Sloped baffle

Regarding digital signal processing as it relates to these issues, this from the DEQX website:

"In addition to frequency-response errors DEQX’s biggest strength is restoring phase and time-domain coherence by delaying faster-arriving frequencies until slower-arriving frequencies catch up for a coherent Impulse-response. DEQX even corrects timing delays in frequency groups within the drivers themselves rather than just time-aligning one driver to the next."

Thanks for this info Psag. The DSP software definitely considers having phase & time-coherence as an important aspect of its signal processing so as to have cohesive sound. This should tell us something about the importance of time-coherence in speaker design :-)
Looks like DSP might be the way in the future...

Practically, headphones are the best for time and phase coherence. Even good quality cheap ones. Use those as a reference to help decide how good speakers sound in this regard. Then check the measurements if available to see if things correlate.

Bombaywalla, I use the DEQX, and I can tell you its tranformative. Because it 'corrects' the drivers, it has a way of making different speakers sound more similar, which would no doubt be disturbing to some potential users. Also, it makes some recordings sound somewhat different than we are used to hearing them, which is something that also takes some getting used to.

Hi Psag,
What you are quoting makes absolute sense... If you pull the crossovers and make everything perfectly phase and time aligned along with perfect frequency response, then the only difference is sound between speakers is the materials themselves...ie, how does the box sound, what does a Kevlar cone vs a paper or aluminum cone sound like etc.... So you are hearing first hand, (by correction) how important a flat response along with phase and time alignment can be.