Real Long
I am a fan of the concept and have had the good fortune to hear the best pair of IRS Vs in existance a number of times.
If you think I am overstating the IRS Vs , they were made by and owned arnie Nudell as an example of the worlds absolute best speaker ever concieved. They were vetted to the press played a couple of days and went into their crates until Miller Speaker's Bill Legall aquired them.
He owned one set of the few that were made already. Being as meticulous as he is each driver was rebuilt and reinforced. His specialty was repair of infinity and he is a true obsessive perfectionist.
The bass arrays consist of only 6 12 inch drivers with 1000 watt amps per siide. The panels ahave special IRS V size Emims. I think there are 16. A peculiar unanticipated fact Bill tells me is that they are smaller than other IRS mims and easier to drive. Then the 32 emit tweeters on each each panel.
How did they sound ..... the absolute most overwhelming musical experience I have ever known. It is as if they evelop you in sound.
Think of the cost. Arnie used the best stuff he could as he eagerly greeted the challenge of making the best on earth. The magazine called New York had them on the cover. It stating that in 1987 dollars that these cost $100,000 to make. That seems a bit paltry nowadays with that kind of price attached to a number of TOTL showcase pieces. At the time it was an unheard of indulgence.
I never did ask him what paid for them and the value of his effort he put into them including hand rubbing ten coats of tung oil into the rosewood each month or so. That made them look like a million too.
He sold them much to my dismay, to one of his friends and admirers of him and those speakers. The buyer whose dream came true.
He said yes the other set isn't as pedigreed as those but they sound good enough. I was upset because his integrity cost him an additional $15K over the lowest price they should have been offered for, when yet another friend and customer offered more when the first guy was having difficulty scrambling to liquidate the funds.
The truth is that most of todays behemoths don't use parts and even remotely as expensive these. Even though they cost a lot more than these. Building them today is unthinkable there isn't any more of that wood left just to start. Imagine a giant panel of cone and domes lets say diamond tweeters or Esotars at a min of about 1,000 a pair times 32 pairs then 16 Ceramic or aerogel mids and 12 custom woofers with a great on board amp per etc.
I used to stack 4 pairs of every speaker I had as a teen. I guess that will be the only line array I will know.
Don't dispair I have a dozen pairs of speakers. I could use all my amps and do it again. I think the sound would be more cacophony than hi fidelity. So I stay with my JMs or old BLs or Older JBLs or my Klipsch La Scalas and heresys or the Tannoys......
My latest outrageous speaker notion is... .(like you give a )...To get even poorer fast. A column of those Feastrex drivers allrange at $50K/Pair. A stack of 12 in a voluminous tower but each in its own reiforced dampened enclosure but back horn style vented into one big tuned port to reinforce the bass.