can one address poor off axis response if many drivers were used

[tech.knockout]

Sorry if these are stupid questions:

If one were to plan to DIY many beamy speakers that are aimed to cover the entire listening area with their limited dispersion; can the poor off axis response of each individual driver be addressed/ignorable without large side effects?

I remember someone posting a picture of a massive altec lansing setup using many drivers which seems to fit this principle. (not a line array, more like a "flower shaped array" where drivers aim at many angles)

Would "comb filtering" be a serious problem in this case, or is comb filtering primarily a crossover overlap problem?

 

[sreten]

Hi,

Its already been done in the case of multicellular horn arrays.

For surface mounted drivers its difficult to avoid combfiltering effects
at frequencies the drivers are not directional and wavelengths are
comparable to driver spacing.

sreten.

 

[Dusty Chalk]

As long as they are time-aligned (both circuitry-wise and mechanically/physically) and they cover the same portion of the frequency spectrum (I.E. crossover, characteristics), I don't see why this would be a problem.

The thing that may happen is that first reflections become a bigger issue, by coming back to interact with a different driver's wavefront out of phase.

One of the E3 speakers uses the following layout to get a point-source: a set of 5 or 7 or I don't remember how many tweeters in a circular array.

I'd be very interested in the answer to this as well, as I am thinking of building an omnidirectional speaker, myself...