What is the "closest approach to the original sound" seems to very greatly between audiophiles.

Thiel immediately comes to mind when discussing sloped baffles and time/phase coherency.

http://thielaudio.com/THIEL_Site05/Pages/FAQs/faqtimephase.html#anchor564257

The now defunct Meadowlark also used sloped baffles, transmission line designs and simple crossovers.

Having briefly sampled these speaker, their design philosophies and engineering approaches merit investigation by any "audiophile". That said, there ain't no perfect loudspeaker and the over used cliche, "more than one way to skin a cat" also applies here.

Speaking of sloped designs, what ever happened to Spica? Did they go under or were they engulfed?

I believe Parasound "engulfed" them and then killed or let the brand die-off, or some such.

Quote:

Thiel immediately comes to mind when discussing sloped baffles and time/phase coherency.

http://thielaudio.com/THIEL_Site05/Pages/FAQs/faqtimephase.html#anchor564257

Wow. What a load of dingo's kidneys :-). I read a little on Thiel's website. At first I was believing it and then I realized that it's not possible for opposite phases to "cancel" each other just by adding. One signal that's ahead of the mean by 45 degrees is not going to "cancel out" one that is behind by the same amount. They can't, because they're not occurring at the same TIME. Thiel even makes this point in their explanation, but how can two things that happen at different times (for example a transient that has components in each driver) cancel each other out?

*sigh*