Are dome midrange better than cone designs?

I have owned and built quite a few speakers which have used dome mids.

In my opinion they are cpable of superb sound.They are generally less coloured and more natural sounding than even the best of cone midranges.
They seem to be extremely hard to use though and their biggest failing is that image depth is compromised by ,as I understand it,their wide dispersion pattern.

Most speakers that use dome mids have poor central imaging and depth.Yamaha NS1000s and 1200s are typical examples of this.

Duntech and more recently Sonique and Aslan Acoustics use two dome mids with a tweeter in between,set back these drivers to time align them,and surround them with profiled felt which effectively narrows their dispersion pattern.
Used this way dome midranges will produce excellent depth and precisioning of imaging.

The Sonique Encore SE use this format.These are superb sounding speakers.I think the best box speakers I have heard.

The dome mids I've heard on Infinity Kappas and Energy Veritas excelled with sax, woodwinds and to some degree with female vocals. They had a breathing quality rivalling ribbons and 'stat's. Because of limited bandwidth, they are best on 4-way or limited 3-way designs.

I was really enthused until I read Jtgofish's problems with imaging.
It is pretty simple to put the 4" Flexbar into a pre-made .375 cu-ft Parts-Express cabinet. Mating a good tweeter may be the problem as Audio technology recommends an x-over of 6kHz. X-over that low means it needs to be done right. i would imagine with such a high quality mid any defect will be VERY noticeable.
Just looking at parts cost, this speaker would be ~$800. use typical hi-fi 6x mark-up and they would cost $4,800 in a salon. Pretty good value if they can be done right.
I am afraid they will be too good and I'll have to upgrade to $10,000 Atma-shpere amps.

Thanks Shadorne for the link.

Cdc: "I was really enthused until I read Jtgofish's problems with imaging."

Keep in mind, that's just Jtgofish's opinion and maybe so with those Yamaha models. Several speaker design (not neccessarily the driver) issues could be the culprit of stated negatives as well.

Shadorne and I both have ATC 100's, and I'm not sure I/we agree with Jtgofish's generalized statement. But that's just MY opinion.

Shadorne?

.........