I would like to read some empirical grounding for this claim. Which 8" will noticeably compress to what degree more than what kind of 12" woofer and is this something we can perceive? I mean with good designs, not in general, I can imagine this
can be the case. I know from experience with photographic sensors that per pixel surface size cannot be made up for with any sort of tweak, array and increased unit count. This way one could argue that two 8", although they feature more surface area, cannot compete with one 12". But this is gross false statement when whe compare unit numbers in this example, which for medium format huge pixel pitch still go into the millions, versus 1 or 2 units in this speaker example. Or take any pro-audio mid-top speaker, some featuring 15" woofers: they do not produce chest slamming bass at all, sure, they want SPL and leave the bass to 18" subs. There will definitely be a difference in how the soundwave of the given spectrum is radiated and this can be measured and displayed, but someone's got to show this then and a based argument too. I used to fancy that center solidity is something I miss from hifi speakers with smaller woofers. But come on, this might just be another crude imagination suggested by visual appeal of size.
Also, armin, very cool! Looking forward to see the data..