Speaker cabinet construction..

Interesting. This is a well known problem. It is why speaker quality can in effect be somewhat correlated to weight and the knuckle rap test. The heavier in general the better. Thin walls (like Harbeth) will have more coloration than heavy damped designs.

What is not mentioned is that these efforts may be negated in large part due to significant audible distortion from ports on speakers. Since VSA relies heavily on ports in any of its designs it is odd that this aspect is not mentioned in the article (ports can ring well up into the midrange).

Cabinet distortion can also be attenuated through soffitt mounting provided the speaker is properly decoupled from the wall, bracing and several inches of rubber/fibreglass and extra thick multiple layers of heavy MDF (not pine) may also be needed (a concrete or brick wall being ideal)

Seems many loudspeakers go more for WAF then performance and cabinet material choice show this.

Absolutely. That is fundamentally what the majority of audiophiles plonking down $5K on a showpiece really want. Most are not aware of the colorations and many prefer teh colored sound (what they are used to hearing and expectations are everything)

Ports are of use dont toss the babie out with the bath water.

For sure ports have their merits especially large ones tuned very low can add little coloration, however, if you want to get fanatical about coloration simply take a look at the ort response from prototypical small port bass assisted design speakers from most Stereophile measurement plots and you will often find what is audible port output (distortion above 1%) up as far as the lower midrange.

In the context of extreme measures to reduce cabinet distortion it makes sense to talk about ports also....so WHY does the article ignore this? IMHO, since none of the discussion is breaking much new ground, it seems to be a very selective discussion clearly intended to be marketing material couched as science and technology.

Es347,

I missed your reply until today. You make a good point. Actually I have no axe to grind with VSA but, as you point out, perhaps I am overly distrustful of most technical claims made by audio manufacturers...especially given that most designers concentrate on aesthetics first and foremost.

All the VSA speakers make great music regardless of price point, and tend to outperform speakers costing magnitudes more

Agreed - they are indeed exceptional value and that is their main strength.