School sound system

[MikeRocchio]

hi guys,

I mostly lurk over in the HT forum but I have recently come across an issue that looks like it might fit here.

I am trying to improve the audio system in my sons elementary school multi purpose room.

It turns out that they have a pretty nice mixer (for mics and audio), and a fairly nice output amp. The problem is that someone has put some rather beefy (new) Rockford Fosgate speakers in the speaker boxes. I'm not sure what model they are but I recall seeing a 400W label on them.

The sound coming out of the speaker boxes is muffled, kinda like your under water or have your hand over the microphone. I have bypassed the Rockfords and wired to some stand alone speakers and the system sounds much better.

I think that the issue is, that they have installed some really nice sub woofer speakers and really need some mid range and tweeters to go with them. But I'm not sure if I'm right or not. worse than that, if I am right I don't have the first clue about how I would implement this fix.

Any help in the right way to CHEAPLY, I mean in-expensively, fix this issue would be greatly appreciated.

[JonMarsh]

I think your "guess" is right on the money; someone probably replaced a wide range driver that includes a "whizzer" cone for some upper range response with just a "beefier" looking woofer, which is rolled off in the top end.

My suggestion would be to look at Parts Express for high efficiency wide range drivers that are designed for this kind of system use- adding a crossover and midrange or tweeter setup would be much more complex and time consuming, probably more expensive, too. OTOH, if you feel like experiementing, maybe a small midrange to tweeter horn with a high pass crossover and LPAD would help out the original woofer. To do it "right", would require some measurement of the existing speaker, and tailoring the add-on to it's existing bandpass.

Good luck, and hope you can get something worked out successfully.

~Jon