Lack of phase shift is one criteria I know helps a lot- for clarity, texture/timbre, subtle dynamic contrasts and sharp imaging. But none of those comes through unless three things are present:
- the drivers have suspensions designed for high compliance at micro-amounts of stroke.
- the crossover parts, primarily capacitors, can pass very faint signals (most caps cannot).
- a very quiet cabinet on the inside.
We can rule out (as first-order causes) the linearity of the magnetic fields around the voice coils- there is no voice-coil stroke occurring.
We can rule out voice-coil venting and high-temperature voice-coil construction- as there's no stroke to create any air pressure to be vented, and little power input to have thermal changes in the voice coil.
We can rule out "extreme" cabinet rigidity, because of the low levels of energy input.
We can rule out cone rigidity, for the same reason.
We can rule out the way the enclosure is tuned (ported/sealed/T-line) as those become non-linear with INCREASES in SPL, if they are going to mis-behave.
Of course, I'm sure you know a lot of gear isn't that great at soft levels (especially interconnects- which is why I recommend the Audio Magic Sorcerer cables before any component upgrade). In fact, I know of some amplifiers which have a decidedly "off-on" type of sound that actually gives speakers with poor low-level response more "jump". Of course, an amplifier which does have excellent low-level response is termed "laid back" when auditioned/reviewed with those speakers- too suave and graceful and subtle for those speakers.
To the others- thank you for your kind compliments.
Best,
Roy
