My guess is that the bass region isn’t really relevant because low frequencies are omnidirectional.
True, the turning point from bidirectional to omnidirectional is around 200hz. A side note is that it applies to random daily sounds as when there is any noise in life crossing those frequencies we are poorly to not able to locate it directly.
Altough it is a bit debatable as when it comes to music and loudspeakers that the same theory applies or just gets a bit different. Because when music plays we have a constant source and plenty of time to trace the bass source and when we know where the sub is there it will remain at that point for our ears and brain because we anchor it there. This should to some justify the use of a double sub in a stereo setup.
It’s in the midrange and treble that the ‘focus’ we hear as a solid sound stage - stereo - is created I believe.
A better cabinet will reduce colouration, and a better crossover will help the frequencies pass more evenly from one driver to the next.
Yes indeed.What is interesting is that the best loudspeaker designers most likely know a couple of things (understatement) about psychoacoustics as in perception of sound, the working of the ear and translation to our brain (which was not the answer to what created a certain illusion) . It is this engineering part which I consider interesting. Our ears and brain are not the source as some earlier answers would suggest but the receiver, and the philosophy behind a working mix to create certain emphasis and illusions is interesting in my opinion. Amar Bose was an engineer who studied this subject and applied certain elements and it is has for sure been a topic among good developers.
Some developers want their loudspeaker to emphasise the male or female voice for example, something which we can catch in a certain frequency range and can be used to get a good score in reviews. I often get the idea that reviewers mainly lay out why they like something but probably not have an idea what little set of adjustments in design are used to get that character or why type x is type x.
The developers might know how to tweak plenty of things to give one speaker a different character to another and "not" have the entry level model beat the one a few steps up the ladder and certainly not their current flag ship.