Focal Kanta No.2

@mmeysarosh 

Yeah, that's always the apples to oranges argument that gets made. Well duh, moving less air is going to produce less amplitude. So you use several. I really don't feel like crunching the numbers at 5am with my contacts out, but I have done the numbers and the 3 6.5" drivers I'm listening to roughly equal the area of a 10 inch cone. So seeing as how they move the same volume of air as a 10 inch driver, their excursion is identical while still enjoying the benefits of the stiffness of the smaller cones. No distortion penalty due to excursion. 

That is an rather myopic view of engineering of any mechanical system. You're comparing three motor system which will in combination require more power than the single driver. The cabinet and baffle construction will be more complex and costly and the bass performance of each driver will vary due to mechanical acoustic properties as they won't have identical operating environments in the cabinets. You do get some advantages, but those don't outweigh the complications. Even if you increase cabinet volume, you introduce cabinet anomalies if not properly braced and damped.

Using an array of smaller drivers is a solution, but I wouldn't consider it optimal application unless the room size is small, which you had mentioned is your current setup. In my room, which is more than double what Focal specifies for the 936 and still significantly more than the Kanta2, going to larger cone diameter is the best route. In my case it works ideally with two eight inch drivers, but a single twelve could do as well. The negative to the twelve is wide baffle and cabinet construction to contain two eights are reasonable in engineering and cost. Right sized tools for the job is always best. 

It's not that myopic at all. I've heard the argument that all those individual sources can be identified, but the physics don't reflect that. If you're argument was correct, the 948's would require less power for a given output in the bass region, but the require more using fewer, larger, but otherwise identical drivers. The physics of the system suggests that the drivers mechanically couple as roughly described by line arrays theory and deviations tend to nullify, not amplify. 

The Focal 948 are slightly more efficient over the 936's, but cabinet volume in relation to surface radiation area is a bit less on the 948 as compared to the 936. The main reasoning to not going further is the efficiency for the mid and tweeter drivers are not any more capable in the 948 or 936. At 92db vs 92.5db, either design is at the upper end efficiency for typical cones and domes without resorting to horn loading or other techniques for the mid and tweeter. Focal hit the limit of those drivers first and in the bass could instead be tuned for deeper response in port tuning and lower distortion.

A good deal of other lines out there do gain significant efficiency in larger models as they shelve their mid/tweeter drivers down in level in the crossover in smaller designs as compared to larger. The flax cones are pretty light and achieve output similar to coated paper drivers, but obviously they have their own set of compromises. 

Now the line array theory isn't entirely effective in the 936 as the driver symmetry goes off in the upper end of their pass band. Since its  pretty low in level, the audibility isn't high and is given as acceptable in a design at this price point. Agreeably, this has more to do with the more complex bass driver arrangement in the 936 over the other models in the line. To make that coupling work really well, you require high constancy in driver and operating environment, which some designs to practice to good effect.