I think so, too. There's an article here that says something on those lines:
It suggests that slim speakers are just a fashion and don't sound as good as they used to - this seems to ring true to me. I like "monkey coffins".
Thanks! Very interesting. This guy expresses it very clearly:
Finally, we have the third graph. This is again a box speaker, like the second example, but this is a box with a wide (18”) cabinet. As a result of the wide cabinet, the speaker starts to direct its radiation forward at around 300 Hz, instead of the 800 Hz of the mini-monitor. The "baffle step" from omni to essentially forward is more than an octave lower.
Of course, at first sight, it might not seem all that advantageous to have the “baffle step” , the transition from omni to forward[“4 π to 2 π”] radiation, at the lower frequency here compared to the higher frequency of the mini monitor. But a basic psychoacoustic fact
already noted makes the difference: Up to around 300 Hz, the ear/brain hears balance as a unit, with no substantive distinction between direct sound, reflected sound, and room sound. The response heard is the total room response. But from 300 Hz on up, there is a transition into hearing the reflected sound and room sound separately from the direct arrival.