Alex:

Multiple tweeters are not beneficial, and the same goes for multiple midrange drivers. If anything, you make the sound worse by using multiple drivers if you listen on varying vertical axis. Sound from each driver will overlap and you'll get destructive and constructive interference leading to comb filtering and phasing issues.

The only way round it is to have as few sources of sound as possible.

But Alex, how often do you listen to speakers on a varying vertical axis?  If you're actually going to try to make an argument over varying vertical axes, then you'd have to hold it against the ALT lensing speakers too, as those lenses assume that the ear will be relatively close to their vertical height, and not 30 degrees above.  The interference and overlap argument may hold true for higher frequencies; I'm not sure as I've never bothered to calculate it, but either way, look at how closely together the mid range units are spaced on the Pentas.  They're close enough that there's no meaningful degenerative effect from the vertical spacing.  Regardless, rather than trying to argue what would happen to the waves, look at the frequency response plots of high end speakers using linear arrays.  Did you look at the site that I posted the link to earlier?  Look at how flat a frequency response Zaph got out of two "budget" drivers spaced vertically.

Either way, are you trying to say that the 8000's are superior speakers to penta 3's?

Austin

ben12345:

Alex:

Multiple tweeters are not beneficial, and the same goes for multiple midrange drivers. If anything, you make the sound worse by using multiple drivers if you listen on varying vertical axis. Sound from each driver will overlap and you'll get destructive and constructive interference leading to comb filtering and phasing issues.

The only way round it is to have as few sources of sound as possible.

 

I'm sure these speakers sound terrible then;

http://junkies.wordpress.com/2007/02/13/mcintosh-xrt2k-loudspeaker-system/

 Saying that, i'd probably have these over anything B&O have produced, and are currently producing!

Actually they do! As lovely as McIntosh stuff is (particularly their amplifiers), their loudspeakers IMO leave a LOT to be desired. The idea behind that many drivers is to increase the size of the soundstage, which while it sounds like a good idea, a single set of high quality drivers positioned further apart (BeoLab 1s are an example) or with controlled dispersion (BeoLab 5s being the ultimate example) will give you the same kind of size to the soundstage, but without all the lumpy response (the McIntosh amps are renown for producing an amazingly flat and clean signal) and 'flittering' hi-end.

A much smarter solution to the problem McIntosh are trying to tackle would be... electrostatic speakers?

Either way, one bi-product of both of these solutions is that the sound would carry better than a conventional speaker (if they were compared at the same volume), which is more of a bad thing in a conventional listening environment as this would massively increase the amount of room reflections you hear (something the Acoustic Lens does a brilliant job of tackling).

I'm not sure how much of this is strictly correct - a true speaker array is much more of a science that just lumping drivers next to each other. The array can be driven in a way that can dynamically focus a "beam" of sound rather than, would seem likely, scatter it to the four winds. I believe that, correctly driven, they can compensate for and cancel expected nulls in the frequency response, there are many patents in this area - I'm sure Dave Moulten could offer an interesting perspective on the merits of an array solution (and how it differs from just adjacent speakers driven with an identical signal).

camshaft:

Either way, are you trying to say that the 8000's are superior speakers to penta 3's?

Austin

Not at all - I'm merely saying that more drivers doesn't = better sound, it just = more sound.

Alex:

camshaft:

Either way, are you trying to say that the 8000's are superior speakers to penta 3's?

Austin

Not at all - I'm merely saying that more drivers doesn't = better sound, it just = more sound.

Four bass drivers in the Penta make it possible to produce a deeper sound. You could argue that one Penta woofer can produce sound in the 20-40 Hz range, but the sound would be very low. Having 4 bass drivers makes the Penta able to produce a high level of sound in the 40-50 Hz region. So yes more drives = more sound, but if more sound = more hearable deep bass, then more drivers = better sound also.

IIRC the woofer in Bl5 could be replaced by 70.000 of the BL5 tweeters. Placing them in the cabinet would be hard though.