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Tekton Double Impact & Comb Filtering

Like many of you, I have been pondering purchasing these speakers but am very curious about the unusual tweeter array. I asked the smartest speaker person that I know (he is a student of Sean Olive) about the design and below is what he had to say.   

"In theory it could work, but the driver spacing means that the crossover point would need to be very low.
He is using the SB acoustics tweeter which is 72mm in diameter, center to center on the outside opposing drivers is around 5.7 inches, which is about 2400Hz. This means that combing would stop between 1/4 to 1/2 of the wavelength (between 1200-600Hz) is where the outside tweeters should start playing nice with each other.
Since he is not using low enough crossover points he has created a comb filtering monster. Now while it's not the great point source that was promised, it's no worse than most line arrays and the combing will average itself out given enough listening distance.

The MTM spacing on the other hand is ridiculous. Hopefully he is cutting the top end off on one of those midrange drivers to avoid combing."

seanheis1
seanheis1 OP
616 posts
 
Me too, so I asked a smart person what they thought and this is what they said: 

"Yikes, patents can be dreamy but this one is pretty out there.
The invention is predicated on (a) the relationship of transducer moving mass versus whatever is resonating in the instrument and (b) harmonics not being accurately reproducible in a traditional dynamic loudspeaker.

re a: String instruments and loudspeakers are damped entirely differently, it's not just moving mass. What does this say about brass instruments that don't have a moving mass?

re b: a dedicated "low-mass" driver specifically for overtones sounds novel. It sounds like the inventor wants to solve IMD but creating an overtone crossover capable of separating the orders of harmonics is likely impossible. Instead, a 4-way (or greater) network can be employed to push the overtones up an octave to the next driver anyways.
btw, Eric Alexander, the author of this patent is the designer for Tekton."

213runnin
914 posts
 
Yeah, it sounds pretty out there.  Talking about present drivers being unable to produce something called "the overtone spectra",   contained in music?  There are many that frequent live performances of all types of music that would vehemently disagree with this idea .

But I guess a guy's gotta make a living, and if you come up with some loudspeakers that look different, and you're a good salesman, well the sky's the limit in the USA.  It keeps reminding me of Bose.  I imagine when Tekton was starting out, they needed  investors, and of course would need more as the company expanded its lines.  No doubt those are around, pumping up the company in different ways.


mofojo
2,266 posts
 
Puke
kdude66
1,200 posts
 
I'm wandering if anybody knows if the big Ulf speaker will require 2 patent's because of the double tweeter array's.


Kenny.
213runnin
914 posts
 
Kenny, why don't you look into what patents were needed for the Bose 901 speaker, then report back?
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