Two answers to this:
Yes, an ideal speaker would simply move the air as instructed by the amplifier. Additions such as harmonic distortion and subtractions such as low frequency rolloff detract from that goal.
No, it's impossible to model an ideal speaker, for reasons of room interactions and the limitations of stereo. Which is to say that even if we could engineer a speaker that did exactly what we want within the laws of physics, there would still be choices to be made with respect to dispersion, polar pattern, and frequency response.
For example, it might seem desirable to make a speaker that directs sound only at the listener's ears, eliminating room interaction. But such a speaker would sound awful with conventional two channel stereo, since the room reverb is needed to provide a sense of ambiance; in an anechoic chamber, stereo sounds like a slit between the two speakers.
Similarly, it's long been known that flat response sounds terrible with two channel stereo (but not multichannel). A speaker's response has to slope down if it is to sound real.
So we do know many of the things that matter, but in other cases, the solutions aren't entirely simple or clear.
Yes, an ideal speaker would simply move the air as instructed by the amplifier. Additions such as harmonic distortion and subtractions such as low frequency rolloff detract from that goal.
No, it's impossible to model an ideal speaker, for reasons of room interactions and the limitations of stereo. Which is to say that even if we could engineer a speaker that did exactly what we want within the laws of physics, there would still be choices to be made with respect to dispersion, polar pattern, and frequency response.
For example, it might seem desirable to make a speaker that directs sound only at the listener's ears, eliminating room interaction. But such a speaker would sound awful with conventional two channel stereo, since the room reverb is needed to provide a sense of ambiance; in an anechoic chamber, stereo sounds like a slit between the two speakers.
Similarly, it's long been known that flat response sounds terrible with two channel stereo (but not multichannel). A speaker's response has to slope down if it is to sound real.
So we do know many of the things that matter, but in other cases, the solutions aren't entirely simple or clear.