Speaker cabinet construction..

Interesting. This is a well known problem. It is why speaker quality can in effect be somewhat correlated to weight and the knuckle rap test. The heavier in general the better. Thin walls (like Harbeth) will have more coloration than heavy damped designs.

What is not mentioned is that these efforts may be negated in large part due to significant audible distortion from ports on speakers. Since VSA relies heavily on ports in any of its designs it is odd that this aspect is not mentioned in the article (ports can ring well up into the midrange).

Cabinet distortion can also be attenuated through soffitt mounting provided the speaker is properly decoupled from the wall, bracing and several inches of rubber/fibreglass and extra thick multiple layers of heavy MDF (not pine) may also be needed (a concrete or brick wall being ideal)

Indeed...once they decide on ported design, no matter how much effort they put elsewhere, the result will likely be less than ideal...

Ports are of use dont toss the babie out with the bath water. But for smaller rooms and close seating. A sealed design will be far less colored and easyer to place. Poor designed loudspeaker cabinets can add much coloration to sound, smearing image since tweeters midrange etc is vibrating on baffle, causes bloom in bass notes since cab walls become a driver, plus reduction in low bass responce. Vibration on cabinets can be controled so vibrations do not cause problems. Seems many loudspeakers go more for WAF then performance and cabinet material choice show this.