TravisinFlorida said:
Hmmm. A monitoring system that adapts to the different stages of production. This sounds very interesting. You had better not croak before this system emerges.
I really do want to see what this is all about. I know you said that you can't let out any details but I have to ask. Does this system involve convolution, phase cancellation, or room/speaker modeling?
I realized after I wrote my response, it was really a bullshit answer because I didn't directly address your questions. Lemme see if I can give you some partial answers by letting you in on my thinking about monitor systems in the 3 areas you asked about.
Phase Cancellation:
This is the old "time aligned" problem and the normal solution doesn't work, except in what I call the "put your head-in-a-vice" position, where there is one sweet spot and anyone out of that spot is screwed. The problem still remains, move your head one way or the other (even slightly), and your "time alignment" goes to hell.
In addition, when you dump capacitors and chokes into a crossover, you're gonna get phase shift (as much as 180 degrees at the crossover frequency) - that's how crossovers work. It something you try to minimize as a speaker designer, but you hafta live with it. Bi-amplification can help there, but the difference isn't too apparent, nor are there many workable solutions at the low cost end of the market.
Room/speaker Modeling:
Except in the most general terms, this just doesn't work. You're trying to adjust problems in the time domain with fixes in the frequency domain. Room nodes are like giant coke bottles; when energy hits them, they're excited and either toot sympathetically, or suck out the energy in that frequency range. The important thing to remember is that it takes time for that energy to build up and more time to dissapate; it's slow as shit. Trying to eliminate nodes by cutting down levels at some frequencies just doesn't work.
You need to take the room out of the picture (which nearfield speakers do), but then, you suffer all the problems associated with small boxes. You need to be able to create a new non-room dependent, coherent soundfield in the mid and far fields which does not depend on the inconsistancy of most monitoring rooms.
Convolution:
A great idea for creating specific room reflections of larger rooms for reverbs, but I don't see much application in home studios anytime in the near future. The DSP computing power required for predictive convolution correction would be enormous. It works well for adding reflections and nodes - not for taking them away.
Finally,
There are other problems in conventional speakers that most of the public aren't even aware of; when the frequency length is equal to or shorter than the speaker diameter, the dispersion begins to suffer, as the speaker first lobes, then beams, as the frequency increases. So, above a certain frequency, the response is gonna get wonky.
At the other end of the spectrum, speakers can work well down to their resonance, but below that, they drop off at 12 dB per octave. Put in a port to help them out and they'll drop off at 18 dB per octave below that. Put a speaker in a small box and the trapped air inside the box acts as a spring and raises the resonant point. Whatever you do in one area, you're fucked in another area!
Designing speakers is largely a game of compromise; trade off a little of this to get a little more of that. But sometimes, you hafta think outside the box (excuse the pun). That's what I did with this new system. You can't break the laws of physics, but if you look at it just the right way, you can mangle the hell out of them. That's what I'm hoping to do with this new system.
I know when we show this system at the AES and NAMM shows, I'm gonna hear some people say, "You're cheating!" My answer will be, "Yeah, so what? It works, doesn't it?"
I can't say much more than this right now.
After you mentioned the JBL "F" speakers, I know that I saw your name in The Guitar Amp Handbook and another might have been The Tube Amp Workbook. I'd love to hear you play some blues some time. Maybe I could add some of your "bad" blues licks to my collection of most likely "worse" blues licks. 
) Did you ever spend time in Chicago, or just in L.A. and Texas?