That you can get a dipole magnetic-planar loudspeaker than is inherently time-coherent for $600, while 5-figure multi-driver box speakers have their three drivers wired in differing polarities, I have always found quite humorous. Speakers with 1st order filters and multiple same-polarity drivers (Vandersteen for instance) produce time-coherent sound in only a relatively small vertical window. Move a little in the vertical plane and that coherency evaporates. It takes a lot of engineering knowledge and design work to make a multi-driver loudspeaker time-coherent; a planar can do it with no work. Sure, planars have their own weakness. With speakers, you have to pick your poison. I, myself, would never buy a loudspeaker with drivers that move in opposite directions in response to a musical signal. That is RIDICULOUS! What is more basic to doing things correctly than doing that?
The first time I heard a drum reproduced that sounded like a real drum was through the Magneplanar Tympani T-1. It put much more expensive speakers to shame in that regard. The sound of the drumstick’s tip striking the head (plastic or calfskin), the head moving inward from the impact, sending waves of sound down the length of the drumshell and causing the bottom resonant head and the shell itself to vibrate, the timbre of the drum changing as the resonance subsided, were all audible in their percussive glory. That "percussiveness" was not apparent in any other speaker I had ever heard. For a drum to sound right, it’s fundamental (resonant frequency) and all it’s harmonic overtones have to be lined up in time. If they aren’t, the drum doesn’t sound as percussive as it should. Speakers that not time coherent can NOT reproduce a drum (or piano, or any other "struck" instrument, as opposed to one "plucked") correctly, no matter what other capabilities it may possess. Such a loudspeaker is of no interest or use to me. That may not be a universal opinion ;-).
