Tall speakers with stacked woofers are not true line arrays

Evidence

Traditional loudspeakers employ multiple transducers, each operating over a fraction of the audible frequency range. They individually interact with 354. reflecting surfaces around them, and they exhibit varying directivity with frequency. In tower loudspeakers it is common to see multiple woofers, and more, and this has led to them being called “line sources” or “line arrays”. They consist of transducers arranged in a line, but they are absolutely not either line sources or line arrays. They are just tall loudspeakers employing the same principles as their shorter versions, unless they are boundary-friendly designs (Section 13.5). — Toole, Floyd E, Sound reproduction- the acoustics and…, 1282

Categorization

• DEFINE: Sharply distinguishes marketing jargon ‘line source/array’ from the actual acoustical definition of the term.
• SEED: Article angle: ‘Why your tower speaker is not a line array’ — debunking a common consumer-audio mislabel with clear acoustical reasoning.