Speakers for low power amps?

Twl...In the Madisound webpage catalog for Fostex, at the bottom are some enclosure designs, and one in particular looks interesting. "Fostex FE164 Mass Loaded Tapered Quarter Wave Tube" by Martin King. The LF extension suggested by the plot is quite impressive from a wimpy (sorry) FR driver.

These enclosures look very easy to build, but rather ugly IMHO. I have been interested in a flat enclosure configuration that one could hang on the wall like a picture. It seems to me that the Tapered Tube could be coiled for a more compact shape, rather as brass instruments are coiled.

By the way, in a transmission line enclosure, the driver is usually located a short distance down the line, but not near the halfway point as in this example. Where a TL design uses a MTM set of drivers, the two woofers (why don't we say (WTW) are necessarily located at different points. I understand that this makes for smoother response.

El, yes Martin King has done alot of work on this kind of design. His computer aided work, and other testing has yielded some interesting stuff.

The truncated top is touted to reduce certain "problematic" effects because he seems to have determined that the "point" at the top is a problem.

Also, by making a small round port, instead of the traditional "mouth" at the bottom, he's made them more like a bass-reflex design than the original design was.

I haven't tried his design, but it seems to look good on paper.

It is somewhat surprising to hear that deeper bass coming out of a single-driver system. Kind of nice. Not really getting into the really deepest range, but not bad.

He definitely has found out about the baffle-step problem, and designed an electronic baffle-step compensation network that would work for those with extra amplifier power(who can stand to chop 5db off their efficiency rating).

Regarding the "hanging on the wall" type of quarter-wave pipe, you could do that if you are handy at making the "coiled" design out of wood. No reason why it shouldn't work out well that way.

I just made mine from the original idea, and it worked out for me, with a few mods needed. Maybe these others are even better, I don't know.

These speakers can be pretty darn good, if you pay attention to the details about their designs.

Wow. Looks like i found a subject that Twl really likes to talk about : ) Thanks for sharing so much info and background about this design, as it is both interesting and different. I'll have to take a look at the info that El mentioned as being at Madisound to see actual results of something like this. Sean
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Twl,
Thanks, I will take a look at the site.

I took a look at the Lowther site. It doesn't look too hard to build. I have a friend that is in to woodworking so I may try to build them with his help. Twl, I don't have much knowledge about these speakers, how do I chose a driver?