I have a question that often goes unoticed in crossover design, Genelecs offer a setting for people that place their speakers on a surface (a table or shelf .etc) that changes the response of the speaker in an interesting way.
I don't know the exact use case Genelec is basing on (mixer size, listening distance, ear height,...) - can certainly be simulated or, much easier, just make a measurement.
At 160Hz, the wavelength is 2.1m, perhaps there are edge diffraction effects through the mixing console, which leads to an exaggeration in this frequency range?
Where are the studio engineers, they should know something like that
A 15" woofer in the right shaped box has pretty good cardioid/supercardioid behaviour by itself and doesn't suffer loss of output in the same way a passive or active cardioid does, BEM directivity simulations below, at 400Hz the rear output is more than 15dB down and at 160 degrees it is over 20dB down. The D&D, Kii and the Directiva R2 have more even directivity over a wider bandwidth.
You raise an interesting point. The radiation pattern below 1kHz of a D&D, Kii or even the Directiva r2 is quite similar to that of a very large floorstanding speaker.
Compared to a 15'' driver, the Directiva r2's radiation below 400Hz is even significantly better.
Here for comparison sonogram and polar diagram of the 15'' woofer in the large cabinet,
from post#1101, with the Directiva r2 at identical scaling:
Perhaps the r2 can (partially) deliver the "sound characteristics" of a large floorstanding loudspeaker (with a corresponding bass module for r2), with a significantly smaller footprint.
In the forum there is the "
Subwoofers make all big speakers obsolete?" thread. For "normal" small 2-way speakers plus SW, the question can be clearly answered in the negative, because the radiation will differ too much and therefore a comparable sound characteristic will never be achieved (ratio of direct and reflected sound).
With passive or active control of radiation, small speakers can rival large speakers in terms of radiation.
How close this comes to the listening experience of large speakers, if the difference in max SPL is significant, I can not say.