Rat Shck Presidian 40-5053. Next Sonic Impact?

Somebody (in the Dallas area) really should build a 7 1/2' line array with these things (and then have a shootout with his Dali's). Hint, hint...

I'll donate some CAT-5 for the wiring.

I could use a project like this - it would be a nice break from M&A case analysis. If you're seriously up for this one, shoot me an e-mail. JQ will stay at home this time.

Mounting both drivers on a planar surface yet featuring a first-order crossover on the tweeter and no crossover on the mid-woofer is no doubt a feature designed to help optimize placement. If the speaker is placed horizontally (with the tweeter closer to the center) a slight toe-in will time-align the drivers. You'll know when you've hit the right amount of toe-in when the image "snaps" into focus. I'm almost positive this is what Rat Shack intended.

Bring on the 7 1/2' array!!!

So what are we gonna use for the bottom octive-and-a-half?

Let's assume that each "element" (speaker, driver, whatever) actually behaves like an 8 Ohm resister.

Let's also assume that we're going to use 16 elements (instead of 14). It makes the math easier.

We need to recognize that resisters in series are simply additive:

R(1) + R(2) = R(3)

But resisters in parallel are not:

1/R(1) + 1/R(2) = 1/R(3)

So we'd arrange the elements into serial groups that are parallel to each other in attempt to keep the total resistance in an "ideal" range (around 8 Ohms).

If we used 16 speakers, we'd create 4 groups of 4 speakers and wire each of those 4 groups in series:

S(1) + S(2) + S(3) + S(4) = G(1) = 32 Ohms
S(5) + S(6) + S(7) + S(8) = G(2) = 32 Ohms
S(9) + S(10) + S(11) + S(12) = G(3) = 32 Ohms
S(13) + S(14) + S(15) + S(16) = G(4) = 32 Ohms

Now wire each of those groups in parallel:

1/G(1) + 1/G(2) + 1/G(3) + 1/G(4) = 1/Total = 8 Ohms