Magico - Wide vs. Narrow

Incidentally, the superb Snell Type A-III mentioned by @erik_squires also had a rear-firing tweeter, if I recall correctly.

@audiokinesis  is correct, of course.  As I recall it could be switched on and off.  In my case my audition occurred with the speakers flat against the wall though. 

Also, incidentally, the tweeter and mids on the Snells were among what we'd consider "high value" (i.e. inexpensive) devices today.  They did not achieve their  performance with supreme high-end drivers. 

Dear @audiokinesis  : Yes Snell came with rear tweeters and as a fact I paste/copy from Snell and in m my ADS L2030 I mounted a rear firing 1" silk dome with same efficiency and FR than the fabolous ADS tweeters in the speakers front firing.

Yes, you enhance the recording space.

R.

@erik_squires , imo the width of the Snell Type A helps the rear-firing tweeter to work well even when the speaker is up against the wall, assuming the wall is not absorptive.

Imo rear-firing tweeters need some reflection path length, but not nearly as much as a fullrange dipole because the rear-firing tweeter’s output is limited to short wavelengths. As the wavelengths get shorter, the reflection path length we can get away with also becomes shorter.

The sheer width of the Type A’s cabinet gives us good path length for the rear-firing tweeter, and the geometry becomes that of a slot all around the tweeter which tends to direct its output up and to the sides. So the rear-firing tweeter’s output arrives late enough that it doesn’t degrade the clarity, but it does improve the spectral balance of the reflection field, which (among other things) contributes to "being able to hear the recorded space", in my opinion.

I don’t think there was anything about Peter Snell’s Type A that wasn’t incredibly well thought-out.

Duke

@audiokinesis  - That's an interesting POV.  I would have thought that the slot would act like a severe low pass filter.