Posted by Duke [ 63.87.108.184 ] on July 01, 2006 at 22:13:04:
In Reply to: Re: If you could bend the ear of a speaker manufacturer... posted by MWG on July 01, 2006 at 19:26:13:
Hi MWG,
Thanks for your comments, and the thumbs-up on the subwoofer idea.
I think the advantage of a tower speaker is that it's a more efficient use of floor space. Certainly with a wider speaker, you have more options because with a wider horn or waveguide you can control the pattern down to a lower frequency. But that's already being done, and the niche I saw was for something that more wives were likely to allow into their living rooms.
It seems to me that WAF is almost inversely proportional to the amount of space a speaker takes up. A lot of manufacturers are building very narrow speakers these days, but with a very narrow speaker you can't get much radiation pattern control.
What set the enclosure width was the commercially available waveguide; 10" was what I could buy off-the-shelf, so the next step was to find a suitable 10" woofer. TTen inch woofers seem to come in two varieties: Home woofers of low to medium efficiency with poor midrange performance, and high efficiency prosound woofers with good midrange that don't go low enough. The Pioneer TAD unit was the only one I found that combined good midrange & good dynamics with good bass extension, but it traded off some efficiency and ruggedness compared with typical prosound 10" units.
Once the width was set, I just drew sketches until the height looked right and the layout looked good to me, and then the depth of the enclosure was set by the required internal volume (about three cubic feet).
I think I could build a bit better-sounding speaker by going with a different cabinet geometry using those same components. I'd make the box twice as wide and have large 45 degree angled side bevels. This would give better midbass support by mitigating the baffle step somewhat, but on the other hand if the box is going to be that wide might as well use a wider horn or waveguide and a larger diameter woofer.
Which Altecs have you had forever? I had a pair of Model 14's for about a month, then they were destroyed in a fire. I paid $700 for them used, and remember thinking that they'd be very hard to beat with a modern speaker retailing for up to six times that amount. I always wanted a pair of 19's, maybe one of these days.
Cheers,
Duke
[ AudioKinesis Forum ] [ Help ]