I simply don't understand how a speaker company can make such basic mistakes in engineering like this.
Just constraints from the marketing department.
I’m expect there were no engineers involved on the design. Marketing needed a narrow height speaker.
I think it's ridiculous Polk can't or won't do better.
It's not a basic engineering mistake. It is meeting the demands of the market, both the practical ("This is the only space I have for a center channel") and the ignorant ("A center channel should have woofers on each side of a tweeter, because almost every one I see is like that")/
- Yes, sometimes engineers have no say, latter-day Advent was a spec thrown over the wall from Sales and engineers just following that.
- But even sales/marketing are trying to get something
sellable and 3-way costs significantly more.*
- I am certain Polk could do better, how much do you care to spend? It's all about DA BUDGET
*It will be interesting to see if the recent motion towards seriously larger tweeter waveguides and lower crossovers like on powered monitors will finally light a bulb in some home speaker person's head, whereby a horizontal Woofer-Tweeter-Woofer layout could have much better horizontal dispersion than the norm with little cost increase.
It would also be interesting if the old cone tweeters got revisited with modern materials, instead of domes. Not holding my breath.
Also not holding my breath for more-sensitive BMR drivers...