Theater 3 baffle size and driver arrangement

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Posted by Chris Leger [ 24.54.31.161 ] on September 05, 2006 at 10:41:39:

Hi,

I was a lurker here a few years ago... went so far as to buy some 2226s and 2126s only to abort, sell the components, and stick with my old Klipsch stuff.

Now I'm in a new house, and space is limited. My living room is 14'x20' with a fireplace in the middle of the wall at the end where the speakers will go. The chimney extends into the room about 2', so the result is I have 2 24"x48" "nooks" at either side of the chimney. I'm installing some custom shelves in these rectangular spaces, and once again my thoughts turn to a pair of horn-loaded cabinets.

Space is at an even greater premium than the above might suggest, as there's a 46"x34" TV on one side, and I can only mount it so high, so I'm left with limited vertical space. Further, the shelves will be suspended on threaded rod that will intrude 6" or so into the shelves.

Thus, the volume I have to work with is approximately 36" wide, 24" deep, and perhaps 15" or so high. Works out to about 6 cu ft of available volume, I think.

Right now, I'm using a pair of JBL L100s, and I like them, but they just don't have the open sound I'm looking for. I mention the L100s because the 12" speakers in the small cabinets give some decent bass, though it doesn't extend as low as I'd like. My thinking is I'd like to stick with 12" woofers because they won't require as tall a baffle in front, and I'd rather not have to raise the TV any higher than it is. But I'm thinking with a larger (WxD) cabinet, I might get some more extension...

So, I've been sitting here envisioning a cabinet with perhaps a JBL 2206 with a 2126/2070A mounted alongside. At 36" wide, The horn and woofer could be installed with a few inches of margin around each one... but I really don't understand whether this is practicable or not. I should mention that I'm running Linux, so running the PiAlign and BoxPlot programs is not trivial. I can do it, but I figured I'd jump in here first and see if you folks think what I'm contemplating seems sane so far.

So, my question is, can a cabinet (e.g. Theater 3, though I don't know its true dimensions) be oriented so that the baffle is on the side of the cabinet, with the drivers I'm contemplating arranged horizontally? Will this yield decent results? I can go smaller in any dimension (36"W x 24"D x 15"H) for tuning purposes, but bigger is going to be a problem.

Thanks in advance!

Chris Leger


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