As noted, I'm not around much anymore, and this thread is ancient, but in the interests of avoiding accusations of attitude, I think that Kabuki speakers arose from the idea that you could divide the frequency range into many small segments, and cover each with one or more cheap drivers that were flat only in their range, rather than use a much more costly driver with a broader range. Then you could add more drivers to get dispersion. What gets ignored is interference effects and soundstaging, and for cost reasons, cabinet quality and size. At the time, Thiel-Small and similar calculations, and the computational power needed for them, didn't exist as a practical matter. Engineers were much more guessing, and the marketing department had a lot of influence. When they noted that a lot of drivers tended to sell more speakers, many Kabuki products were the result. They looked a lot more impressive than the British speakers that actually sounded better, and since most people didn't know what hi-fi should sound like, they sold better as well, as they looked like a lot of bang for the buck. I guess "Kabuki" is a somewhat degrading reference to this unfortunate combination of historical circumstances. I lived through this era, so this is just based on my impressions from the time, not on any scholarly research. At my age, those impressions are from 40 years ago, so caveat emptor.
