Our horn speaker does have a constant narrow directivity. But yeah, it is big!The CBT is a unique speaker that does not function like typical multiways. It is simply not a useful comparison.
Look, I don't think there are many speakers out there that spit out true constant, narrow vertical beam outside of PA speakers, but those never fire alone, only in arrays. I don't know why people started in the last while saying that vertical reflections are so harmful to clarity and so forth. It sure isn't that clear-cut in the research, where the conclusions I've gathered suggest more or less that the effects range from a very slight benefit/neutral to harmful in experimental settings. Outside of artificial experimental settings, there are so few examples of available speakers that actually allow a person to isolate the effect of vertical reflections without other factors confounding that judgement.
Personally, I've heard consistent and inconsistent vertical directivity combined with good and bad horizontal directivity. I think we are all in agreement that poor, inconsistent horizontal directivity has plenty of bad effects. The only arguments on this point concern what kind of radiation pattern is optimal (wide, narrow, constant, sloping, stepped).
On vertical directivity, we don't even have something resembling a consensus. There are plenty of circumstances in which inconsistent vertical directivity becomes objectionable and plenty where it does not. It is just hard to tell what is good vs. bad when looking at measurements. There hasn't been enough research done on the topic which isn't limited in one sense or another. Consistent vertical directivity on an otherwise excellent speaker I've never had the chance to hear. I would love for an owner of the large Perlisten speakers or for Erin, Amir or any other reviewer to include in their listening some report about how speakers sound at different heights.
My experience is that I will never again buy standard multiway towers, bookshelves or monitors with vertical lobing. But all noncoaxial speakers are impacted by lobing to some extent. How to assess that is the question, and I don't think the right design answer is solely narrow vertical beams.
Here is the CBT45 by the way. It was passive.
And the response of the CBT45 vs height at 1m distance.