Line array help or suggestions

I am building a center channel channel for our living room Home Theater. I had several drivers already I decided to use, 10 3” FR drivers and a Morel 1” dome. I decided to add the 1” dome above 10k as it has pretty smooth off axis response and the FRs get a little ragged that high.

I plan on wiring each set of 5 in a Bessel alignment to keep horizontal beaming to a minimum.

My question is horizontal spacing. I have no limit up to 60”, but I was wondering if anyone had an ideal of optimum spacing with them being in a Bessel, I really don’t know where the acoustic centers will be and how they will sum. I really do not feel building test baffles and measuring and was hoping someone on here would have a tip.

Thank you!
IMG_6526.jpeg
 

Attachments

  • IMG_6525.jpeg
    IMG_6525.jpeg
    289.8 KB · Views: 49
No, not what I want, and I really appreciate your model! That is why I was trying to go with 2 separate 5 driver Bessel arrays. I was hoping this would prevent that type of focused output but I wasn’t sure how the 2 arrays would combine, that was the intent of this post. My hopes were that since both 5 driver arrays would not behave like symmetric line array I could have much better horizontal dispersion.
 
Shading is done several ways usually by using resistors or connecting speakers in series and parallel. This way the speakers in the center of the array are louder than the outside speakers. For example with a five speaker array you have one speaker connected at 8ohms, the other four are connected in series and parallel at 8 ohms for a system at 4 ohms. The first speaker gets 1/2 the power and the other four get the other 1/2. There may be better ways to shade your array, this is just an example. The outside 8 drivers will have the same frequency response as the center two but they will be less loud, this focuses the perception towards the center two speakers and allows much higher power handling.
 
Even if he weights the array as per the Hamming window (1:0.8:0.5:0.2:0.1), the main beam width will be only 2 times wider.
95honda-hamming.png

I'd get 10 small boxes from a dollar store and experiment with them "live". It is way too easy to make a mistake :-(
 
Arrays are only practical when run with DSP imho. Wouldn’t it be easier to add a passive lowpass to the outside drivers and only use the two (or one) fullrange(s) adjacent to the tweeter up to the crossover to the tweeter? So that you essentially build a 2,5 system?
 
Shading is done several ways usually by using resistors or connecting speakers in series and parallel. This way the speakers in the center of the array are louder than the outside speakers. For example with a five speaker array you have one speaker connected at 8ohms, the other four are connected in series and parallel at 8 ohms for a system at 4 ohms. The first speaker gets 1/2 the power and the other four get the other 1/2. There may be better ways to shade your array, this is just an example. The outside 8 drivers will have the same frequency response as the center two but they will be less loud, this focuses the perception towards the center two speakers and allows much higher power handling.
And @markbakk

Ahhh, not sure you guys caught my original post, these are being wired in a Bessel arrangement.
 
Where the one speaker is out of phase? That would explain the five drivers. 🧐 That would be a Bessel array, I guess. I think people though you were putting in a Bessel crossover.

OK, now that we know what you are up to, I agree with @mayhem13 keep everything close together. There is no reason why you can’t build a larger box to fit the width of the mantle. Just for esthetic purposes, but still keep the drivers close in the middle.
 
  • Like
Reactions: 95Honda
Also, I think I will add a defeatable high pass filter @150Hz for the 2 out of phase drivers, beaming shouldn't be as bad that low and it should just act like a Nestorovic alignment, I don't want to lose a ton of output in the 100-200Hz range as there is a pretty hefty handover to the subwoofer. It will be easy and on a toggle switch, so if it doesn't work, I can leave it bypassed...
 
  • Like
Reactions: Arthur Jackson