Pundits will tell you that good loudspeakers will not fix a room with poor acoustics. I would add that poor loudspeakers won't do much improve the sound in a room with ideal acoustics.
Regardless of the acoustical environment, consistent coverage is always the ideal goal for a loudspeaker, or a loudspeaker system. Consistent coverage (bandwidth versus specified coverage angles) is often the difference between more expensive loudspeakers and their less-well-behaved, and less expensive alternatives.
Measuring frequency bandwidth and rated coverage patterns can only be reliably done in an anechoic environment with sophisticated microphones, measurement tools and evaluating the results by an experienced professional. Using a hand-held camcorder to create a You Tube file to be played back on off-the-shelf computer speakers is no way to evaluate a loudspeaker. However, if the audio from the video below is real, the CBT speakers from Audio Artistry certainly deserve a closer look.
http://www.youtube.com/user/mthemaniac?feature=mhee
Now the loudspeakers in the video are not professional audio loudspeakers. We're told the video was shot in a hotel suite during the 2013 Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas. So keep in mind that these loudspekaers are primarily designed for high-end, in-home use.
However, oddly enough, an earlier version of the Audio Artistry CBT Series loudspeakers are installed in a 900-seat church about ½ a mile from my house. Church Production featured the project in an article in March 2012
Having heard recorded music through the church system, I can say the vertical and horizontal coverage are excellent, though it was hard to tell if that's the result of a well-behaved room or the loudspeaker design.
However, having heard a fairly big system using the Audio-Artistry CBT design, and knowing the pedigree of the engineer responsible for the design (Don Keele and I worked at Electro-Voice together, though we never met until many years later. He has also worked at JBL, Klipsch and Harman/Becker), I have a tendency to believe that the audio in the recording could be real.
What do you think?
Related Articles:
Portable Loudspeaker Systems: Multipurpose Utility
