New to speaker building, got an idea.

[afwjam]

Hey guys hows it going. I was talking about an infinite baffle on the cult forums and I mentioned I was interested in building my own speakers and they sent me over here. I was going to buy an infinity beta system with beta 50's and c360 and es250's, I think I can do better for myself. So I started looking at parts express and came up with some ideas.... forgive me if I am a crazy newb. Here is my theatre set up as it stands, I am installing an AT screen that will lower out of the ceiling in front of the fire place.


My new idea is instead of towers to have flat speakers mounted on the front wall behind the screen, three identical speakers to create a good sound stage.
Here is my mock-up that I made in google Sketchup.


I chose 4 Dayton RS150S-8 6" woofers, 1 Dayton RS52AN-8 2" Dome Midrange, 1 Dayton DC28F-8 1-1/8" Silk Dome Tweeter.
The woofers on either side, tweeter at the top and midrange in the middle 3" port on the bottom. maybe I should swap the tweeter and midrange. The box is 24" W 18" H 8" D. I chose the Daytons just to have something to work with, this could of course change. So am I newb with a bad design or do I have something here? :?? Oh and I plan to design surrounds and rears too, but one step at a time.
Thanks for any help, hope to get involved in the community as I think I found a new hobby! :B :T

[Nathan P]

There are many problems with running any kind of driver with a horizontal layout IRRC. You'd be much better building the onwall version of the Modula MT or one of the other on wall designs in the Mission Accomplished section.

[afwjam]

The main problem being canceling of waves? especially off axcess right? What If I had a taller single row of woofers on just one side and the midrange and tweeter on the other?

[Jed]

You will get comb filtering problems and cancelations in a format like that, depending on how high you filter the midrange and tweeter. Could always do a traditional speaker stereo pair side by side.

That said, why not just build a a Center channel speaker? And welcome to the forum.

[afwjam]

Hey thanks, was planning to use three for the the mains and center. Well obviously I need to do some reading, any books you guys recommend. I am sure I could just build one of the already proven designs, I guess I just want to do something really different. I want to use a lot of drivers too. Glad to be here on the forum!

[Jed]

You'll learn more reading posts by JonMarsh than what you'll learn in any book. The Loudspeaker Cookbook is a good place to start as well.

http://www.htguide.com/forum/showthread.php4?t=26574

[---k---]

Designing bad speakers is easy. Designing really really good speakers is tough.

Building the proven designs isn't as easy as you may think. Jon's upcoming WMTW would probably work well for you - as Jed linked too.

[Dennis H]

I would add that Jon's speaker linked above is designed to lie on its side as a center although it will also work upright. It's basically what you sketched except it uses 2 RS180 which have about the same output as 4 RS150. It uses the same dome mid and a different (better) small dome tweeter.

[afwjam]

Cool guys, those speakers look great. I can't wait till the design is finished with the rs180's. I have a long couple weeks of lots of reading to do, thanks for all the help.