Sloped baffle

Getting back to the original question concerning sloped baffles and time alignment, Mofimadness commented:

"It is used to time align the drivers. Some manufacturers do this physically, (with the cabinet) and some do it electronically (in the crossover)."

No knowing a whole lot about speaker design, my guess is that it is more difficult and expensive to design and produce a speaker with a sloped baffle. Wouldn't that imply that there is some perceived advantage to doing so?

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.

I should have stated, "PART of the reason for a sloped baffle..." There is the time domain as well.

Psag, I don't think the last couple of comments posted before your comment (mine included) deviated from the OP's question about sloped baffles. I say that because sloped baffled may be used to address (in whole or part) issues relating to using multiple speakers and electronic crossovers.

Bombaywalla and others have provided us with a cornucopia of information about time and phase coherance -- sloped baffles just being a subset of the larger issue. Quite honestly, I didn't realize that the time and phase alignment problem was so difficult to solve.

Having said that, admittedly, I do not fully appreciate to what extent a speaker's sonic performance is compromised by time and/or phase errors. Perhaps, as Sounds_Real_Audio just posted, the issue may be more hype than real. I just don't know.

Al and Ralph .... where are you??? :)