[quote author=thedude link=1040842968&/90#101 date=1042611073]
hmmmm, im thinking horn tweeks now, wax, crisco, jelly...
[/quote]
Would that be surfboard wax for that "California sound", or "Olde English Furniture Polish" fo that laid-back British sound? :o
The mis-matched driver discussion reminds me of an experience in my early stages of Audiophilia Nervosa: I was in one the local "Stereo Super Stores" (that was actually it's NAME!) listening to the then top of the line Polk speakers. They were gigantic pseudo-planar speakers 4'x6' covered with 4" drivers. I was A-B testing them with Polk's second from the top speakers (slightly smaller but same basic configuration) and neither one sounded particularly astounding. Funny thing was, when I had both sets playing the tonal quality took a huge jump up. It seemed the uneven interaction of the different drivers produced something closer to "real" than all the matched sets.
Perhaps the brain knows that sounds from natural sources are essentially unevenly spread across the device producing them. Most of the sound from a guitar comes from the sound box, but there are still discernable sounds coming from the strings on the neck. The sound waves of a piano are spread across a finite distance within the instrument, those waves resonate from the body of the piano with different nodes and they also bounce off of, and resonate with, the lid.
The human ear (and the brain that process the information) is very spatially sensitve. I suggest that this sensitivity and the processing that goes along with it are what's responsible for our perception of a "real" instrument. Perhaps the mis-matched drivers in the Imperials (I bet you were wondering when I'd get back to that! ;) ) helps simulate the physical size of an instrument BECAUSE of the different sonic qualities of those drivers.
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