well, I will give short ans:So you're talking about $1000 active speakers? Forget about the Altec Lansing 5.1
I lift several points:
- "LGK may sound ok in near field"
- "LGK sharp drop below 200hz" <= Add a sub then
- "Experience is useless but I tried several speakers and preferred the Genelec"
It's like the LGK are deemed hot garbage here and have 0 qualities because "they distort at high SPL". Fullrange drivers have undeniable qualities. But if you only look at frequency response and high SPL you'll never get the appeal. Getting rid of the crossover has benefits. You gain efficiency. You avoid phase issues between mutliple drivers. You get a point source.
1) may sound ok if you've not experienced anything better, much like back in the days any $10 earbuds sounds fantastic when we were a child
2) you need a sub and crossing them at >150hz, it means the placement of sub can't be as free as it's above where one can notice the localization of the sub, and when you add a sub with restricted placement and phase issues, what's the point to get a point source without crossover?? it just becomes a sub+mid-tweeter 2 way man
3) what I meant is not my personal preference of Genelec, what I mean is one can only experience so much, and each step one purchases a new level of stuffs, one would usually feel it's amazing and can't be better, until the better arrives, which is what we called bias and subjective here.
the LGK is deemed hot garbage is because it is touted as Giant killer which it isn't, and the finished pair is costing $1000, at that price it better not distort at NORMAL SPL, mind you, 86db @ 1m is not that high when frequency goes low, equal loudness curve told us you need a lot more going below mids and my problem is what it goes horrendous distort at 200-500hz, and modern music usually contains quite some bass notes, at those bass notes, with the lack of high pass filter in the LGK, it will distort at much lower SPL, so in a desktop, when you never know that is actually something called mid/upper bass, it could sound OK at best but not anything above say, a fostex PM0.4 costing similar to the base LGK kit.
Point source is always good but also difficult as ___ to properly implement, and can be done in some nice engineered coaxial.