Can anyone tell me what kind of trouble I am going to run into if I build a set of ART Arrays and I double them with two lines of drivers in each cabinet?

These will mainly be used for HT and 80's music. I have an older Pioneer Preamp and a Carver TFM-55 (500 x 2 @ 4 ohms) amplifier. These will be paired with a Mach5audio IXL 18" sub, ported in 13 ft^3 tuned to 17 Hz on 1000 watts.

Thanks!
Brian

I picked up (2) pairs of these kits for $520, so I was just trying to do something with them.

What if I put all 16 drivers in a row down one side of the baffle, and then put the 2 tweeters on the other side of the baffle. Would that be better?

As far as the crossover, I have all the parts for two sets, so I was just going to put 2 sets of crossovers in each speaker. . .

I know it is crazy. Just having fun. My Home theater actually has North Creek Rhythms, and I do not plan on replacing them. . .

Brian

Adding a second line of woofers will severely limit the horizontal dispersion, and adding a second tweeter will severely limit the vertical dispersion. You don't want to do this. Building the array as a bipole with drivers on the front and back would be better, but bipoles are very sensitive to placement and I wouldn't position them closer than three feet from the back wall. I understand your desire to be creative and not just copy what's been done in the past, but just adding drivers will not result in a better sounding speaker.

If I had $600-$1,000 to spend on a line array I believe I would go for better drivers instead of doubling up on the ones specified for the ART array. You could build a very nice sounding quasi-array using eight or nine Dayton Reference drivers with a Fountek ribbon tweeter. Rick Craig of Selah Audio used to sell this as a kit. He called it the Day Tek, and two or three years ago it sold for about $800. I suggest you contact him to see if it's still available, but the cost will have increased becasue of increases in the cost of parts, especially the inductors in the crossover. If you go this route you'll end up with an array featuring top quality drivers with an expertly designed crossover and enclosure plans.