Tbg,
I've been researching line arrays for the last couple of weeks, but that only assures I have way more questions than answers or experience...
But, the website which you refer seems to be only concerned with is only concerned with farfield sound reproduction(stadium, club). Not that nearfield acoustic completely diverge from farfield, but the goals are significantly different.
The "lobing" and "Nulls" which you(and your link) refer to primarily become a problem for listening at the point/frequency where c-to-c spacing of the source(drivers) exceeds the distance of one-half to one full wavelength of the highest frequency produced by that particular array(low, mid, or high).
The "trick" is in designing a widerange(mid/bass) array which crosses over to the next higher frequency array below the threshold where lobing and comb filter effects become troublesome. Within the home audio industry there are a variety of drivers small enough in diameter to achieve those goals.
These issues really seem(to my inexperienced eye) to be no more difficult than the many design limitations and compromises which plague all speaker designs(including traditional 2 or 3-way "box").
Here's a far better, and more technical, analysis(besides Dr Griffin's link above) of the design parameters and limitations of array design in this ElectroVoice paper.
I've been researching line arrays for the last couple of weeks, but that only assures I have way more questions than answers or experience...
But, the website which you refer seems to be only concerned with is only concerned with farfield sound reproduction(stadium, club). Not that nearfield acoustic completely diverge from farfield, but the goals are significantly different.
The "lobing" and "Nulls" which you(and your link) refer to primarily become a problem for listening at the point/frequency where c-to-c spacing of the source(drivers) exceeds the distance of one-half to one full wavelength of the highest frequency produced by that particular array(low, mid, or high).
The "trick" is in designing a widerange(mid/bass) array which crosses over to the next higher frequency array below the threshold where lobing and comb filter effects become troublesome. Within the home audio industry there are a variety of drivers small enough in diameter to achieve those goals.
These issues really seem(to my inexperienced eye) to be no more difficult than the many design limitations and compromises which plague all speaker designs(including traditional 2 or 3-way "box").
Here's a far better, and more technical, analysis(besides Dr Griffin's link above) of the design parameters and limitations of array design in this ElectroVoice paper.