@shadorne wrote: "There are only a few audiophiles today who understand what a big speaker with large 15” woofers and 4” voice coils can do and even fewer who are willing to pay the price in terms of poor WAF and transport logistical headaches!"
Amen brother.
I show big speakers at audio shows (hybrids, not fullrange horn systems) and see people listening with their eyes instead of with their ears all the time. They walk up to the room expectantly because they heard something that sounded good through the open doorway, then they see a big woofer and a horn and recoil in surprise, spin round, and scurry away as if they don't want to get caught near such speakers. But if you do the math, those big powerful woofers often have a better motor-strength-to-moving-mass ratio than the expensive little audiophile darling midwoofers the eye-listeners were hoping to see, not counting the air-coupling benefits of the larger cone area (which are amplified by horn-loading, something I don't do because my speakers gotta fit into my car when crated up).
A top-notch reviewer (whose day jobs include math professor and professional musician) once remarked to me that speaker designers are getting better and better at solving the wrong problems. There are very basic problems that 15" woofers and 4" voice coils solve which aren't even acknowledged by most of the industry.
Duke