Audiophile Series seven π

Those are really great, so if you've got two good corners in your room, I think they would be excellent.

If you can't put speakers in the corners, I'd suggest four π speakers instead. The Theater Series four π speaker is the most popular large-format model, and that or the Stage or Professional Series four π Speakers would serve you well.

What are the subjective differences between the 3-way and the 2-way corner horns? I notice that your designs tend to be 2-ways, with a big woofer. My experience with this layout has not been good in the past, with the woofer at it's narrowest dispersion handing off to the tweeter at it's widest.

Granted, I've heard mostly cheap speakers done this way, but even the few good ones all suffered from driver integration issues, even with good drivers. The one that sticks out most in my mind was a Heil AMT / 12" combo that did really good things down low and up high, but the crossover region was a nightmare.

How have you avoided this problem in your 2-way designs?

Thank you,
--Shannon

What motivated your choice of drivers? I notice that you favor the use of drivers from the professional / musician world, rather than from the audio world. This is a very different choice than other designers are making. Of course, your designs are rather different too. What has led you to your rather idiosyncratic driver choices?

Not intended as a criticism, as I have never read you to be anything other than a careful, thoughtful engineer, but you have gone in a different direction, and I'm curious...

Thanks,
--Shannon

Check out the specs of JBL Professional Series and TAD products and you'll see what I mean. Eminence is very good too.

The bottom line is performance is what motivates me when choosing components. If I found that I could get better parts from the carsound or home theater markets, then I'd use them instead. Nothing matches the dynamic range, low distortion and uniformity of response of good prosound components in a properly designed and implemented loudspeaker system, in my opinion.

The above quote probably is the key to another reason why Wayne is using the drivers in question. Wayne's designs aim at reaching a true high efficiency/sensitivity. This is virtually impossible with conventional hifi drivers, since these are usually aiming at making deep bass possible from small(er) boxes. This in effect excludes the possibility of high efficiency - it's simply a matter of the laws of physics. Putting it in simple terms (a bit oversimplified, actually, but...): If you wanna have a 10 times better efficiency, & still reach the same level of bass, you have to accept a box that is 10 times larger!