There are examples of speakers with worse measurements that were recommended afterall. I would also like your opinion on the impact of an untreated room on the early reflections and why do you consider that parameter more important than other factors. To put it more clearly could you rank the factors you consider more important in a speaker - room system?
Oh gosh, the answer isn't simple if you also want to "prove" it.
Let's assume as a normal case that most drivers today, if used properly, have moderate to low distortion and relatively good decay. And, that listening behavior includes low to moderate sound pressure levels - for someone who likes to listen with very high sound pressure levels in a huge listening room, the following weighting would look different.
Normal listening room, mid or large wall and ceiling distance:
1. direct sound
2. speaker radiation, distortion, decay, compression
Normal listening room, small wall and ceiling distance:
1. direct sound, speaker radiation
2. distortion, decay, compression
In the first, large room, the side walls are 1m further from the speaker. For the red marked first order reflection, this means that it has a 3.5dB higher sound pressure level (at the listening position) in the small room compared to the larger listening room.
Accordingly, this reasoning can be carried out for all other reflections of first order (or even higher order), then it quickly becomes clear how much the room size (and the distance to reflecting surfaces) has an influence on the overall sound. In this regard, I can only refer again and again to a
section in a Floyd Toole's lecture, where these connections (direct sound and diffuse/reflective sound) are impressively explained.
In the room sketches with the first-order reflections, the corresponding radiation angles are also drawn in (I have omitted the front reflection), when the speaker on-axis FR is aligned with the listening position.
So for the horizontal first order reflections we have to look more closely at the angular frequency response measurements with 20°, 40° and 80° for loudspeakers (for our example listening rooms).
For this purpose I have selected two speakers on
spinorama.org that show a similar radiation pattern as the upgrade version of the SCM16.
Unfortunately, the hor FR are displayed only up to 60 °, so instead of 60 ° should be shown 80 °, but for our purposes the illustration is sufficient.
The yellow bars indicate the particularly problematic frequency range of the speakers. If we could cut out this area, the speakers would have a even radiation.
here are the corresponding CTA-2034-A diagrams, which also show the problems (see e.g. DI and ERDI).
Dynamic compression is, with a "normal" loudspeaker, less than +-0.5dB at dynamic peaks with moderate sound pressure level.
Distortion of any kind is usually well below -30dB above 100-200Hz for a "normal" loudspeaker at moderate sound pressure level.
In total, the sound pressure levels of the reflections at the listening position, in a small listening room, are even above the axial frequency response for a large frequency range, so they have an enormous influence on e.g. the tonality of the loudspeaker.
Hence my personal order of the various influences.