Thanks for the read! Very enlightening, for me at least lol. My $0.02 regarding the article's concerns:
"The subtracting and adding of various frequencies at various angles can result in audible shifting in the speaker’s sound across the room."
I believe I am experiencing this with the VP180, but it is very slight and not likely to be noticable under normal listening conditions. Most of my friends only noticed it once I pointed it out to them and they started testing and listening for it, while two of them didn't notice it at all, even after I tried to explain it to them.
Personally, I found it more noticable with vocals (ie. singing) and less noticable with dialogue during movies. This may have more to do with the fact that movie dialgue bounces from actor to actor with sound and/or effects in the background, so it's masked somewhat.
It is more noticable when all other speakers are
disabled and you start shifting from one side of the room to the other, but nobody (I hope) listens to music or watches movies like this. If I were to sit and stay in any (reasonable) listening position other than the sweetspot, I'd still be very happy with the sound coming out of the VP180.
"Off-axis, MTM speakers can often sound hollow..."
I can say that I've never found the VP180 to be even remotely hollow, regardless of where I am standing or sitting. I've even tried some pretty extreme spots, like almost 90 degrees off centre, and it still does not sound "hollow" in any way.
"...but the comb filtering, or lobing effect, can also shift the imaging away from the middle as a “phasy” sound."
I have no idea if this is going on, but if it is then I can't hear or notice it. I find that no matter where I am located in the room, the VP180 keeps the sound imaging centered to the screen. It's funny, because two of the VP180's strongest attributes are precisely this, the fact that it is always full and rich sounding and never hollow, and that it manages to keep the sound coming from it firmly anchored to the screen.
"...do your best to avoid or minimize wave interference across your room by being wary of horizontal redundancy."
This may be true, but whatever Axiom did to the VP180 sure seemed to work. I'm no speaker engineer so I don't know exactly how Axiom pulled it off, but my best guess is that the crossover points, the layout of the drivers, and the distances between the redundant drivers have all been carefully calculated and designed in order to minimize the shortcomings of an MTM design. Whatever the case, the VP180 provides great sound to every seat in my room, and amazing sound to one very lucky sweetspot
