Speaker placment in an array?

[Zarathu]

My design has a 7.5' x 23 inch x 8 inch array, with a vertical band of about 23-30 inches of tweeter, and the full 7.5 feet of 3 inch Sammi Midranges. I also have a smaller separate woofer array about 32 inches high consisting of 5 Audax 6.69 inch AP170MO's(they may be cut off at 80, or let to roll off naturally in their sealed enclosures---more likely). There is a subwoofer that kicks in at 70hz. All crossovers are 24db electronic.

This array is doubled of course, a set of two on each side.

Should the tweeters go on the outside of the large array? And should the woofer array go outside of the large array, or inside of the large array.

Click on drawing and it gets bigger. The drawing has the tweeters on the outisde IN the main array and the woofer array TOWARD the inside of the main array.

[johninCR]

What will be your high cutoff for the 5 woofers? The reason I ask is that the woofers need to have the longest line length to have line source dispersion for the lower frequencies. As long as they are playing only longer wavelengths then spacing is less critical. You may want to consider putting the woofers on the main array with the tweeter array between the woofers. One woofer at the top and bottom of the baffle. One on each end of the tweeter array and the other wherever it looks best.

The reason you need this is the nearfield/farfield conversion point for your planned woofer array will be very very close and the mids and tweets will project a nearfield response much further. The end result will be that your SPL will vary by distance AND by frequency. For example, at 4 meters 150hz will be down 12db but 1khz will only be down 6db, because your woofer array is acting like a point source (-6db per distance doubled) and you mids are a line source (-3db per distance double).

Regarding your question about tweeter array position, I don't have an opinion. I seem to remember others expressing that having the tweeters to the outside had some benefit.