Time and phase, in combination with amplitude, determine what we hear.

Sound is comprised of many different frequencies intermingled and combined to form complex waveforms. A speaker is time an phase correct when all the frequencies arrive at the listener's ears aligned in time and phase so that all the complex waveforms are intact.

The woofer, midrange, and tweeter will all reproduce their portions of the frequencies that make up this waveform. If the speaker is time and phase correct the outputs of the three drivers will add together at the listening position into a very close reproduction of the original waveform.

But if the drivers are not properly aligned, or they are not all connected in positive phase, or if a high-order, steep slope crossover is used, the ouputs from the drivers will arrive at the listening position out-of-step from each other and twisted in phase. Now we have a speaker with flat frequency response that cannot accurately recreate the musical waveforms. Believe it or not, this is exactly to case with the vast majority of loudspeakers.

So, why do most mainstream manufacturers and magazines focus only on the amplitude (frequency) response of speakers and ignore the critical time and phase? We believe this tunnel-vision approach is a direct result of a serious flaw that has affected almost every listening test ever done. The flaw is that they are TESTS.

We enjoy music as an emotional experience. We are drawn into good music, exhilarated by exciting music, relaxed by soothing music, and put-off by bad music. In a listening TEST, people put away their emotions and try to use their analytical mind to evaluate a speaker's performance. It's like trying to evaluate the quality of a classic painting by counting how many different colors are in it. The analytical mind focuses only on the surface, the frequency response, and ignores the reason for music; emotion.

Our opinion is that these evaluations made with the analytical mind have nothing to do with a speaker's true performance on music. They are cited in various circles as proof that time alignment doesn't matter, or that phase doesn't matter, or that all wires sound the same, or that all amps and CD players sound the same, but they all miss the fundamental truth. Listening to music is an emotional event and cannot be accurately evaluated by the analytical mind.