Why not horns?

Wes, I know nothing about this bass driver. You need to ask Dan.

I understand what bridging an amp is. If you bridge a 75W amp you get 300 watts if the power supply can handle it, not the 150 stated by paralleling it, whatever that means. Perhaps I misunderstood what he meant, that's why I asked him to clarify.

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Required viewing to understand this madness !!!!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xs1aUws0Lrs

The experience in the Cathedral room was way different than in the room with the mega gear driving those horns.

Cathedral used a modest CD player and a vintage Fisher tube amp as I recall. Some classical piano and more pop pieces (carole King) were played while I was there. The Cathedrals were very pleasant and clean sounding and easy on the ears, though volumes and dynamics were not to the max with that setup and source. They indicated they were going for more of a "vintage" type sound. I could have stayed and listened in this room for much longer than the 20 minutes or so I spent, but I still had some ground to cover before event end.

The mega gear room was tweaked to the max for phono, and the phono stage designer (Dynamic Sounds) was present. The phono rig there was most impressive, not a trace of noise on those ultra sensitive horns and a quite nice and vibrant presenation overall to boot, but that's another story for another thread. Some digital was played using an Accuphase player, but this was way less impressive in that setup.

Bridging and paralleling are two very different things.
Bridging effects the voltage. Parallel does so with the current. If a design can allow for paralleling you double the current thus doubling the wattage. You also cut the output impedance in half thus increasing your damping factor.

The question of whether or not a set of three basshorns will reach 109dB sensitivity is not as simple as measuring 1watt at 1 meter. Measuring actual sensitivity in the real world is a little more complicated. And the whole 1w/1m standard is very misleading!
1w/1m works adequately for comparing drivers and most simple one to four way dynamic designs. But for planar speakers and line arrays it is basically useless. A typical speaker will measure a particular level at 1m and that level will drop off as a function of distance. A planar or line array will measure one thing at 1m and then INCREASE as a function of distance up to a point. This is because it takes a little space for the entire surface of the planar or all the drivers of a line array to combine.
In the same way, three bass horns are effectively a line array of 6 different 12inch woofers. This takes up nearly eight feet and will only combine at a distance of about 10feet away or more. Therefor, in order to accurately define the actual sensitivity of the entire system you have to measure both the upper frequency horns and the basshorns are the same distant spot. You measure the upper horns to get their true sensitivity at that point and then set the basshorns so that they are of equal SPL at that same spot. THEN you measure the amplifier output. And only THEN do you have a real estimation of the sensitivity of the entire system.

Prdprez, that guy who hated horns was talking about mine at Lone Star 2010. The speakers behind the curtain in the first example were GedLee Summas.

Until you've heard speakers designed or inspired by Earl Geddes, you haven't heard all there is to hear in the world of low-coloration hornspeakers. And at least one of his students got some press a couple of years ago: a Golden Ear Award from The Absolute Sound.

Duke