On Mon, Dec 31, 2012 at 2:14 PM, Neil <djdualcore@gmail.com> wrote:

On Sun, Dec 30, 2012 at 8:28 PM, Fernando Lopez-Lezcano
<nando@ccrma.stanford.edu> wrote:
> Just a thought: a speaker with an extended frequency response (ie: able to
> reproduce ultrasound) could sound "better" because the high frequency driver
> is more linear and better behaved in the _audible_ range, and not because it
> is able to reproduce sound above our hearing limit...

Good point. I don't doubt at all that the speakers in question sound great.

Neil

It's a simple reason if you have the math background: signals with compact support in the time domain have infinitely long tails in the frequency domain. By having more high frequency range, you improve the temporal response of the transducer.
At the ends of the frequency range, the group delay becomes significant and shifts some components of the signal more than others. A wide-band transducer with high damping is better able to reproduce the signals that you feed it, but also loses some of its capability to deliver power.