Phase Coherence or Time Alignment: Which More Imp?

I don't understand your post. There is no 'patent holder' per se on cross overs; what 'site' are you refering to--and who charges a lot for their speakers?
Sorry, not being sarcastic maybe I'm just thick today, but I really don't understand your comment/question.
Please clarify.

It's odd that Bud Fried, (who I had the pleasure of knowing) is part of this conversation, and as Lincoln might have said, "it is altogether fitting and proper..."
Bud Fried's TL series made be become an audiophile back in the early 1980's. I fell in love then, with the, almost polar opposite, THIEL, and met, eventually worked for Jim Thiel. The one undeniable comment about Fried, or IMF as they were after the first split, (women, you know)--were the most 'musical' speaker around. They had the magic, and people didn't talk about 1st order, or this and that, they were too busy playing music to talk about it.
Plus, with no 'time alignment' they imaged wonderfully.
But, and this is not sentimental fluff, the music came out of the boxes just like it's supposed to.
I guess, Fried more than any other product was my inspiration for my speakers, (to be released, God help us soon). I just tried my best to make them sound like music. Forget the popular jargon, and make them sound like something that makes you want to sit 'all the way through an album', and not get up and change the record or disc, because it sounds to 'bright' or amusical.
An acquaintence came by during my final voicing, and said, (this is from the heart, not a commercial) 'your speakers make me want to listen to music again." Honest to God, a comment like that will put tears in your eyes.
I think about Bud, (and Jim) and their influence as opposite as they were, and thank them both, because without either, the industry would be poorer.
Sorry for the melodrama, but I mean every word.
Larry

I have to agree with Lrsky, although I usually prefer not agreeing with anyone. The theories of speaker designs are interesting, but the actual experience is what matters ultimately. All speakers are compromises - and overall it's pretty amazing that you can etch a pattern into plastic with a cutting head, play it back with a tiny diamond, amplify that signal a gazillion times, and then have it come back at you sounding ALMOST exactly like it did going in.

I've heard many of these new "wonder-speakers" with all sorts of expensive drivers and internal wires that are just unlistenable (to me), and I've heard 20 year old designs with some updates (like my Dahlquist DQ-20i's) that keep beautiful music sounding that way. And despite whatever a designer does with Phase and Time, room interactions play a huge, huge part in what you'll actually hear.

I have heard both Joseph Audio Pearls and Green Mountain C-3's a fair bit and they're both great speakers with different attributes for people with different "ears".
I had a trade pass at the last HES San Francisco and went back and forth without having to wait on lines between Joseph Audio and Avantgarde Trios and came to the conclusion that if I had to live with one or the other at home, I'd pick the Pearls as less fatiguing - not what you would predict for a steeper slope crossover.
I also have spent a few hours audiotioning GMA C-3's and found them to be spectacularly dynamic, very detailed, and also a bit bright/forward in the mids (for my taste) - also not what you'd predict from a 1st order design.

So go figure...

Actually, I WOULD expect the 'forward' or brightness from a first order design. It's almost a sure bet that everyone who's heard THIEL would agree that they sound forward in the high frequencies. My speakers measure flat, (inasmuch as any can or will) yet the tweeter is invisible to the ear; this has the effect of making fatigue a virtual non factor. Plus older recordings, some of the sixties abortions which sound so awful, (this was the moment when engineers found the eq switch, I like to say), and they sound different than contemporary, but listenable, instead of ear splitting.
The principal design behind any speaker, should be fidelity, that is the output should equal the input, and here we're walking a fine line. A quarter of a db across a broad enough bandwidth, makes all the difference in the world tonally.
I theorize that the forwardness comes from the rather 'odd' sounds created by the multiple bandwidths covered by the drivers-- and how tonally mismatched they are in reproducing what should be similar sounds. That 'blend' of sounds creates a secondary sound, amusical to me, which I find offensive, and 'bright' as described by
Opalchip, even though he surmised that first order 'would not' sound bright.
This is based on listening to the contribution of the drivers individually, as they 'try' to play frequencies, which reside normally, well out of their range.
Theory, not scientific fact, but my ears hear the composite of each individual driver, and the sound is abberational.

Larry,

Great post.

In my opinion, the only manufacturer who really implements low order crossovers properly is Jim Thiel. His crossovers are complex, but he is much more advanced in his thinking than any other designer in that camp. If you took his speakers and ran them at moderate listening levels in a well damped listening environment and sat at just the right height you'd hear the best results that particular method has to offer.