Vivid Audio has shaped their drivers which is perhaps more important then shaping the cabinets. The drivers are designed to allow the back waves to flow more freely past the magnet and spider towards the dampening. Looking at most drivers even on very expensive speakers it is easy to see that a large portion of those back waves are just going to bounce off the magnet and spider and fly back through the thinnest part of the cabinet, the very thin cone. There goes the clarity.
I’ve never heard Vivid Audio speakers, but would like to. They are compelling in light of how their sound is described, and are said to be very dynamic and resolved. Perhaps you could elaborate?
What you mention though with regard to the free flow of the back waves emitted by the drivers seems if not unimportant, then a curious highlight from anyone other than the manufacturer itself. I’m not saying this particular technical feat doesn’t matter, but what is it to us really to speculate into these issues when what most of us really do is being immersed in the totality of their reproduced sound? What I’m getting at is the effect of being lead on by claims that seek to explain this and that feat and its sonic importance, when we can only really assume its (ir-)relevance and should perhaps refrain from any further deduction. For example, many of us have been spoon-fed with the apparent importance of speakers being slender, that (multiple) smaller drivers are quicker, that certain diaphragm materials are desirable, that totally inert cabinets are a must, etc., and we then go on to label this off as the truth ourselves. Let’s not pretend to be oblivious to the business importance of brand distinction, the domestic (spouse-)demands for smaller size, the want for convenience and on and on, and how all of this is catered to to varying degrees by the manufacturer. It seems to me we’ve lost at least some, or even a vital part of reference outside of what the industry "dictates" or fashions, a reference that rests more solely within the listener.
It should be noted that heavy speakers boasting their size and weight actually work against physics in that heavier materials resonant at a lower frequency. Low frequencies are much harder to deal with. Much harder. Larger cabinets will always propel greater amounts of cabinet resonance into the room. The reason is simple. If the area of the cabinet is 100 times the area of the driver then the cabinet only has to resonate at 100th the amount of the driver to deliver the same amount of energy into the room. The test for this is to stop at a traffic light next to a car with a subwoofer in the trunk. The sound is amplified by the surface area of the car..
A propos.. Reading over at Oswalds Mill Audio on the choice of hardwoods for building their very large conical horns and cabinets, Mr. Weiss mentioned particular woods as being sonically desirable (i.e.: "the ones that sound good"). So, this is actually acknowledging the contribution of the surfaces not being the diaphragms themselves, but that would otherwise play a factor in the overall sonic outcome, and work with them as part of a whole. Others would fret over the issue of progressive size and its associating resonant tendencies, and altogether ditch their justification. Or, try to work around them as a means of seeking resonance elimination, and end up with enclosures the weight of several hundred kilos a piece, and a new set of challenges with the drivers being the by far biggest sonic contributor - not necessarily desirable.
