I made a BIG mistake here. I confused the design of the Whisper ( multiple stacked and staggered mids ) with that of the Focus ( vertical array ). As such, some of my comments, primarily those about lobing within the horizontal plane of the Focus, are not quite as applicable. I am sorry for any confusion that this may have caused. There will be comb-filtering taking place in the Focus though as it does use dual drivers spaced widely apart in an MTM array.
Having said that, all of the info included is correct pertaining to lobing, cancellation, peaks & dips, limited specificity of imaging, etc... on designs that use multiple drivers sharing the same frequency range mounted side by side and / or staggered pairs that are mounted both vertically and horizontally.
One can see the differences between how the
Focus and other Legacy designs function and what i'm referring to here by reviewing pictures of their product line. The wider that the similar drivers are spaced apart, the more erratic the dispersion and more sensitive the sound will be to listening height, distance and angle. This is why most designers have abandoned horizontal driver alignment and have switched to vertical driver alignments.
All of the designs pictured will require greater than average listening distances in order for the drivers to blend together. As i've mentioned in other threads, this is true of any design that uses a large quantity of drivers and / or a design that has the drivers spaced widely apart. Trying to use a speaker of this size and design in a smaller room and / or in a nearfield listening situation will result in sound that is far less than cohesive. Once again, if one wants to achieve good results, you have to pick and choose components that will work well with the environment they will be working with and electrical demands placed upon them. Even then, one will not be able to achieve the level of image specificity that one might experience using a speaker with fewer drivers in a more conventional configuration. Whether or not imaging is important to the individual is obviously a matter of personal preference.
As a side note and for sake of clarification, imaging and soundstage presentation are two different things. Many people confuse the two thinking that a system with a wide / deep / tall soundstage is the same as having good imaging. This is not true as imaging is the specific placement of individual notes / performers within the soundstage itself. Kind of like looking at a picture of a crowd of people, but being able to see all of the people as individuals. Sean
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PS... I have speakers that image very well ( vertically aligned drivers ) and i have speakers that lack image specificity ( omni's ). These are simply different types of presentation with both sounding good, just different. Some may like one type of presentation more than the other. As mentioned, one has to judge for themselves what they like and want to end up with over the long haul.
Having said that, i think that most would agree that knowing more about such things before making a large investment in speakers may help them to look, listen and recognize that such differences do exist. Finding out about such things and / or being exposed to different types of presentations AFTER an expensive purchase has been made can be very disappointing to say the least. Sean
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