The Magnepan description at 2:15 minutes or thereabouts, describing "Toole's" research is totally wrong - an outright lie. The first requirement of a good sounding loudspeaker is its on-axis response, second, it's early reflection response, and at low frequencies, its steady-state in-room response. Sound power by itself is a poor correlate of overall sound quality. It is useful because it is a component in the traditional metric of directivity index, and if it is smooth, it can help confirm the absence of resonances.
BS baffles brains, especially when people don't read and promoters of products are simply either ignorant or deliberately misleading. I suspect both in this case. He is using it only to get my name in there. It pisses me off !!!!
Wendell was rushing to get out of the office for a well-deserved vacation, so he asked me to pass this along:
I regret that my remark has caused distress, and that it was apparently misinterpreted. My admiration for your contributions is genuine and, as with many loudspeaker manufacturers, has been beneficial to our design efforts. The last thing we want to do is misrepresent your work, either intentionally or not.
We at Magnepan go out of our way to avoid the kind of technical doubletalk that, unfortunately, is all too common in industry promotions. As I've stated often, we want our speakers to be evaluated on the basis of sound quality, rather than technical one-upmanship. What we say is the truth insofar as we understand it, and my long-time policy has marketing director has been to "undersell and overdeliver."
We didn't claim, nor do we believe, that power response is the primary determinant of loudspeaker quality; as you say, the most important characteristic of a good loudspeaker is good on-axis performance, and that was our first priority in designing and optimizing the 30.7. I chose to emphasize power response rather than on-axis performance in my North American tour for two reasons: one, it made for a more interesting demonstration, and two, because I know by experience that when the energy is uneven in a room, I am not convinced that it sounds like an orchestra.
Our loudspeakers wouldn't sell if we were indifferent to the technical properties that contribute to good sound, and your work has been an integral part of that effort. If my remarks were inaccurate or subject to misinterpretation, I apologize. It certainly was not my intent.
Wendell Diller
Director of Marketing, Magnepan