I know these are two entirely different approaches, since the 1801's are extremely insensitive speakers and the Pi's are extremely sensitive.

One constraint is that the speaker can't be more than 44" tall, because of where I'm going to place them, so the standard method of building the 7Pi's is out, even though I do have a corner available, so I guess I could make a 2-way version of the 7Pi's.

I want to spend around $750 ideally, but I'm willing to go up to $1k.

If I did go with the Pi's, there is also the question of active versus passive. I could buy the Behringer digital crossover, which would have a lot of nice features, like the ability to eq for my room, but would require a bit more setup.

What would you do in my situation? Also, if I did go with the 1801's or the Pis now, I may still build the other farther in the future, since I have some NHT 1.5's I could upgrade with the 1801's.

Thanks, Ian

But I don't have any idea how close a Pi speaker would sound to that. But if someone in the Pasadena/LA area has Pi's, I would love to hear them

I know what the standard box speaker is like, and I'm a bit tired of it, but I know the 1801 is at least a bit better than the average speaker.

I was looking at Adrian's site and his horn setup looked very nice. I'm curious what the tradeoffs are of the 10" mid in the 7Pi versus the 6" Adrian uses? If I could fit a smaller mid horn under my 44" height limit, that would be great, or if I could mount the tweeter and mid coincidentally. Alternately, maybe I could build the mid into the woofer corner horn cabinet and that would save me some height?

-Ian

Also, does anyone have any used JBL 2226's?

My only concern about not building the midhorn into the cabinet is that I'd have to completely rebuild the cabinet later to add the 10", due to my height constraint.

I am now experimenting using a Stage 4Pi setting on top of an Adire Rava subwoofer as a center channel for home theater and as a center speaker in a 3 speaker "stereo" played through my AV receiver. I have to say that this combination is pretty impressive. I think the Stage 4 Pi sounds better off the floor a bit. Using a subwoofer and crossing it over at 60 or 80hz makes a really dynamic full range speaker and is great fun to listen to. If I were going to make a stereo pair of floor standing speakers and had the room size and suitable location I would make a pair Pro 4Pi's with JBL drivers and a subwoofer such as the Adire Rava or Tempest, the Vmps, GR Research or PartExpress Titanic in one large cabinet with separate chambers, or two cabinets with matching veneer. The whole cabinet could be less than 44" tall. By putting the sub with the Pi's you get the Pi's off the ground about the right height, you can cross them over above 60hz if you want without worrying about being able to identify the bass as a distinct sound a part from the rest of the speakers, phase issues also don't exist. Using two subs may give you smoother bass and will certainly give you more of it to help the subs keep up with the dynamic range of the Pi's.
Larry

Just use a .35 mh coil and take 3db off the attenuation off the horn circuit.

Don't know if this helps at all.

Ron

Russellc

Thanks, Ian