Measuring a forward-firing speaker in an anechoic chamber is a snap. Take the sensitivity measurement, for example: Simply place the microphone directly in front of the loudspeaker’s tweeter at a prescribed distance and capture the sound, echo-free -- exactly what you want. Remember, though, that the OMNI driver does not fire straight ahead in the same way; the speaker disperses more energy to the sides and rear than a front-firing speaker. All that side and rear energy gets lost in an anechoic chamber and doesn’t get accounted for in something like a sensitivity measurement. You run into similar problems with frequency response, for largely the same reasons.

 

Doug Schneider - SoundStage