I was running just cheap black boxes for the 1st half of the contest, then moved to a larger tank and switched to hydra 26s (and won another as the contest prize). Now I run orphek. I strongly feel that lights get too much blame for colors and growth.
That's interesting! Did you have many hydras running over your tank? I can't seem to access your growth winning link in your bio, would love to read it! Feel free to send a message.
One thing I am noticing with what your are saying is that those lights you are using have very good spread on them, as would a very good halide reflector, and T5 naturally. And another thing is that these point source LED's are extremely directional, such as Kessil and a few others. Maybe in the shaded areas the zoox are present in a higher density and aren't photosynthesizing as efficiently, thus aren't providing corals with adequate resources for growth? Especially if the light size of the coral (Acropora for example) is already in a par of 250-300, the shaded size would be much less. Just a speculation.