Dunlavy Minimum Phase Mods

Here’s the (an) issue with that. They may do those nice square waves at one point in space, or maybe on a line from the speaker to the listening seat. But what about what comes out of it off-axis? All it takes is to face a speaker away from you to know that the sound level really doesn’t drop down all that much. IOW, you hear the wavefronts that leaves the speaker off-axis -- not just the one going out perpendicular to the baffle. Linear or minimum phase only makes sense with a coaxial or point source speaker, otherwise it’s just a techno-game (IMO).

For people who don’t know, Bill invented OmniMic and XSim. He knows his stuff, so questions below are for my own education. I ask all of this not really knowing if ideal phase is all that beneficial. From what I have heard, I could not tell a difference.

I’m not sure if you are arguing room acoustics or off-angle driver phase matching.

Room/Power Response
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You are, of course, right in the sense of the overall power response, but isn’t the goal of good speaker placement and room acoustics to have a nice delay between the initial signal and the first reflections?

Off-Angle
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Take something like the Dunlavy. Assuming your ears stayed at tweeter level wouldn’t being off-axis be fairly benign? And isn’t it better to start from "ideal" than a normal 3-way alignment?

Of course, I can see a true coaxial being ideal here, like Thiel or Kef, where the alignment stays consistent over a broad range.



Best,

E

Linear Phase is preferable except when high Q filters (aggressive filter) are used.

High Q filters can result in audible pre-ringing and a minimum phase filter will have no pre-ringing - so a snare hit will sound more natural with a minimum phase high Q filter.

However, I think high Q filters should be avoided period! 

So if you are dealing with low Q filters then linear phase is always the best. The reason linear phase is best is because it preserves the relative phase information in the audio. The timbre of a musical sound that covers many octaves or percussive instruments that have a wide spectrum response will be preserved faithfully by a linear phase filter. Minimum phase changes the relationship between various frequencies and can really mess up correct timbre.

In a speaker crossover with a low Q filter (gentle filter) I would recommend always linear phase (so as to preserve timbre especially in higher frequencies)