Drubin: The design that B&O has is severely flawed, regardless of what you read about it in "Hi-Fi glossies". It is similar in concept to what BIC did 20 years ago and Mirage is trying to do today but with a lot more research and technology involved. It will still suffer from nearfield reflections and the associated standing waves that come with such designs. If you want this to work "right", you have to use a single point source driver. If you don't, you'll run into multiple arrival times from each driver due to the different path lengths that each driver has to take to get to your ears. Not only will you hear the sound directly radiated horizontally out of the driver, but also the sound reflected off of the driver above it. If you look at what they are trying to do with these, you'll be able to see that it is nothing more than a way to duplicate the Ohm A and Ohm F that make use of Walsh drivers with multiple conventional drivers instead. In this aspect, Walsh took the various arrival times into account in this one driver, hence the taper of the cone and what German Physik's calls "bending wave theory". As the top of the speaker is closer to ear height, it is further away from your ear. As the bottom of the cone is physically closer to your ear due to diameter, it is further away from the ear in terms height. Both arrival times should be near identical if the taper of the cone were designed correctly and your seated listening height is taken into account.
El: I have both "panel" type speakers and Omni's. If i could combine the speed and low mass of the planar design with the radiation characteristics of the Omni's and then add SPL capacity to all of that, i would have it all.
As it is, the wavefront from a point source Omni is FAR more natural with a deeper, wider and more spacious presentation than any planar ( or speaker for that matter ) that i've ever heard. None the less, Omni's have their problems too. Since i like specific attributes of each design, i have dedicated systems set-up to run both : )
El: I have both "panel" type speakers and Omni's. If i could combine the speed and low mass of the planar design with the radiation characteristics of the Omni's and then add SPL capacity to all of that, i would have it all.
As it is, the wavefront from a point source Omni is FAR more natural with a deeper, wider and more spacious presentation than any planar ( or speaker for that matter ) that i've ever heard. None the less, Omni's have their problems too. Since i like specific attributes of each design, i have dedicated systems set-up to run both : )