That however hasn't stopped companies from trying to shrink the satellites further and further. Classic case in point: Bose. Their famous cubes have shrunk more and more over time which makes them crap, but through clever marketing and the general female hatred of large speakers, they have been and still are very successful.
It's not only that the construction itself is faulty.
Bose also uses the cheapest materials available: Paper, plastic and particle board - all of them not having exactly the best acoustical qualities. Their cubes contain small broadband cones made of paper, which are incapable of reproducing high tones right.
The result is that all Bose cubes have a lisp, the highs are smeared into one terrible hissing noise, while the lower mid range basically doesn't exist and their "bass modules" (they know very well why they don't call them sub woofers) have the acoustic qualities of a shoe box.
Of course there are other manufacturers who make equally crappy stuff but they sell their sets for 200 Euros and not 2000 Euros! No co-incidence that Bose is the most profitable audio manufacturer in the world.
Bose also has a very strict policy with their dealers: Bose products are not allowed to be demonstrated together with other brands, preventing customers from making a direct comparison. That's why you mostly see Bose products in a separate recess or corner at the dealer.
But let's come back to the no-midrange problem. Now, with shrinking satellites, diaphragms and the volume of the cabinets (which also plays a role in reproducing sounds) decreased in size. That however means that the lower the frequency, the more problems the speaker will have to produce sounds efficiently. So what you end up with is a tiny subwoofer-satellite-system with an alright subwoofer that covers 50-100 Hz and satellites which cover 200-20 kHz. They simply have become too small to cope with frequencies down to 100 Hz, therefore, there will be an audible hole between 100 and 200 Hz, which obviously is not good.
I'd even go as far as saying that every speaker smaller than 13 cm cannot even reproduce from 800 Hz downwards right.
For my own main speakers I use horns for the highs, 17 cm speakers for the upper mid range from 3000 to 800 Hz, 38 cm dipols for the lower mids from 800 to 100 Hz and two external 48 cm woofers in closed cabinets for the bass -- all of them with short displacement. The whole thing is a fully active 4-way system with an integrated feed forward filter in the active crossover, which rises the bass volume for frequencies from 40 Hz downwards to compensate for the falling ability of the closed subs to reproduce ultra-low frequencies right.
In addition I also use 2 more bass reflex subwoofers to give the whole thing a bit more grunt and kick in the sub bass for home cinema purpose. All in all the amps have a power draw of about 4000 Watts to drive the system
For that you get a linear frequency response from about 25 Hz to 20 KHz.
Onkyo offers some less expensive units with the Audyssey system, mine had it and the difference it made was quite noticeable. Took a good 15 minutes and I had the microphone on a tripod to put it in the right position in 3 different spots (as per instructions).
There are differences in how the manufacturers use the Audyssey software or rather which version they use. Denon currently uses the latest upgrade, containing the MultEQ XT function. It measures up to 8 (!) positions in the room and automatically determines, if a speaker is full range or a satellite or a sub woofer. It also automatically determines the optimal crossover frequency between the sub woofer(s) and all other speakers, checks the polarity of all speakers and adjusts the frequency response for the
full frequency range, signal runtimes and volume separately for each speaker from 20 Hz to 20 KHz and for up to 3 connected sub woofers! The MultiEQ XT system uses not a parametric equalizer but a much more sophisticated filter with a much higher resolution. The whole measuring process takes up to about 45 minutes, with the final calculation needing about 5 minutes alone.
You can then also use the result of the measurement for the 2-channel stereo mode, which is really quite nice. I'm currently torn between listening music without tampering the signal via my high end stereo pre-amp or via the Denon AV receiver with room and frequency correction. I tend to prefer the Denon now, because a) it enables you to use the sub woofer(s) effectively for listening to music and b) it is a more relaxing listening experience.
But in spite of all that, I still had to set the surround speakers 2 dB lower, than the Audyssey system determined, and I have to adjust the volume of the sub woofer depending on what movie I watch. Some movies need more bass, some have so much, that you have to turn the sub woofer down or your whole furniture becomes a passive membrane :lol:
In the end, your ears are the final judge and you ought to trust them more, than a computer.
I'll be happy with my Onkyo unit until I can upgrade to Luxman units sometime later in life, in fact I'd be using my parents old Luxman system right now if it supported modern interfaces (Though, I am using the Lux turntable since it's still superior to any modern units available for less than $500 or more).
I have never been a fan of Luxman amps. I know they were a favourite in hifi magazines and many hifi fans swear by them but for my taste they always sounded too soft and didn't have the performance stability to really fire a demanding speaker setup. The fact that in Germany Luxman amps were sold together with Quadral speakers (which needed lots and lots of power to remotely sound good), didn't help either.
On the other hand I am not really up to date with the current hifi scene. I stopped caring, when I found my optimal setup at the end of the 1990's. Since then I also haven't read any magazines anymore
P.S.: To further illustrate the problem with room influences and how severe it is, here are the results of the Audyssey frequency corrections for the main, center and surround speakers in my room. The curves show the necessary adjustments in decibel from 20 Hz to 20 KHz in order to produce a linear result at the main listening spot.
As you can see, there are corrections in certain frequencies of up to +10 dB and -20 dB. One will never be able to eliminate warps of that magnitude with Helmholtz resonators or other means of passive room acoustics adjustments. Also fiddling with frequency crossovers or the speakers themselves will never produce more than random results. The only way to fight room influences, is actively with electronic filters of high quality.
By the way: My room has rather good acoustics with the measurements of 4 x 6 x 2.5 meters.
So the bottom line is: Whatever a hifi purist may tell you about how neutral his speakers are or how much he will not interfere with the "purity" of his precious music signal -- don't believe a word he says, because it's complete and utter rubbish.