This website will be dedicated to my journey into audio. In order to bring great sound into my home I’ve ventured into Do It Yourself audio. After an initial period of trying to figure out which concepts could lead to some form of success I’ve chosen to build myself a pair of full range floor to ceiling line arrays. Perhaps you’ll think what an odd choice, however they do possess some features that make them real interesting inside a room.
Line arrays are a bit of a strange breed in Audio. They do act quite different compared to the more traditional multi-way speakers. Even though they do have some compromises of their own, they also have a couple of strong points that could make them a valid choice for those that seek great sound in a small form factor.
They are not for the faint at heart though. Line arrays like the ones featured on this page need equalizing to be able to sound right. This is one of those things that can be frowned upon in the HiFi scene. So if you’re against this kind of manipulation, line arrays are not for you.
However if you’re up for a challenge, read on as I’ll try and explain why these arrays can be a better choice than they may seem at first glance.
Whatever speaker we bring into our home will never be able to perform as good as it was designed to do. Create the perfect speaker, bring it into your living room and all bets are off. However we can improve our room, to get overall better results. For some strange reason, once we start doing ‘improvements’ like that, we could quickly run into an argument with our spouses. So my goal was to find a solution that only needed minimal treatment of the room and still be able to perform above average.
So why the choice for line arrays then? Well, for starters, line arrays occupy very little floor space while they do have several good things going for them in the way they interact within a room. They can be placed close to a wall, out of the way. They do need some adjustments to the room to be able to perform their best, but nothing elaborate. Basically, the planes parallel to the line arrays need some attention. This way it is easy to absorb the most offending early reflections. The close to wall proximity has other advantages for bass performance.
