After building quite a few subwoofers and 2-way speakers over the years, I was looking for something different, and line arrays fit the bill nicely. They use a large number of small-diameter drivers –sometimes as many as hundreds– and have some intriguing characteristics such as little loss of volume as you get further away, low distortion, and very slim enclosures…

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I’ve been building subwoofers for years now, and I’ve always used car audio drivers. However, I recently started building speakers using pro-audio drivers, specifically mid-woofers and horn loaded compression drivers. I love how dynamic and clean-sounding these drivers are, so it was only natural that I decided to give pro-audio subwoofers a try…

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I previously built Valeria, a compact bookshelf speaker using pro-audio drivers. The dynamics offered by this small speaker are impressive, if I may say so myself. Lately, I’ve been thinking of building speakers with better bass response and improved horizontal and especially vertical directivity. This necessitated using an 8" mid-bass driver, a compression driver that rolls off below 1 kHz, and a horn that can control directivity better than the B&C ME10 I used in Valeria…

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I’ve been using a pair of KEF LS50 Metas as my front speakers and my DIY KEF LS50 clone as the center channel speaker in my home theater for a while now. I’ve been generally happy with the smooth sound they produce, but there’s one thing lacking: dynamics. Lately, I’ve been thinking about building high-sensitivity speakers using pro-audio drivers. Horn-loaded compression drivers, which are used to reproduce high frequencies, can get really loud with little distortion…

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Since you can buy two to three pairs of KEF Q150 for the price of one pair of LS50 Meta depending on whether there’s a sale or not, I decided to build an LS50 clone using a Q150 driver to see if they would sound similar after equalization. The clone wouldn’t have the beautiful curved front baffle and better crossover of LS50 Meta, but it would otherwise be very similar in construction….

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