As I wrote here in the thread before, the reflections from the walls makes our brain calculating where the speaker is standing. You can hear exactly where it is when not looking. Compared to directional speakers (or damped room) where de reflections are much less and you cannot hear where the speaker is placed. -You just hear a stereo image in front of you. Regardless of speculating how the waves are reflecting inverting etc, thats what happens for your brain. I have tested it. Try the comparison if you have the possibility.An interesting juxtaposition of statements, because if so, the conclusion would have to be that speakers should emit an inverted version of the signal out of the back, to bounce around the room and mix with the non-inverted version at the front. Even if one espouses the conventional view of audio as being only about phase-free frequency response magnitudes (I don't), such a system produces radical comb filtering all around the speaker (like listening to two speakers wired in anti-phase) and this is reflected off the walls, floor and ceiling to the listener. This is a radical modification of what I would think was the obvious requirements of a speaker!
I just don't get this argument about self-evident 'boxy' speaker sound. I listen to box speakers, and if they are reasonably designed and constructed, to me they disappear and image well.
My understanding of audio would be that you would mess with anti-phase at your peril: in order for your hearing to separate direct sound from the room, it needs the reflections to be facsimiles of the direct sound, particularly in regard of time domain asymmetry and 'envelope'. We know that the way to create 'surround sound from stereo' is to use anti-phase. It's unstable, and not artefact-free. The open baffle speaker is like adding a few random speakers behind the main speakers, emitting an antiphase version of the signal, like an ad hoc 'Superwide Stereo (TM)' system.
Maybe it sounds 'like really spacey, man' but I think this is arbitrary spaciousness (kind of) and not proper stereo imaging.
Of course the amount of echo smearing the sound is affected by the reflections also, but in that case the rooms acoustic is really this bad and we talk about something else: useless listening room. However it helps a lot if the speakers are narrow. A combination with good acoustic in the room (reasonable damped) and narrow speakers are best, of course. I think most of us understand that.
Cheers,
/Per
Last edited: