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D'appolito arrayed speakers ... standing centre channel speakers on end.

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Dougey_Jones

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I get their wishes ... they want good sound without giving up half their living space or taking out a second mortgage to get it.

A typical Sound Bar Killer is something like an Aiyima A07 and a nice pair of bookshelf speakers... Half the time the speakers end up on the ends of their TV stand or on a pair of end tables... I'm very cautious about safety since almost always their are either kids or grand kids in the house. I was hoping to solve the problem with a pair of small floor standers... like the L-100s but no way they're spending that kind of money on better TV sound.... and FWIW I agree there are limits.

It's too bad Radio Shack is gone ... their "Minimus 8" speakers would be perfect ... 8 inch woofer, 2 inch paper tweeters, and that rich "old radio" sound...
If this sentiment is typical of your customer base, then why aren't you selling and installing in-wall speakers, hiding AVR's and doing IR repeater setups? That's what I've done for most of my family and friends that feel this way about home audio. In-Walls can sound fine if you do a decent job packing the wall behind the speaker with fiber fill or other dampening material. Even more so nowadays with Audyssey XT32 and Dirac you can get fairly impressive sound from this type of install.
 
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Something like the sigberg monitor (coaxial+woofer 3-way) could almost be ideal if it was built to play lower, but that wasn’t their design goal as it is meant to be paired to a sub.
Regardless, there are a lot of options at many price points. I think you can find a successful balance with many of them and your low stand.
I was thinking about that, too, and having a tilted base to aim at the seated ear height could be further stabilized with a little back bumper of some sort. Sadly, product like that doesn’t seem to exist in the marketplace. Building and finishing it nicely will cost just as much as a good set of Speakers! :p

I do seem to have found a gap in the market... at least one that can't be filled economically. My whole thing is selling a reasonably priced system, set up in their home, often running from an HTPC that I also set up for them... so it's pretty much a turnkey boost in entertainment value without the high prices to go with it. Typical budget is about $500 for amp and speakers or $1000 with the HTPC included. Not a lot of markup there, I can tell you.

Good luck! :)

Thanks. ... I may need some of that...
 
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If this sentiment is typical of your customer base, then why aren't you selling and installing in-wall speakers, hiding AVR's and doing IR repeater setups? That's what I've done for most of my family and friends that feel this way about home audio. In-Walls can sound fine if you do a decent job packing the wall behind the speaker with fiber fill or other dampening material. Even more so nowadays with Audyssey XT32 and Dirac you can get fairly impressive sound from this type of install.

I've done that too in a couple of very nice houses... but in many cases these are apartment dwellers and I can only imagine the landlord's reactions when I start cutting holes in walls.

One needs to cover all bases...
 

Dougey_Jones

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I've done that too in a couple of very nice houses... but in many cases these are apartment dwellers and I can only imagine the landlord's reactions when I start cutting holes in walls.
Honestly, when I reach that point with people I just throw my hands up.

1) You don't own your space
2) You don't want anything to be visible
3) You don't want Audiophile crap in your home

Seriously just get a soundbar or a pair of BT headphones and stop wasting my time.
 

Plcamp

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I'm often met with "I'm not an audiophile and I don't want their crap in my home"
Well (on the other side of that coin) they are clearly not satisfied with the speaker performance of their TV set either. Do they want improved sound, why not just have no speakers?

So, somewhere between what tv companies give you, and audiophile nirvana, is what they seek.

Might be best to ask them what they comfortably want to spend, from which a best answer is possible?

Meanwhile, here is a blog which might interest them…it seems to me to be a good fit for moderate size, furniture grade, high quality sound and does not break any banks?

 
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Honestly, when I reach that point with people I just throw my hands up.

1) You don't own your space
2) You don't want anything to be visible
3) You don't want Audiophile crap in your home

Seriously just get a soundbar or a pair of BT headphones and stop wasting my time.

No offense ... but that's how I got into this part of what I do ... Nobody seems to want to help them.

When this started, I was using 5 inch speakers with a "whizzer cone", mounted into the ends of modified entertainment cabinets and people were happy as clams. Of course that's impractical to keep up since most people already have stands... but it does show me that it is a workable concept. It's just a matter of finding the right speakers...
 

Doodski

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No offense ... but that's how I got into this part of what I do ... Nobody seems to want to help them.

When this started, I was using 5 inch speakers with a "whizzer cone", mounted into the ends of modified entertainment cabinets and people were happy as clams. Of course that's impractical to keep up since most people already have stands... but it does show me that it is a workable concept. It's just a matter of finding the right speakers...
Use in-wall speakers for the cabinet mounting arrangement. :D
 
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Well (on the other side of that coin) they are clearly not satisfied with the speaker performance of their TV set either. Do they want improved sound, why not just have no speakers?

Have you listened to the speakers in today's TV sets ... headache inducing at best.

