My post didn't question their superb value for money, just showed their absolute limitations which seem to be currently inevitable at their price range, I hope in a future v2 version the will improve the radiation of their coax, bringing it to the current reference levels (which also will be seen in the score with sub and EQ).
I don't argue against limitations of the Orbits. Every speaker has its limits. But Spinorama score has only limited significance in that regard. Generally, I don't see that little wiggles in directivity are of higher importance than, for example, radiation into the whole rear hemisphere. Spinorama score only cares about the wiggles, not about total dispersion control. But the latter is imo more important for actual sound. In other words, I care less about transition regions between angular ranges that receive high btw. low sound level, than about the size of the respective angular ranges.
I totally disagree there, as it shows how well the radiation of the loudspeaker is and is even relevant for people are getting the maximum of their loudspeakers with EQ and subwoofers.
A sub cannot enlarge a small speaker. For example a Neumann KH 80 is not a good speaker for larger rooms despite 8.7 score (EQ+sub). And it's not only dynamic limitation. Also radiation pattern is not optimal for larger rooms. It becomes omnidirectional at fairly high frequency, which is to be expected from a small speaker. As a result, low direct-to-reflected sound-ratio causes a blurry sound image, when auditioned from typical livingroom distance. Small speakers are best for close listening distance.
If this wasn't the case, everyone could simply use a miniature speaker like the Audio Smile Little British Monitor, add subs and show all the big speakers how to make good sound. That's just not a realistic expectation. Also note how simple it is to get extremely high Spinorama scores with mini monitors. There is not even a waveguide on the tweeter. But with sub and EQ the score is 8.9 and even without EQ the sub alone gets it to 8.3. It beats the KH 80 score without any acoustic optimization. Radiation is omni below 800Hz, which is even wider than KH 80. And due to small drivers, vertical directivity is also very good for a non-coaxial speaker.
Now compare these small speakers to KH 420, which is somewhat directional down to 300Hz. Directivity plays an important role for small vs. big speaker sound. The Orbits take directivity control one step further by cancelling more rear sound than the KH 420 removes by acoustic shading from it's large enclosure. The Orbits are small speakers with radiation and low-frequency extension resembling very large speakers. Therefore, comparison of the Orbits against mini monitors based on Spinorama score makes no sense to me.
