Well, you certainly liked these speakers. How ever the question has to be asked. "Could these speakers be better for the money?"
Which leads me to ask the questions. How much influence do marketers have over design choice? The next is how do companies spend their research and development dollars?
So lets look at the concept. Marketers, we must have a three way. The public think its better. Well is it? Next we need three bass drivers that looks more cool than two. Next lets have lots of ports.
Lets take the last two requests first. First off the three chambers and ports. There really is only one optimal tuning for a given woofer. So one is correct and the others have a degree of miss alignment. So we assume one woofer is loaded optimally. The bottom enclosure as it is larger in the picture must be the extended bass alignment.
This has a lower F3 at the expense of raised Q. The other would be the high output alignment. The tell tale evidence of that is the ripple around 70 Hz, as that is the calling card of these alignments.
The three drivers has increased power handing, but lowered impedance which for the HT crowd will embarrass some receivers, especially more recent models.
So one has to ask the question, would we be better off with two drivers with more robust motor system and suspension. I would give that a probably yes.
Now we get to the choice of a three way design. A 300 Hz crossover on the lower end is pushing your luck. However what is a bigger problem is the complication of a three way worth it when it has to be crossed right in the speech discrimination band at 2.1 KHz. At the same time the crossover spread is not quite 3 octaves. In your measurements you can see some degree of band pass gain remaining as you would expect given the 12 db slopes.
So my contention the downsides and expense of a three way design here has not been justified. It is perfectly possible to build 6.5 inch drivers with bandwidths that allow crossover in the 2.5 to 4 KHz range. Here we have a mid driver that crosses at 2.1 KHz.
So my contention is that money could have been saved with two bass drivers and no mid. The saved money could have been put into better drivers and less better quality components in a simpler crossover. I think that would have made a speaker you would have liked better.
Now lets get to the laid back character, and the falling HF response. I agree a much more forgivable fault than a rising response, but a fault none the less. Now this fault probably seems strange to those who have wrestled with these problems. However it is not strange at all. I suspect that the midrange cone is breaking up badly out of band. This has meant the tweeter has had to be overly attenuated to prevent a worse problem, a rise in output centered around 3 KHz. I suspect given their drivers they made the optimal listening balance.
So again it makes the case for putting money into better quality drivers.
So what of three ways. There really is not much point unless the mid driver is pretty powerful and has a wide pass band. There is a lot of power in the midband. Unless the midband driver has a bandwidth to allow crossover at least form somewhere in the 400 to 500 Hz range on the bottom end and at least 3.5 Hz then you are better off with a two way design. In my experience for most available drivers two mids and not one are really required for decent power band in that width.
So yes, we have a speaker you like, but I have the strong hunch that you would have liked a well executed simpler design with better components better.