So, somewhere between what tv companies give you, and audiophile nirvana, is what they seek.

Pretty much. As one of my friends put it the other day ... We want to own good sound, we don't want it to own us.

Might be best to ask them what they comfortably want to spend, from which a best answer is possible?

I've been selling "soundbar killers" for about 4 years at this point, got quite a few out there. I've generally sold modified Dayton T652s for the job and they work well enough. With a decent crossover and some internal padding they come off pretty good. But this demand for less-tall speakers is new. I understand it... I'd like a pair for myself, but it's not such an easy bill to fill these days.


Meanwhile, here is a blog which might interest them…it seems to me to be a good fit for moderate size, furniture grade, high quality sound and does not break any banks?

Thanks, I'll give it a read...
 
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Use in-wall speakers for the cabinet mounting arrangement. :D

I thought of that ... I would end up having to buy, modify and then sell the cabinets to them ... and many already have their own.

I did think about finding someone to prefab smaller boxes for me... but that turned out to be more expensive than modifying the TV stands.
 

somebodyelse

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If you need to put the speakers that far below ear level you'll need something with both good horizontal and vertical response. The only ones that spring to mind all use a coaxial mid/tweeter which really limits the options.

I guess IKEA are aiming at a similar market with speakers that fit into their cabinets or double as a lamp.
 

Doodski

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I thought of that ... I would end up having to buy, modify and then sell the cabinets to them ... and many already have their own.

I did think about finding someone to prefab smaller boxes for me... but that turned out to be more expensive than modifying the TV stands.
If you need to put the speakers that far below ear level you'll need something with both good horizontal and vertical response. The only ones that spring to mind all use a coaxial mid/tweeter which really limits the options.
Then run some car audio speakers. Some of them sound fantastic.
 
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If you need to put the speakers that far below ear level you'll need something with both good horizontal and vertical response. The only ones that spring to mind all use a coaxial mid/tweeter which really limits the options.

I guess IKEA are aiming at a similar market with speakers that fit into their cabinets or double as a lamp.

I've also seen planar wall hanging speakers...

Now there's an idea .... Exciters ... Dayton Audio sells exciters that work against a flat plane of (somewhat) arbitrary size. I have no idea how good bad or otherwise they sound but maybe there's something in that...



It would be interesting to see if they could be developed into a decent flat panel design ...
 

KMO

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Generally, from what I've read D'Appolito arrays, on end, will have better horizontal dispersion than vertical. Which makes me wonder why centre speakers are designed as they are... You pose a good question, why would they do that?
The design goal of a "centre" speaker is just to make a low-height speaker to fit better above or below a screen.

WTW is just the simplest way to make a symmetrical low 2-way. The fact that that layout would work a lot better the other way up is irrelevant. The requirement is just "a low-height speaker". The only other way of making a 2-way low-height is to use a coaxial driver, which would work much better for dispersion. (I have a LS50 Meta in centre duty myself for that reason.).

Going 3-way generally makes life better, because you have a chance of squeezing a tweeter above the midrange.

This will probably not be the case for every centre speaker, but the KEF R2C’s for instance don’t go very low. Might be something to pay attention to.
No, but they go low enough for home theatre - the R2C is exactly what the THX people who did the initial work in consumer bass management had in mind - a sealed box with 80Hz roll-off. That roll-off theoretically combines with a second-order 80Hz HPF in the AVR to produce a 4th-order curve matching the 4th-order 80Hz LPF used for the sub. (Pretty much all AVRs have that fixed asymmetric 2nd+4th-order crossover, despite most users not having a sealed speaker matching the crossover frequency.)

Theoretically, at least, the R2C is an ideal speaker for any position in a 5.1 setup with a sub.

KEF themselves have started pushing their "centre" speakers for non-centre roles. They've even dropped the "c" from the name of the new Reference 2 Meta and Reference 4 Meta because of that.
 
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The design goal of a "centre" speaker is just to make a low-height speaker to fit better above or below a screen.

In reading up on it that was the sense I got. Certainly they didn't impress me as serious attempts at WTW arrays.
 
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Has anyone tried a pair of these?

51ahheSvudL._AC_SX466_.jpg
 
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There are 3.5", 4.25" 2-way thin versions and of course the larger stuff.
It's not thickness that's the problem ... people are wanting short speakers that don't stand half way up the wall.
 

Doodski

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It's not thickness that's the problem ... people are wanting short speakers that don't stand half way up the wall.
Yeah, I think that got started in the late 80's. The bookshelf speaker craze and not having 18" woofers anymore. So you are considering making some panels with exciters? Have you heard a excited panel in person?
 
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Yeah, I think that got started in the late 80's. The bookshelf speaker craze and not having 18" woofers anymore. So you are considering making some panels with exciters? Have you heard a excited panel in person?
Haven't heard them yet... so this will be an interesting experiment from the get go...

Doesn't solve my "ready to install" speaker problem... though.
 
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