I've been sitting on the desire to build a pair of nearfield line arrays for the last 6 years after reading the work of Roger Russell and his column systems. 5 years ago I started building a prototype pair with cheap $1 Aurasound 3" with the end goal of building a separate, finished pair with Peerless TC9's. I never finished those after moving from NY to Florida for work.
To make a long story short... I finished them! Below are photos of the build. It has taken me several months to get them done and that was with having a cabinet maker build the cabinets. I never realised how many technical design decisions went into making these.
My goal was to have the best performance in a $3,000 budget (most of that went into the cabinets).
To make a long story short... I finished them! Below are photos of the build. It has taken me several months to get them done and that was with having a cabinet maker build the cabinets. I never realised how many technical design decisions went into making these.
My goal was to have the best performance in a $3,000 budget (most of that went into the cabinets).
(Once I figure out how to upload photos) Here is the prototype my cabinet maker made for approval before building the final cabinets. The construction quality was fantastic but I ended up making a lot of asthetic/performance changes. As you can see, we experimented with a full length grill option that would have been a full length sheet of perforated metal.
The biggest change was to figure out if we could flush mount the drivers and which routing method worked best to allow the drivers to breath in the back.
Here is the flush mount test as well as two styles of routing for the back of the drivers. I settled on the simpler of the two as it saved time and wasn't sure the extra meat for the screws was worth the extra complication.
Attachments
I had gaskets made on a water jet at a local rubber and gasket company to seal the drivers to the cabinet. I made the template in Photoshop. They cost $1.35 per x 50. Way better than cutting them individually by hand!
The flush mount in the cabinets were measured and tested the for these gaskets and remain flush.
The flush mount in the cabinets were measured and tested the for these gaskets and remain flush.
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How to find the sweet spot
Question for you line array guys before I return to posting build photos. How do position them to get a good sweet spot in the listening position? They have such a large sweet spot that it's like not having a sweet spot at all. I have no problem positioning point source speakers.
Is ironic, I built them to hear this huge sweet spot. Now I can't seem to find it because it's so huge.
Question for you line array guys before I return to posting build photos. How do position them to get a good sweet spot in the listening position? They have such a large sweet spot that it's like not having a sweet spot at all. I have no problem positioning point source speakers.
Is ironic, I built them to hear this huge sweet spot. Now I can't seem to find it because it's so huge.
Very nice project, i have never heard the ids25 but i am sure they sound wonderful, a straight line array like this is something i must try myself before i die
Thank you! Hadn't thought of it like that.
My biggest problem is not reduction in a phantom center. Do I need to move the speakers closer to the corners?
Nice! Did your guy do those cabinets by hand, or are the baffles and such done on a CNC router? Also, where did you find drivers for $1 each??? I’m about to start designing some for myself, and the pain of $10 x 50 ea has got me a little bummed. $50 for 50 drivers would be super.
Never mind, just realized those $1 speakers were the ones roger Russell used in his original build.
The cabinets were done on a CNC machine. He has done very fine work for a long time and said that this was the most precision demanding work he has done. I don't think he could have flush mount the drivers without the CNC machine.
The TC9's were a little under $8 with bulk pricing of over 50 drivers. The Aurasound drivers were bought several years ago to build a prototype and I still haven't used them.
This photo shows both drivers side by side.
