Steve Houlihan and I built the Digital SEAS Winged Phoenix based on looks and intuition. Well, so much for intuition... The horizontal polar response had a significant peak in the 60 Deg off axis response (6.7dB at 1k Hz) which needed to be corrected.
So Steve and I tried nearly 30 prototype dipole main panels using the test setup shown below. We used his LAUD 3.x system for the horizontal polar response measurements. I wrote some subroutines to analyze and display the data. This provided a more consistent analysis than could be achieved by "eyeball". Here are some pictures of the setup.
The basic setup on Steve's deck in the redwoods...
Here is the manual turntable for rotating the speaker to various polar positions - 15, 30, 45, 60, 90, 120, 150, 180 degrees. The base is rotated about a nail driven through the base into the deck. There is a line on the deck that is the reference position.
Here are just a few of the many different sides we tried...
It doesn't take Steve Houlihan long to change the sides for a new prototype. With his portable screwdriver, some sheetrock screws, particle board, a little duct tape, and his table saw, it was a snap!