Sloped baffle

Hi guys, I don't want to pretend to be The Expert on this subject, but I've built hundreds of speakers and have worked and designed along side some of the best back in my Marcof/SpeakerCraft days... so,
"but only if in combination with 1st order crossovers as used by Thiel and Vandersteen, revealing a coherent time-aligned step response"
1st order helps, but there is no speaker that is in complete phase at all frequencies... When you roll a speaker hard, it throws the driver out of phase just by the nature of steep slopes...
Remember a speaker rolls in and out of phase up and down the frequency ladder, once you choose your initial crossover point, you need to remeasure the drivers phasing up and down the scale with your first crossover in place , then choose another point that gets absolute phase at the crossover point. You may see a speaker that has a 350 & 3750 crossover point and you know that the tweeter can easily be crossed at 2500 or so, as long as the mid is smooth out to a given frequency, the designer may choose to take the frequency where absolute phase comes back into place. Also Impedance compensation helps control phasing a also. For that reason, I prefer impedance compensation, normally a driver sounds better when it needs compensation and compensation is used.
"I recall reading that Focal, Harman and Paradigm have anechoic testing chambers, staffs of engineers and physical facilities that presumably enables these companies to make rational and informed choices when designing and building speakers. I also recall reading that these companies manufacture in-house their own drivers".
Anechoic chambers help tremendously in measuring driver frequency and the effects that driver modifications have on a drivers frequency response, but Impedance & phasing are measurements that can be done without having a critical listening environment, I'm not trying to say that a great listening environment is not important, only that impedance and phasing can be handled without an anechoic chamber. Again, time alignment & correct phasing are keys to an imaging champ. I've kept it as simple as possible, I hope this helps,
Tim

Thanks Tim. I'm listening to a HD CD of Dave Brubeck's, "Time Out." Perhaps I'm just used to listening to sonic swill, but the imaging is more than satisfactory and the music is quite enjoyable. My fronts are Paradigm S8s (v3), with beryllium tweeters.

Btw, I think the original recording was made in 1959. Maybe that was the Golden Age of music recording, maybe not. But the HD CD redo sounds great.

As an Fyi, I bought the CD from the Acoustic Sounds web site. AS is located in Kansas. Very good source of music in all formats.

BIF

I think there is a lot of hype around this issue. A lot. If you have floor standing speakers and simply adjust the spikes so the front is slightly higher to accommodate your sitting position the you may have it.

Is this just all a bunch of hype? Are there other more serious considerations? Cabinet construction, drive quality?

Probably

Sometimes sloped baffles are cosmetic only. My understanding for 1st order crossover speakers is the broad frequency overlap between drivers, requires a sloped baffle to keep the drivers on a single axis. When off axis the shared frequencies between drivers will cause cancellations/nulls depending on the distance.