Such loudspeakers are only really useful, presuming one's goal is ideal sound quality, in highly reverberant rooms with near boundry placement. Due to the limited off-axis response of such a unit (even noted by the designer) room interction would be greatly minimized. In a room where there is no possibility to control any reflections, even via furniture placement, this is superior, but in typical domestic living rooms it has been shown that loudspeakers with off-axis performance similar to on-axis are prefered over high directivity for a variety of reasons [1, 2]. Please note these findings are in regard to mid/far field listening. Nearfield situations are less concerned with polar response as there is only about a ten degree listening window.
A common complain of these studies is that trained listeners were used which means the results are not generalizable to regular listeners. This has been shown to be false with the only differences between trained and untrained listeners being choice variance, length of time needed to make judgments and critical nature of the judgments [3]. Also, it is important to note that training effects on untrained listeners become readily apparent after as few as three serious listening sessions [3].
[1] Loudspeaker Measurements and Their Relationship to Listener Preference - Part 1. Toole, E. Floyd. J. Audio Engineering Soc., Vol. 34, No. 4. Pages 227 - 235. April 1986.
[2] Loudspeaker Measurements and Their Relationship to Listener Preference - Part 2. Toole, E. Floyd. J. Audio Engineering Soc., Vol. 34, No. 5. Pages 323 - 348. May 1986.
[3] Differences in Performance and Preference of Trained vs Untrained Listeners in Speaker Tests. Olive, E. Sean. J. Audio Engineering Soc., Vol. 51, No. 9. Pages 806 - 825. September 2003.
