Ah, sure, understood. Boxes are much more portable
Yep, I firmly belive that's the reason. Also remember, I have five large ESL's in a relatively medium (16x28x10) sized room.
I would go for the best midbass you can afford. I splurged with the Extremis and am very, very pleased. Even at super high SPL’s, they maintain utra-low distortion, even when the six of them are moving significantly. You’d think 80hz is high x-over, but even with 24db/octave, they are pumping a good bit of 60hz output, especially up over 100 dB SPL
Highly recommend you consider a line source that goes from 500hz on up, as that will keep the crossover low enough to not interfere with the midrange and highs.
Gee, that sounds like an ESL to me. So either your heretical Final or an ML ESL would do the trick.
The IB is a design that assumes equal pressure front and back, so the damping is purely symmetrical from an air resistance point of view. The driver damping needs to be designed to accommodate a zero (or close to) front and rear resistance, so not every woofer out there qualifies. See the FAQ at the Cult. The benefit is no compressed air distortions (like the spring action the compressed air in an acoustic suspension design give on the outward trip).
The downside (and benefit) is you can easily hit xmax, so the trick is to use multiple drivers, that and to get symmetrical counterbalancing forces on the manifold box.
More info on IB’s at the Cult of the infinitely baffled
Yeah, I was referring to keeping each woofer enclosure seperate from each other. The tweeters have a back-cup, so it probably wouldn't matter if I put them in the same enclosure...but that's a different question.
As I see it - Having seperate enclosures/compartments for each woofer
Pros - ??? More rigidity?
Cons, - can't share internal volume (ie, have a 7ft box, with 4 ft of arrays...so you have an extra 3 ft of height to share the internal volume), have to be more precise in placement of braces...to keep each compartment the same size.
What are the pros, really?
I want to build the thing with a curved back, and think I've found a good way to do it. If the finals fit the bill for the midrange+ part, I'd love to build an enclosure that will house it along with the midbass array, and look finished. Basically, I'm jealous of your design
Rigidity would be a plus of the separate woofer enclosures, but as you note, it makes for a bigger and heavier cabinet. My sense is that as long as internal resonances and standing waves are correctly accounted for (in the frequency range of operation), then shared space is fine.
Mine is pretty simple in that regards and works fine. A few more cabinet resonances than I’d want if designing this commercially, but fine (and inaudible) for my application.
Just wait until you hear that SL3XC, it’s whole different game…
