Forum members and forum readers are certainly not average consumers. Nevertheless, many forum members and probably even more readers use lower cost speakers than the better/best Genelec/Neumann/D&D/Kii offers. For many, Orbits may be close to the maximum amount they want to spend - although very good value for money, they aren't exactly cheap. People shopping in this price range rightfully expect high sound quality and also value full frequency range and maybe even small size. Most will be happy with what Orbits deliver.
Generally, I'm intersted in technical discussion based on facts not opinions. If certain distortion levels are acceptable for a highly regarded speaker, these must also be acceptable for a lower cost speaker. Has the micro-smoothness of the transition between high and low SPL regions in directivity plots more acoustic effect than the overall shape and size of these regions? Is a small speaker with sub the same as a large one? If not, what's the difference? Or to put it different, can I just buy that small Neumann/Genelec/Ascilab speaker, add a sub and get big speaker performance as spinorama scores seem to suggest? How loud is loud enough and for which application? Does it make sense to let a speaker play down to 30Hz at 86dB SPL and even at 96db SPL in-room, when it can't play fullrange at higher SPL? I would like to see a discussion of such toppics without people getting worked up. But this seems impossible to some...
