"Sam" wrote in message
om...
Many loudspeakers incorporate some type of time alighnment scheme in
their design such as a sloping baffle. Is this truly necessary? Can
people actually perceive the difference in speed between high
frequencies and low frequencies? When you listen to a live orchestra
do you hear the bass drum before you hear a high from a flute?

No, you don't. That's the point of time alignment.
Can
someone explain to me the significance of pace, rhythm, and timing in
our audio playback systems

Sam

Preface:
A sloping baffle by itself does not provide time alignment.
It must be combined with a 1st order crossover.
For example, NEAR 50 speakers, with a sloping baffle, are not time aligned.

Argument:
It is highly debated.
The output of a square pulse as rendered by a time aligned speaker looks
like a square pulse. Other designs render it as two or three unrecognizable
waveforms, mysteriously percieved by most people to be the same.

Many studies claim that the ear is insensitive to time delay.
Others claim that the last iota of imaging quality is provided by this
method.
Yet time alignment exists only if the listener positions himself at one spot
in space.
The Spica TC-50 and TC-60 were perhaps the first speakers to popularize time
alignment.
But whether the time alignment, or the 1st order crossover, or the felt
covering the baffle, or a combination of all these things is responsible for
the image clarity, is subject to debate.

Time aligned speakers have low power handling capacity, as a consequence of
the 1st order crossover. Hence they are not suitable for listening at
greater than moderate volume.