The Moose Array reminds me of one of my favorite speakers. The BOSE
802. Not the best sounding beast, but it remains as one of the most
brilliant speaker designs of all time. You could adapt to just about
any size facility just by stacking them. A triple stack (24 full-range
transducers in the set--six vertical per face) would project the sound
for a long distance. We freaked out dogs over the entire city of St.
Catharines, Ontario one night. Thousands of dogs howling all at once.
Brilliant. Absolutely brilliant.
The concept behind the Moose Array is sound in one aspect. It is
better to have a larger surface move a little, than a little surface
to move a lot. The reason is distortion or even the Doppler Effect for
higher frequency sounds that are riding along the waves of the lower
frequency sounds. However, with larger moving surfaces, you end up
with off-axis issues.
My self-powered studio monitor speakers (near/midfield) are a classic
8-inch with tweeter design with shaped front to keep distortion within
the boundary layer and conical evenness under control. The problem
with a multi-transducer speaker design is the minimum distance
required for the sound to become coherent. With mine, as with most
near/midfields of similar design, that is almost two meters distance.
Generally speaking, the more transducers, the more distance. However,
to a point. When trying to produce a wavefront (like an electrostatic
membrane speaker design does) with conical transducers, you get
extreme amounts of interaction between the waves. In order to make
this work, the speaker design has to either be shaped or the power
level has to be altered to provide greater movement in the inner
transducers than the outer transducers. You have to punch from the
middle.
The majority of speaker designs have one major failing. They are
ported. Ports are exacly like turbochargers on engines. You add ports
or turbochargers when you don't have enough cubic-inches.
But don't listen to me. I'm quite proud of my Bose speakers in the
house. They are far from the most "accurate", but they sound great in
their environment. When configured properly, they are awesome. (And
they only take up a few inches up near the ceiling).
AG Schnozz
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