youve got space why not use it ! Are you familiar with the royaldevice.com ? Im unsure if its still there,it was 2 x 8 18" woofers ,8 on each channel,powered by a valve CDP and valve amp of a few watts :P

Cheers
Mike.e

• Gjerstad horns

What exactly is the "good argument for a single source" other than its cheaper?

I would, and do, use relatively cheap subwoofers. When I say that I have five, I am including the three woofers in my front three channels. I do not use small speakers hear and the front three speakers have very good low end capability - down to about 35 Hz. There are two subwoofers wired into the LFE channel, one at the front near the three mains and one at the rear. So at LF, with the Dolby selection for the front set to "large" I do have five woofers. The front right and left are closed box full range, the center is port, and the subs should be bandpass. Also keep in mind that this kind of low end power can easily over power the response if the room is not well damped at LF. It is almost impossible to do an optimum loudspeaker design that is independent of the room. So when discussing "right and wrong" we should always consider the room when talking about the speakers.

I see that you sell books and software on your www.GedLee.com website, and I gather that you do consulting work too. Do you sell completed loudspeakers, kits or components?

Wayne

Are we here discussing fundamentals or are we beyond that? I thought that these sites were places for discussing the nuances of the state-of-the-art. The basic stuff is available elsewhere - like the Bass list, which is very basic and likes it that way.

The speakers that I designed came about as my attempt to make a loudspeaker that really did not exist. That is a cinema speaker - like the classic JBl and Altec stuff - but brought up to date with the newer compoents and theories of waveguides that have become avaialbel since those older designs. I wanted a state-of-the-art, no compromise loudspeaker for my home theater customers (I also do custom home theater installations) - and my own theater since I was using 20 year old JBL systems.

The speakers that I came up with turned out to be so good that a friend in New Orleans - Duke Lejune - asked if he could be a dealer and sell them. We are just getting this off the ground now. The speakers have been extensively evaluated both with measurements and subjective analysis, all of which point to them as being some of the best loudspeakers avaialble at any price. Best of all, I am not into hocus pocus, magic dust, mythical sound character, and all that mubo jumbo that is only really a ploy to justify the ridiculous prices that these systems ask. Apparantly there are enough succers out there to justify this approach.

No, my speakers will be quite reasonable by comparison. I have a dealer price, that is the price that I need to get to pay or the construction, but I don't want to quote an exact dealer price at this point. The dealers will need to determine that. But lets just say that I would not allow a dealer to mark them up beyond about $2500.00 each and I could see how they could easily go as low as $2000 and do quite well. This is not cheap by all means, but I would put these speakers up against anything at any price.

About kits, I am fully willing to sell the parts of my design, as well as the drawings, to interested customers. But, as I said, my prices to the consumer for the systems are so competitive that the most that one would save by buying the components from me is about 25%, which is a paltry amount when you consider the assembly work involved. The speakers were designed to be mass produced and they are the most cost effective when that is done.

Well thats enough about my loudspeakers.

I also do training. My loudspeaker course has been very succesful and attended by some pretty well know people like Vance Dickason, and Patrick Turnmire. As I said Harman sent about 6 engineers.

How did you measure the response down to 32 Hz to know that it was flat?

Lets examine the pro's and con's of closed versus bandpass.

Closed - LF limit at fs of speaker in box, HF limit that of the driver itself, or the LP crossover.

Bandpass - LF limit as much as 1 octave below fs of the speaker in the rear box, HF limit no more above fs than the LF limit is below. In other words the bandpass (single ported) has a symmetrical response centered on the dri=vers fs in its rear enclosure.

So, unless the closed box is going to be at a HF limit above that for which the bandpass is capable of, the bandpass wins hands down. But the bandpass losses when one wants a response greater than about 1 1/2 octaves.

As I so often say, there is no single choice in any of this you have to look at the big picture.

In a home theater for the LFE channels (the .1) anything but a bandpass is not the ideal - beccause this is already a band limited channel.