It seems you haven't actually read their Concept 500 white paper I linked, in which they have a whole page on the importance of good dispersion characteristics, with measurements. Stereophile's measurements also show this evenly controlled dispersion, both
horizontal and
vertical. And it's a 2.5-way design, not 2-way. They're not exclusively a 'high-end' brand either, with products for every price range, starting at around $200 a pair for their 3010 and
3020 models, which have been given pretty much universal acclaim as great budget stand-mounters.
What needs to be understood is that companies like these are making mass-market products to home users, the majority of whom have no idea what things like directivity/dispersion are, and unfortunately these are not 'sexy' selling points to most people. It is the marketing departments of these companies who choose what to prioritize in their press releases / white papers / advertisements, and this is often not an accurate reflection of the priorities of the engineers who actually designed the speakers. It's quite obvious from measurements that Q Acoustics' speakers adhere to the fundamental evidence-based principles of good speaker design. Just because they also carefully consider less important aspects of the design (which are inflated by marketing), does not mean they're ignoring the more fundamental principles and should be overlooked as offering solid evidence-based speaker designs to the mass-market.
People are quite wrong to think the Harman approach is the only valid evidence based approach. It may be adopted as such by many on this forum but that does not make it absolute, though It is certainly part of the picture.
I have been interested by speakers (as an amateur, though a qualified noise and vibration engineer) since I built my first kit (KEFkit 3) in 1970.
I gently touched the mid range unit and was amazed how little vibration from the 5" unit was making so much sound. Then I felt the cabinet and thought "what the royal f*ck is that?" since, by touch, it didn't seem to be vibrating much less and it was a hugely bigger area than the cone.
Ever since then I have been intrigued by the design of speakers and how the cabinet radiation affected their accuracy.
I read what the BBC had done all those decades ago and have followed the various ideas (and it has to be said, fashions) on how speakers should be to an extent ever since.
Trial and error on prototypes with listening tests was all they could do but they showed WITHOUT ANY DOUBT that cabinet talk was a problem and researched methods to ameliorate it.
Nowadays much better methods are available and far more ideas can be modelled and tried.
Most of the "high-end" makers have sold the idea that just more rigid is better, which is expensive and may not even be true.
Several makers have addressed the problem in a much more thorough engineering way, including KEF and Q-Acoustics.
What ACTUALLY needs to be understood is that the work on directivity is important but not the only thing, and until somebody explains to me how the cabinet talk, WHICH IS KNOWN to be important too, is included in the sort of microphone spinorama type measurements, which so far I seems to be impossible, then it is only a part of the story, it may or may not be the most important evidence based parameter, we have not, here, yet got that data.
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