I’d like to think that he did consider the subject of rooms and placement in detail. He just didn’t like what cabinets tend to do to the sound of the drivers.First i greatly appreciate your toughtful post....
My point is in spite of their limitations what Aczel forgot, is the room precise tuning by controls, with many acoustic devices,( my grid of 18 Helmholtz pipes and tubes among others) not only passive material treatment...
The sound we listen to dont necessarily come ONLY from boucing on passive walls, the room could be activated and help greatly by improving the box speakers...
In fact my box speakers in MY room sound better than magnepan in a bad room.... This is my point by experience....
Then calling all boxes monkey coffins is only revealing a lack of understanding about acoustic controls and where the sound come from.... In a simplistic conception of acoustic the sound come from reflection, absorbtion, or from diffusive surface from the walls, ceilings etc...
This is ONLY half of the story.... A room is a pressurized potential engine that can be activated by many pressuring engine devices like Helmholtz botlles, tubes and pipes... Then what we listen to is no more ONLY the results of waves boucing back from the walls but also a results of this different adjusted pressure devices created by Helmholtz for particular speakers needs and for the particular ears of the listener ...
Then the alleged " monkey boxes" dont lost their limitation, but dont sound either boomy or lacking trans parency... For sure they are mot magnepan but they can beat it in some acoustically prepared room designed for them, when the magnepan are in a bad room...
My point is Aczel go too swiftly to a condemnation of box speakers...
ALL speakers ask for a particular acoustical settings and have all their limitations.... Box speakers are very useful in a small room when we ask also for some level of bass....
I don’t think it’s fair to suggest that loudspeaker cabinets do not present certain sonic issues.I NEVER said that box speakers dont have limitations of their own, i only said that calling them monkeys boxes coffin is saying too much negative...
For example the rectangular boxes had an internal resonance problem, and it is possible using dyssimetric compressive force and a load with 2 sets of springs under the speakers, and one set under the load on top of the speaker to control the destructive power of the resonance .... It is a result of my listening experiments...And some transparency come to the ears only from that.... add to it a better controlled noise floor of the electrical grid and more transparency comes... At the end add an helmholtz tubes and pipes grid adjusted for these particular speakers in this specific room, another level of transparency comes with it....
Calling them "monkey coffin" is not a solution, nor dreaming also about a totally other kind of perfectly controlled and powered speakers with filters etc....Horns or magnepans are better without being perfect, but a good controls on their working mechanical, electrical and acoustical dimensions we could make them acceptable .... No more monkey coffin.... Acoustic controls of the room is more powerful anyway than the design of any specific speakers...This is my experience....
My deepest regards....
