The Jim Griffin line arrays at last year's GPAF were special. Choosing between these arrays and very expensive conventional speakers, like the Wilson Watt Puppies I heard recently, would be a no brainer to me. I believe Jim's were priced at about $8K with the DEQX electronics, but they would sell for more like $20K if offered by a mainstream speaker manufacturer. An incredible bargain at $8K but still outside my budget.Needless to say, the group build arrays will not be in the same league as Jim's, but their sound should offer many of the characteristics of well designed line arrays. I've built a few using budget drivers, including $25 Vifa woofers and $15 Silver Flute woofers, with a point source tweeter, and have been pleased with the results. The pair that comes closest to the design Wayne and I are considering used 5.5" Silver Flute woofers with the Vifa DX25 tweeter, and to my ears it sounded the best of all. I might have chosen the Silver Flutes for the group build, but they were $11.75 last time I bought some and the price has since increased quite a bit. Also, I have had such good experience buying from Parts Express that I wanted to use their Dayton house brand this time. See the link to a picture below.
We plan to build and tweak the prototype pair, then to get some feedback from a group of qualified listeners who know how a good speaker should sound. Probably the Tulsa and or Dallas Audio Club members. If the feedback is positive we'll document and post the project.