Does Time alignment and Phase coherency make for a better loudspeaker?

prior usernames - same ol loser/poser/instigator... 

atdavid

dannad

audio2design

roberttdid

headaudio

just to name a few...  :(

it does seem that snippy and snarky are in fashion, unfortunately - i fall into the rut occasionally as well

as for time alignment allowing the brain to work less hard, maybe so, dunno, but while i would agree that vandy's are very relaxing to listen to, my recollection is that thiels are less so, in fact they are quite dynamic and can get edgy, so not sure time alignment is behind their characters (more likely the metallic tweeter used in thiels)... other speakers are lovely and relaxing - harbeths, spendor classics, grahams... those are not time aligned

the fundamental problem with any question like this is of course any one element of successful design can matter, but the specific impact of that element can only be felt only if all else is equal... design of something as complicated as a loudspeaker is highly multi-variate, so ’all else’ is never ever, ’equal’, far from it in fact ... so it ends up being an interesting theoretical discussion with little to no real world applicablity

'does the type of insulation matter in how an interconnect sounds'?

'will a different brand of capacitors in a linestage improve the sound'?

'do r2r dacs sound better than delta sigma ones?'

and so it goes, round and round...

@jjss49 , flat is always the best place to start.

not debating that point (starting point, reference point) - my statement refers to aiming for a perfectly flat measured speaker response as a sonic end point

a few points

flat frequency response is easily obtainable in front of speakers but if the idea is to make a loudspeaker sound good, truly flat frequency response is the wrong goal (google ’bbc dip’)

time coherence is only meaningful if delivered at the listener’s ears, which is not so easy in a domestic listening environment

phase response/inversion has rarely made a major difference in the sound in my own experience (many hifi units allow for remote switching of phase, so it can be very easy to test for oneself)

lots of the things about speakers and what makes them sound good are hard to measure, so as in many things in hifi audio, measurement based criteria are necessary but insufficient conditions for a pleasing result

sometimes