Another thing you might be hearing are frequency dependent peaks and nulls in the response from running two vertically arranged neo 10's at 5k. No matter how you slice it, subjective comments about a single transducer should probably not be made if someone is listening to 2 of them at 5k at the same time.
Seth

I agree with your assessment about using 2, but I began by listening to only one at a time. All on its own, both filtered and unfiltered. I auditioned all possible mid choices this way first, narrowed them down to ones that were acceptable to me and then ran them in a quick 3 way setup to choose a winner.

Its funny, but all of the metal drivers I auditioned(Zaph, several PE reference drivers, Tang Band titanium and some others) that had a large spike in response near 10KHz still seemed to have a signature to their sound even with 24dB/oct slope crossovers down around 3Khz. It was very enlightening to listen to drivers like this, separated from the system, to see what exactly they would contribute to the sound in a system.

Now, I'm not comparing the Neo10 peak in any way to the metal cone drivers peaks, but it came to my mind and I thought it might be interesting.

Greg

Bg Neo 10 and 3 anechoic measurements can be found here:
Proraum Vertriebs-GmbH | Startseite
At the end of the Hobby HiFi Pro 20d article download, there are raw anechoic driver measurements for dipole neo 10 and neo 3 under-laid on the speaker system driver measurements.
Another cause frequency response irregularities can come from cavity resonances on the rear of a dipole creating acoustic impedance interactions that reflect back into the driver, effecting the response.
Seth

Greg, Just completed reading all of your audio project posts on the Audio circle website. I am humbled by your intelligence and insight. You have a deep understanding of the many variables involved with designing, building, testing and listening to loudspeakers. I apologize for debating you on subjects that were already accounted for in your design process. All I had to do was dig a little bit...
Seth

Is that your test room?Seriously?With computer table between speakers, untreated window behind speakers, hard floor, untreated walls nowhere, glass table!

Not a big deal at all. I appreciate your nice remarks and really I was glad you were posting some new sets of data on the drivers. I just noticed the pictures you posted of the aluminum channel for the mid/tweet. That is a great use of a "found" object. I'm assuming it is some type of building construction material?

Greg

Seth, now that I see how thick that aluminum is, have you measured any diffraction effects for either driver compared to a more flush approach to mounting?

Greg

Well, to be fair many people have rooms that look like this, but yeah it must be a pretty "live" sound. Seth, you might want to experiment with some good absorption material like the Bonded Logic stuff placed directly behind the Neo10/3 combo. My house is all tile and when I first moved in and had no window treatment, area rugs or acoustical treatments on the walls, I almost cried the first night I had the system all set up. It was an echo, reverb nightmare.

Listen with some good quality open back headphones like AKG or Sennheisers and then compare the "room sound" you get from your system.

Greg

Lenta, I agree with you completely. That's why we use drivers that only have raw anechoic(hobby Hifi and manufacture's) or at least raw quasi-anechoic (Zaph) data used along with active as apposed to passive electronics. If you don't have control of those variables, you are, for all intents and purposes, ******* in the wind. In fact, if you don't have this type of raw data at your disposal, it doesn't matter what type of room you have. If you still think I'm wrong, go to Sigfried Linkwitz's website and look at his testing room...At least I'm in good company.

Going dipole from 500 hz & up was a revelatory experience for me. For years, I listened to Dunlavy SC 3's with Conrad Johnson electronics. I hated the sound of my room. Hated it!! but I thought that, short of moving, there was nothing I could do about it. Then I came across the Linkwitz and Zaph websites. I saw Linkwitz' room, read his comments about speakers and room acoustics, and decided to give it a shot. Every single thing that I hated about my room's acoustics no longer existed ( They obviously exist, but are no longer being exited. For they first time ever, soundstaging is centered perfectly instead of pulling to the right. I can listen at relatively loud levels all day long without any listening fatigue. With my old system, a half an hour is all it took before it drove me crazy. For the first time in twenty years, my wife will actually turn the system up instead of off. How many guys can make that claim?