Okay, the gloves are off. Let the fur fly

I think TWL is being a little disingenuous with his question here. He is obviously perfectly well aware (as are all of his fine respondents above) of the various "technical" advantages, disadvantages, and tradeoffs inherent in any of the schools of speaker design. It's just that he is insistent on maintaining that such perfectly legitimate issues as high and low frequency extension, freedom from dynamic compression, fidelity to absolute volume level, and dispersion characteristics and radiation pattern are somehow not as germane to musical "truth" as the qualities he values above these. What he cannot do is "prove" that the tradeoffs he prefers are any less "technically" deleterious to the musical signal than those he disfavors. When such real-world factors as size, cost, appearance, ease of placement, ease of system matching, and the likelihood of a good-sounding overall result are considered, multi-way cone-in-box speakers will often have the advantage. Advances in the applications of digital crossovers, built-in amplification, and unconventional enclosure designs (composite materials, computer-optimized shaping and damping) may further stretch TWL's "point".

Well, now that TWL has revealed himself to be the "agent provocateur" some of us suspected all along, I will add this caveat to my comments above: It is doubtlessly true that many speaker manufacturers' design "choices" are in fact dictated to some degree by the selection of conventional OEM drivers available to them (when such manufacturers don't make their own). This, plus the the existing body of engineering knowledge pertaining to the building of yet another dynamic box design, makes it much easier for a start-up to enter the fray with this type of product, rather than to finance and carry out all the research that would be needed to bring new technology in single-driver design to market. Seen in this light, one might conclude that not only is the dominance of multi-way dynamic boxes somewhat self-perpetuating, it may actually be inhibiting the further development of potential alternatives.

TWL - Of course that descriptive was meant in fun. Your statement at the beginning about slings and arrows - maybe you're trying to catch some where there are none? No need to apologize for having a point of view here (or to ride in on a Trojan horse just to stir the pot!). BTW, I happen to have a fascination with line-source panels, and hope to one day own some as well (my speakers are Thiel CS 2.2's). But in the meantime, do you have any hot suggestions about what to listen to in the way of crossover-less single-driver designs? Cheers yourself!