Bill Fitzmaurice

They are.

More than a few DIY experimenters have turned that hobby into a lucrative profession. Included in that list: James Lansing, Paul Klipsch, Edgar Villchur, Henry Kloss, Conrad Sundholm, Thomas Danley and Alex Claber, and if I may, myself. All of got into speaker design because they were dissatisfied with what was available commercially and thought they could come up with something better. Audio design in general, and speaker design in particular, has always been advanced by the work of amateurs, unimpeded by corporate politics. Villchur's example is perhaps the best. He had a Masters degree in Art History. He got into audio as a radio repairman while in the Army in WWII. That piqued his interest in audio, which he followed up on after the war. When he came up with the idea for the acoustic suspension speaker he shopped it to all the major players. They all said the same thing, that if his idea had any merit that their own engineers would have already done it. That was circa 1950. Undaunted, Villchur built a prototype of his new speaker out of a plywood box. The dimensions of the face of the box were taken from a picture frame that he had hanging in his house. His wife, Rosemary sewed the pattern for the flexible surround out of mattress ticking. After proving his concept to himself, if not others, he and his student, Henry Kloss, proceeded to create their own company, Acoustic Research, in 1954. In 1966 AR’s loudspeaker sales represented almost one-third of the entire market. Not bad for a couple of tinkerers.

As one who does both commercial and DIY designs I have to disagree. One major advantage to DIY is being able to build designs that are labor intensive without concern for the cost of the labor. There's a reason why high end outfits like Danley Sound Labs get top dollar/quid for their products, and it's not just the cost of the components, it's also the cost of the labor to build them. A DIY build of a sophisticated design can easily match the performance of a high end speaker costing $5k at a fifth that price or less. Where commercial has the advantage of economy of scale is in the low to midrange price range, but even there DIY can still be the better route. You can buy a simple ported or vented box or you can build one for the same price but loaded with premium drivers, whereas buying a commercial one with premium drivers would raise the cost considerably. Now that's not to say that all DIY designs are gems by any means, I see cringe worthy junk all the time. But to be fair I see plenty of cringe worthy commercial junk too. Maybe not in the $5k range but certainly in the $500 range. And lest I forget...well, I did actually...DIY doesn't have expenses for marketing and distribution, office staff, accountants, lawyers, offices and factories, the guys on the loading dock...it's a long list that all contribute to the price you pay.

Zero. 😮 http://hornresp.net/ While it's called hornresp it will do horns, transmission lines, and direct radiators both sealed and ported. https://xsim.software.informer.com/ The only catch is you need Z and FRD files, but those are available for most drivers. Cost of the software is no issue. Learning how to use it is the hard part. Where going active is concerned there are full DSP plate amps at reasonable cost. Even if you go DIY with the amp the cost of DSP to go with it is about 10% of what it was 20 years ago. Not that I'd recommend trying to design your own for a one off build, the time it takes to acquire the skills required ranges from months for simple designs to years for complex designs. But there's no shortage of plans available from those who have done the work.

'Tis puzzlement for sure. If they have the chops to design and build good bass cabs they have the chops to design and build good PA cabs. On the flip side: The same absolutely applies to bass cabs.

You'll get the best results with four round ports 8cm diameter 15cm long. The rattles indicate insufficient panel to panel bracing.

To paraphrase Disraeli there are lies, there are damned lies, and there are specifications. 😮 No eight inch driver can take 650 watts continuous mechanically. No eight inch driver in a direct radiating enclosure can produce 126dB continuous. This is an example of the marketing department writing a cheque that the engineering department can't cover. Yes, most companies play the same game, but that doesn't make it any less dishonest. 🤥

Damping absorbs midrange frequencies that will otherwise reflect back to the cone at various angles of phase, causing response peaks and valleys. The back is the critical place to apply it, but for best results all the surfaces should be covered. It may not make a major difference, but it's so inexpensive there's no reason to not do so.

That's one option, but you don't need 50 meters. You should be able able to find the same polyester batting in a useful size at fabric shops, it's used for pillows and furniture upholstery.

Indispensable.

The E140 was rated at 200w. The problem with pairing it with the 2515 is that their T/S specs are wildly different. As for sealed versus ported, with sealed you give up about an octave of low frequency extension and take a huge hit on excursion as well. Besides that neither the JBL nor 2515 have specs that work well sealed. The net volume of the cab is probably closer to 200L, so by no means is it too large for two fifteens.

Add another Eminence, then it needs proper porting and damping. With the exact interior dimensions I can provide the porting information. There may be another issue as well. For a number of years their inputs were marked red negative, black positive, which is the opposite of how the Eminence are marked. If that's the case it would explain the farting.

Not exactly the Royal Albert. 😉

I was referring to the dispersion of the woofer, not the high frequency element. One of the main shortcomings of many twelve and fifteen inch loaded PA tops is they tend to cross over to the HF element at too high a frequency, which should be no higher than 1.2kHz with fifteens, 2kHz with twelves. Those that do get it right tend to be in the upper price range.

An eight loaded top is sufficient for pub gigs, provided the woofer is of high quality. The same applies to eight loaded subs. The trick lies in knowing the quality of the woofer, as manufacturers are loathe to reveal what they're loaded with. Eight loaded tops are less directional, as the angle of dispersion is inversely proportional to the size of the cone/radiating plane . As to throw, the inverse square rule applies to all driver sizes. The advantage to 'stick' systems is they have very wide dispersion on the horizontal plane, due to the smaller driver sizes, along with narrow dispersion on the vertical plane, due to the taller radiating plane. That aims more sound into the audience, less at the floor and ceiling. The disadvantage is most use woofers too small to do the job, at an unjustifiable price. A very good arrangement is a 2x8 top, which can give output equal to a 1x12, with wider horizontal dispersion and narrower vertical dispersion. The same applies to 4x6.5 inch tops. But those are few and far in between, as their advantages are very much unknown to the average user.