Originally Posted by
Mr. Widget
Actually you are making my point exactly... one that I must not have made clearly.
Take any 43xx 3-way, 4-way... they can be multi-amped and precisely time aligned and it will not significantly change their imaging. This is because like most speakers of the last 50 years, the polar response across their entire spectrum is a raging nightmare. Mirror imaging doesn't fix this, time alignment doesn't fix this, realistically there is nothing to be done with these designs if imaging is the goal.
To get a very consistent and controlled polar response from ~500Hz up is very difficult without waveguides and a fair amount of design and care. As it turns out coaxial designs like the modern KEF LS50, the Genelec Monitors, and the vintage UREIs have inherently better directivity control (wide frequency response range polar response) than traditional speakers... AR3a, L100s, and >90% of everything else out there. Many of the better designed 2-way mini-monitors image well because the small woofer and dome tweeter on a compact and narrow baffle can exhibit very good directivity, but even following this model is no guaranty.