# Need new speaker choice for existing cabinet....



## Guest (Nov 6, 2007)

I lead the sound team at my church. We all hate our stupid monitor wedges. Our Ashley EQ's do a wonderful job at cleaning them up but you can see the attached pictures of what it takes to clean up the sound, but they only help so much. We currently slam off the lows just to clean up the sound since these are primarily for singers. 

So I am investigating at upgrading the drivers.

Currently they contain the following...

Eminence APT-150 Super Tweeter w/100x50 Horn: http://www.partsexpress.com/pe/showdetl.cfm?&Partnumber=290-534

Eminence Kappa-12A 12" Driver 8 Ohm: http://www.partsexpress.com/pe/showdetl.cfm?&Partnumber=290-456

What are my options while still using the actual cabinet? I am also not sure what my weakest link is either. I unfortunately don't have an easy way to do a map out the frequency on these individually more then what you see on the Ashley which was with both drivers at once. My friend came in with the equipment and we mapped out the Ashley using pink noise.


Thanks for the help!

Frank


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## Anthony (Oct 5, 2006)

Well, those are all good drivers, so it's not that you have cheap speakers. Eminence makes good stuff.

It looks like the tweeters are just too hot for the rest of the speaker. You may get away with putting in an L-pad to attenuate the tweeter down, but that would only be half the solution. It also seems like you have too much bass from the ports, which is why you have to knock it down to sound good. Many times, bad port tunings can make bass sound flabby or downright awful. This is all just speculation, though.

Since you have access to mics, I would find a way to get some frequency sweeps. Just use room eq wizard (REW) available here, follow the instructions, and get some data measured at 1m (everything), and nearfield (less than 1/2" away) for the woofer, port, and tweeter -- all separately. At least then we might be able to figure out where the design went wrong.

It could just be that the speaker is expecting some sort of room loading (or lack of), but without more details and a measurement or two, it would be hard to help out further.

Good luck and keep us posted.


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## drf (Oct 22, 2006)

I don't think you neeed to replace these drivers at all. As said, eminence make some very good drivers. 

Its a little hard to tell from those pics (bit blurry, and nothing beats first hand experience) I'll do my best to evaluate whats happening.

To start with it looks like you have more freq's cut than boosted (bar the mids) which means the drivers aren't lacking and thus don't require excessive compensating. Also it doesn't look like they are that heavily eq'd overall. Considering most churches are aweful buildings to get accoustically right, it looks like you have gotten off lightly. Which leads me to think that it is basic room accoustics that require the attention. 

Lastly, sometimes a flat response for live sound does not always sound the best, it may be mathematically correct but the human response to live audio is so much more than sound that sometimes a horrible looking curve will actually sound better. 

Food for thought anyway.

hope this helps

Dr F


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