Starting to plan out a pair of Massive Line Arrays (MLA)...

[chops]

Eventhough I love my fairly new large open baffle loudspeakers (Usher Audio D2 clones gone open baffle), they are simply too dang large for this room, eating up way too much space in my theater/listening room. They sound great and have more than plenty of oomph with very little power. Gotta love that high efficiency!

I have always been highly interested in line arrays and have decided to finally build a pair, a large pair at that, with a large, matching center channel.

To fund this rather costly project I'm going to be selling off all five of my Usher Audio drivers AS WELL AS all three of my Altec 511B horns and 902-8 drivers. So if anyone is interested in purchasing any of these, please let me know.


Anyway, before I tell you about the drivers I'm going with, I want to explain the reason I chose the woofers. A few months back, one of my brothers bought the Dayton BR-1 6-1/2" 2-Way Monitor Kit Pair from PE when they had them on sale. I helped build the crossovers for him while he did most of everything else. To make a long story short, these little things put out the most amazing, low bass for such small speakers! In his room, they have solid output down into the mid-30's easily! And that's without any tone controls of any kind!! They also have excellent midrange that's very full, clean and natural sounding.

So for the very reasons stated above, I'm 99.9% sure I am going to go with a large number of Dayton DC160-8 6-1/2" Classic Woofers, somewhere on the order of 10 drivers per channel (3 channels total). I figure that if those little kit bookshelf speakers put out that kind of bass and midrange with ONLY one driver, ten drivers in a LA should be that much better reaching down into the low-mid 20's, especially when you take into consideration the higher efficiency and lower distortion.

To finish the LA's off, I'm going to go with a bunch of the Dayton PT2C-8 Planar Tweeters, I'm thinking 5 per channel should do it.

They'll be crossed over at 2100Hz via my DCX2496 at 48dB per octave. The reason for choosing 2100Hz is because that's what those kit bookshelves of my brother's is crossed over at, and because the planar tweeters should only go to about 2kHz when used in multiples. Who knows, maybe I can get them down a little lower around 1.5kHz or so since I'll be using so many.

The enclosures will be 10x the size of the kit speakers which are 0.55cf tuned to 41Hz. So that means mine will be 5.5cf, and I'll have them tuned slightly lower to 38Hz with three 4" flared ports down near the bottom of the rear baffle.

I know these aren't the greatest drivers out there, but they aren't junk either, and I already know very well what one of these 6.5" drivers are capable of. And as it stands, just the drivers alone is going to cost me over $1k, so I really can't go with anything better than these ATM. But I feel that these two drivers should get me some pretty decent sound, and with much narrower, shallower speakers than what I have right now.

So what do you all think? Please let me know!

[Inductor]

I "see" to many problems, like the Fs for that to many drivers (is not the same between them) and will cause vibrations.
Read about mr. Bose 901's patents & evolution. They (speaker drivers) are isolated from each other. So, two woofers might pose a similar problem already. (note: I never tested this.)

[JandG]

Please PM me on the CD & horns.
Thanks J & G

[AJ]

"I know these aren't the greatest drivers out there, but they aren't junk either"

Those drivers are gonna sound great. I played around with arrays for a coupla years and they are very forgiving of driver quality. My only suggestion is to use at least 8 of the PT2 tweeters if you can swing the budget, and you can never go too tall with them.

These were built as a "sit-down only" experiment and were the last attempt of mine to make something look nice. Eight 5-1/2 peerless buyouts from PE and eight original version PT2s. They ended up being my reference to beat speakers in spite of being too short. You'll probably love yours when they're done.

[Inductor]

Nice DIY.
X-Over: A 1.order/3.order (?!). Inductor only on the woofer side, chops ?

...crossed over at 2100Hz via my DCX2496 at 48dB per octave

I see.

[pedroskova]

Is this going to be an OB LA or a sealed LA?

WIth your digital set up, I'd go OB.

[chops]

Originally posted by JandG
Please PM me on the CD & horns.
Thanks J & G

Email sent!

[chops]

Originally posted by AJ
"I know these aren't the greatest drivers out there, but they aren't junk either"

Those drivers are gonna sound great. I played around with arrays for a coupla years and they are very forgiving of driver quality. My only suggestion is to use at least 8 of the PT2 tweeters if you can swing the budget, and you can never go too tall with them.

These were built as a "sit-down only" experiment and were the last attempt of mine to make something look nice. Eight 5-1/2 peerless buyouts from PE and eight original version PT2s. They ended up being my reference to beat speakers in spite of being too short. You'll probably love yours when they're done.

I've seen pics of your setup before. NICE! I'm looking forward to getting this project going. The best part of course will be when I bring them to life. If I can afford more drivers at the time, then I'll definately get them, but if not, I'll leave space on the baffles to add onto it at a later date.

Originally posted by pedroskova
Is this going to be an OB LA or a sealed LA?

WIth your digital set up, I'd go OB.

They're going to be 5.5cf ported and tuned to 38Hz or so.

[ttan98]

GR research mid/woofer M130 is very good for the money and very efficient at about 89-90db, for 8 ohm version. I have used them myself, costs $24 each. Good value, very sweet mid range easily cross at 200hz and 2000khz.

they are used in LS9 array speakers by GR research. It is worth a look.

I have no connection to the company just a happy customer.


Cheers.

[auplater]

I went with planars... the neoplanars are good down to ~ 300 hz, the BG 75's are crossed @ 600 hz...I used peerless 6 1/2" mid woofs for 300 hz - 40 hz, and 2 12" sonosubs for low end duty..

you'll love how they fill the room, you might want to consider ob for higher frequencies at least if you have room





John L.