design goals don't exist. As they are now going after the consumer market, it may influence that segment of the market more than anywhere. The WMTMW is an "audiophile" thing. It does not have to make sense.