Directivity of side by side woofers

Yes I also had the Everest in mind!
But aren't the 15" angled outwards, away from eachother? Or is it an optical illusion on that photo? That would intuitively seem wrong, considering the earlier mentioned Kinoshita monitors have the woofers angled inwards to counteract lobing.
 
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It would be very helpful if you backed up your statement with an explanation, since it is quite obvious I don't understand this :)
Not so obvious, how about this...
 

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^ that is very intuitive and easy to think how it should work, but the data seems to indicate toe in works better in terms of easier integration to a horn. Unless I'm interpreting the simulation wrong, positive angle on right driver (that has positive X offset to the reference axis) should rotate it outwards and it looks like it but I'm second guessing because it feels like against intuition :D Anyway project file, diffraction simulation and the resulting measurements attached if someone wants to play with it.

Here is another set, the attachments are
1. baffle sim whose response loaded to the drivers, both use the same
2. toe in - rotation 22 degrees inwards per driver
3. toe out - rotation 22 degrees outwards
4. toe in - rotation 45 degrees inwards per driver
5. toe out - rotation 45 degrees outwards
6. coordinate system

and the project ZIP.

edit. thinking of it the toe out responses are probably closer to real than the toe in where the drivers would obstruct each other a bit causing interference.
Noticed the 22 degree samples have bit smaller X offsets but that doesn't make much difference at all.
 

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Actually there is some difference due to smaller X offset! When c-c is 360mm (180mm and -180mm on the drivers) the side lobes are not so pronounced around 1kHz. But increasing the spacing to 400mm nominal 90 degree pattern goes lower. The other has 90 nominal horizontal dispersion around 550Hz and the other around 470Hz.

If the 400mm wide test baffles were right against each other side by side flat, c-c would be 400mm. Rotate both about 22 degrees either way and the c-c becomes smaller, to about 370mm (if calculated using trigonometry and not just approximated :). Or does it stay at 400mm on toe out situation, measured around the corner?:D Too late evening for serious thought.

Attached GIF shows toe in situation with 22 degree rotation on both drivers. c-c spacing is varied between 360mm and 400mm. The polar map is normalized to give good look on the pattern.

It is interesting to observe there is flat DI above ~1kHz in the toe in situation which can be increased or lowered by changing the rotation angle of drivers. Optimal angle seems to be somewhere between 10 - 35degrees perhaps, depending on what kind of horn there is to integrate with. Less rotation makes the pattern very narrow. More rotation and the patterns seem to get too wide and dirty. Less c-c seems smoother on the lobing sector but more spacing gives pattern control to lower frequency.

I suggest anyone considering such system to play with the simulation, it is very interesting to see what happens when parameters get manipulated and try to get a good balance :)

if xo to a horn was somewere around 400-500hz the stuff above 1khz doesnt matter that much.
 

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Edit time over. looking back the toe out situation the patter control seems way more effective below the ~500hz than with toe in. Maybe it was better option in real application after all, especially with very large horn with narrow pattern, and a steep xo :)... toe in still looks easier to integrate though.
 
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So I started thinking about the classic studiomonitors where they would use two 15" drivers in a side by side configuration with a radial horn above.
Thoughts about this, does this approach give a better directivity match between direct radiator and horn?

Greets!

Depends on the horn's directivity, baffle size, room boundary loading, so you can use this simple math to work through it 'good enough' for some of us: Help Converting Line array into multi-way system?
 
Here are 22 degree examples

toe out in ripple tank
toe in

Resolution should be ~50px corresponds to ~40cm, in which case the ripple tank setup should roughly match reality.

From the ripple tank tests it looks like the VituixCAD sims have the coordinates right. Toe in setup with 22 degree rotation has strong main lobe ~1kHz and weak side lobes. The toe out has narrow main lobe and wide side lobes, all almost equal in SPL.

From the ripple tank tests it looks like both have relatively few issues around where the crossover would be closer to 500Hz than 1000Hz. Although, the response may differ here significantly since both drivers interact with the physical construct which does not happen in VCAD sims I posted. I have no idea which one would work better in which situation. I strongly suggest build and measure since these are very quick and rough sims to give some idea how a system like this could work.
 

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^ if you checkout post #37 attachment the toe out setup seem to combine into nice wave front at least up to the ~700Hz test. The intensity seems to be quite uniform with wide dispersion. The toe in setup makes more distinct main lobe so narrower pattern overal. But jeah even the sims have lots of simplification baked in so :) I think I've seen examples done both ways, from memory the toe in situation is quite rare though. Some high end products seem to have it (on the vertical axis). Most if not all big monitors using 15" side by side have them flat or toed out? In fact it is quite hard to google up images of these dual woofer systems, there is much more stacked vertically than in the horizontal configuration.

Here is someone building augsburger type thing, with toed in woofers. Some measurements of dual woofer setup in post #49, images and what not later in the thread.
Old School Studio Monitor Build | Page 3 | AVS Forum

Surely a system like this is cool looking but not sure if it is something one would want or need for sound quality. If they were good, they'd be everywhere instead of stacked drivers?:)
 
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