Cheap OB line arrays

[BoomieMCT]

I often get ideas for projects I don't have the time or space for. Anyhoo I noticed these Foster wide bandwidth drivers on sale at Madisound and I got to thinking. At $3 each and with a Qts of 1(ish) these could make some cheap and easy line arrays. You could buy 32 of these for about $100 bucks and have two eight foot tall lines with an F3 of about 60 Hz (before taking into account baffle diffraction or dipole losses) and a sensitivity of about 100 dB.

Now I can't find much data on this driver. It is listed as "wide bandwidth" but how high can it really play? I'm sure I can find some clearance tweets to cross to - especially with a high x-over point. Anyone have info or experience with this driver? At $3 each I'm sure they aren't super great - but probably fine to play around with.

This is a tempting experiment - not sure if I have time for it though!

[mayhem13]

Hey boomie. Like the ad says free air only. Terrible response down low in a box. Cone limits looks to be around 13khz if use 3mm as xmax guess. But for $3 i bet you could find a use for them in an array on an open baffle. I bet you could get even a better deal on them if you buy the whole lot-can't hurt to call and ask. BTW whats your take on coaxial drivers?

[BoomieMCT]

Yeah, my theory was to make an open baffle array - so it would be free air. I was actually using a stricter assumption of 1mm of xmax. Not great but it would be offset by the fact there would be 16 in each array.

I have no problem with coaxials. I heard an Adire kit based on the 10" Emminence Beta coaxials that sounds very nice. Why do you ask?

As an aside I wrote Foster Culver for more info on this driver. We'll see if they respond.

[mayhem13]

I'm considering coax's as my first design project. There's been some pretty good reviews of the new Theil coax system as well. Looks like one coax 8" driver in a cuft box dual ported for low end extension. Can't get any easier than that since i've got the lows covered. Any known good coax drivers come to mind?

[BoomieMCT]

mayhem13 wrote:

I'm considering coax's as my first design project. There's been some pretty good reviews of the new Theil coax system as well. Looks like one coax 8" driver in a cuft box dual ported for low end extension. Can't get any easier than that since i've got the lows covered. Any known good coax drivers come to mind?

I've heard this in a ported cab and think it is pretty keen.

[mayhem13]

thanx for the tip boomy. I think the 8" version and apt-50 tweeter would be perfect for me. Price is right too at less than $100 per set. I'll start with two mains and follow up with details. The tweeter used has some pretty good feedback. 5 of these in a HT set up would probobly be insane!
Left over dollars from driver cost could go to let say bi amping and dcx2456's.

[BoomieMCT]

mayhem13 wrote:

thanx for the tip boomy. I think the 8" version and apt-50 tweeter would be perfect for me. Price is right too at less than $100 per set. I'll start with two mains and follow up with details. The tweeter used has some pretty good feedback. 5 of these in a HT set up would probobly be insane!
Left over dollars from driver cost could go to let say bi amping and dcx2456's.

Hold your horses. I know the 10" sounds pretty good. I was not as impressed with the 8" or the 12". Also, I would not recommend a pre-canned crossover - even one from Eminence. Finally I'd also use it with an ASD-1000 or PSD:2002 instead of an APT-50 - for non pro-sound use you'll want a lower x-over point than 5kHz. A 10" cone will have enough beaming issues.

Anyhoo - we're getting off-topic from cheap OB arrays. I may need to split this into another thread.