Fig.5 shows how the 5.3's balance changes to its sides. In a normal, not-too-lively room, the slight flare in the presence region (due to the tweeter's wide dispersion at the bottom of its passband) will compensate for a slight lack of on-axis energy in the same region. The silk-dome tweeter may have an on-axis peak in the top octave, but it has very narrow directivity in this region: the exact high-treble balance in-room can be managed by experimenting with the speakers' toe-in to the listening position. Note that the woofers are more directional at the top of their passband than might be expected from their small radiating diameters and the narrowness of the baffle. Vertically (fig.6), the perceived balanced does not change significantly as long as the listener's ears are between the top of the cabinet and the upper woofer axis.

Fig.5 Soliloquy 5.3, lateral response family at 50", normalized to response on tweeter axis, from back to front: differences in response 90 degrees-5 degrees off-axis, reference response, differences in response 5 degrees-90 degrees off-axis.

Fig.6 Soliloquy 5.3, vertical response family at 50", from back to front: differences in response 15 degrees-5 degrees above HF axis, reference response, differences in response 5 degrees-10 degrees below HF axis.

In the time domain, the Soliloquy's step response (fig.7) indicates that the tweeter is connected in inverted acoustic polarity, with a complete cycle in its output preceding the positive-polarity step from the woofers. The 5.3's cumulative spectral-decay plot (fig.8) is basically free from treble resonant problems—KR did note how grainless the speaker's presentation was.—John Atkinson

Fig.7 Soliloquy 5.3, step response on tweeter axis at 50" (5ms time window, 30kHz bandwidth).

Fig.8 Soliloquy 5.3, cumulative spectral-decay plot at 50" (0.15ms risetime).