When I occasionally feel the need to build a set of pro speakers, it is
usually because I
want a light, compact, high power, high efficiency system for the cost of
a
box-on-a-stick. I couldn't justify the design time commitment, and most
designs I've found
on the www are either innovative but misguided, or simple reflex boxes,
and don't help me
at all.
Bill Fitzmaurice (www.billfitzmaurice.com) seems to design speakers whose
SPL plots look
useful, but Bill's website gives very little real information, the graphs
seem a little
inconsistent, the test facilities seem limited, and he even uses cheap
piezo tweeters in
some models, so I'd appreciate hearing from anyone who has experience with
them, or has
plans for good light tops (on sticks) and a sub.
The DR-200 and DR-250 are said to offer the absolute best possible
performance, but also
the most build difficulty. Maybe they really do need to be complex to get
the performance?
Maybe they contain unnecessary complications? Maybe the design hasn't been
thought through
properly and optimized for manufacture? Also, I tried tweeter line arrays
decades ago and
found the phasing colouration unacceptable for any system, so what might
make these
designs any better? Ditto for the somewhat different kind of colouration
of crossfire
arrays?
The OT-12 is a much simpler contender, but it would need a complex
crossover to avoid both
tweeter damage when driven hard, and a notch around the crossover
frequency.
The T-36 and T-HT subs seem to perform very well, but both are far too
large for me, and
all the others seem to be aimed at DJ / club applications with good
extension to 30 Hz,
but lacking in the 50 Hz region critical for bass and kick drum in bands
(my
application). This may also imply that the drivers are not well loaded
around 50 Hz,
greatly reducing the available SPL. Maybe the lower resonance (presumably
a ****t) could be
tuned higher to fix this? Or maybe a 6th order bandpass might still be
better for my sub?
Without more detail its impossible to judge all these things from the
website, or whether
Bill's SPL efficiencies are gained by just omitting the proper damping, or
how much the
various SPL plots are averaged. Bill's plans don't cost much, but with so
many unknowns
I'd prefer some feedback before buying any.
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