Quote from: peterh on 2015-05-06 22:52:50

would a non-neutral frequency response for a speaker cause phase smearing?

Yes.  Speaker drivers tend towards being minimum phase, but once there is more than one driver and crossovers, the phase response is relatively poor.

Why do you say tends toward?
For example a speaker with a bass roll off  generally has quite a bit of leading phase distortion.

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EQs cause phase smearing.

Not necessarily. If used as a true equalizer, it compensates for the poor phase response of the speaker and the overall system has less phase smearing as you put it.

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Would this happen if a company was making a speaker, and decided to ratchet up the bass 5 db?

Depends on how they do it.

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Lets say there is a speaker with a 5db boost in the bass, would this 5 db bass boost that the company built in to the speaker, cause the same phase smearing that EQing up the bass 5db would cause?

Generally, yes.

Why do you say generally?

Quote from: Milton_Friedman on 2015-05-11 02:38:25

Yes but the OP is asking about a minimum phase EQ

Then make it clear that what you are saying refers only to that specific kind of EQ.

Quote from: Milton_Friedman on 2015-05-11 02:38:25

if you EQd a flat speaker to have scooped mids using a minimum phase equalizer, would it cause the same amount of phase distortion as if the speaker was tuned to have flat mids.

Assuming you mean flat mids in both instances, yes its basically the same.  Or rather either can be tuned to produce the same effect as the other.

No that's the whole question, it's NOT flat mids in both instances, one speaker is tuned to have scooped mids out of the box, the other isn't.

Quote from: Milton_Friedman on 2015-05-11 02:38:25

And from what I gather I think the answer would be no.

huh?  read this thread, this has been explained several times already.