I absolutely agree with everything in this article and it agrees with my experience.
I agree that a full range integrated speakers are superior to speakers/sub. The problem is that it is difficult and expensive to engineer. For optimal results and if honest, essential, for the speaker to be at least partially active. My endeavors showed me that for optimal results a full range option was the best sounding solution. That is why I chose that option. The right and left speakers and rear backs are full range speakers. The 3db point of the center is 45Hz, with 12 db per octave roll off, and the surrounds -3db point 52 Hz 12 db per octave roll off. Only the ceiling speakers are crossed over and the others run full range. The sub channels are mixed into the right and left fronts starting at 40 Hz. You can get good room curves with other options, but running as described above produces easily the best listening experience.
I have mentioned the room power response many times. Yes, you need an accurate near field axis response. But if the combination of the first arrival response and reflected response don't closely match all is lost. I think if you have the luxury of a large enough room, the best sound of good speakers is in the far field.
I agree that absolute phase is a crock. However, many deny the aberrations caused by phase, and therefore time discrepancies, that do not affect FR. However I have pointed out many times, that you can design a speaker with a perfect FR, but with enough phase/time aberrations it is totally useless. Steve correctly pointed out that phase aberrations are particularly deleterious in the midband. This in my view when designing speakers with conventional crossover technology, you have to be very conscious of where you place the crossover. I avoid crossing over drivers from 700 Hz to 2.5KHz like the absolute plague. If you do that, you will have a speaker that is wide of the mark. If I can I like to avoid crossing over between 500 Hz and 4KHz.
Now there is a bit of a caveat to the above which masks it. That is recording techniques with mics scattered all over the place, and placed far too close to instruments. This sort of engineering malpractice is the rule rather than the exception. So the result is a recording just fully peppered with phase/time anomalies, and masks the speaker issues. If you make phase coherent recordings with minimalist mic techniques you will hear these speaker anomalies without difficulty.
The Detroit symphony have their own high end AV facilities. They have gone to the three spaced omni technique and no longer pepper the stage with mics. The sound is stunningly good, and incredibly realistic, with exceptional imaging, sounic depth of field and realistic ambience. You really feel you are there. It is also helped by a phenomenally good 4K video. This is the way it should be done.
Hopefully there will be a move to speakers connected to the home ethernet and fully active speakers with DSP for total time delay correction. This should be able to be done without requiring remortgage of the home. I am very optimistic this will come. I would advise anyone building a home theater, to put AC power at every speaker location and conduit for ethernet cat 6 at least. So the pre/pro will feed the speakers via ethernet connection. This will happen and will be major step forward. Then finally we will see the back of those awful troublesome receivers, which are well past their sell by date, if they ever had one.
