ideas for building a box for 6 10's

Here's a concept for you.  I have not built it but I had planned to.  You may not be able to tell exactly what this represents, but it is a unity horn design tuned to approx 30Hz (1/4 wavelength tuning) utilizing 6 X 12" woofers.  All comments are happily accepted.

DYohn, I know your sketch is freehand, but the 12" drivers don't fit along the 63" baffle length to scale.  In an actual build, how would you space the drivers out?  Would the back woofers be separated further from the inside wedge (where they seem to look like they fire very close against one another)?  It looks like you intentionally want them very close to the back wedge and further away from the front, sort of asymetrical.  Is that due to nothing else besides driver depth?

What drivers did you design this to use? 

What is the material used in the construction?  Are those solid, one-piece 5' X 4' top and bottom panels?  Any bracing not shown?

http://www.quarter-wave.com/Horns/Horn_Theory.html is a tough bunch of information to understand.  Is this a good source for learning how a box like this achieves "tuning"?

Hi Steve.  You are right, that sketch is not to scale.  The design is based on Tom Danley's patented invention of a "unity aperture horn."  His idea uses a pyramidal horn with drivers mounted along the sides to create a constant-directivity full-range system.  He uses woofers (usually 2) mids (usually 4) and a HF compression driver at the apex of the horn shape.  The tuning frequency is determined by the radius of the opening (or in the case of a rectangular opening, the length of all 4 sides) and in this sketch the opening is approximately 1/4 the wavelength at 30Hz (30Hz=452 inches.)

I wanted to take Danley's unity concept and try it as a subwoofer.  The shape would not be a true pyramid as the top and bottom would not slope but be flat with four to six drivers mounted along the sides.  The horn should add somewhere between 3db and 6db to the combined efficiencies of the drivers.  Yes, the top and bottom are solid and all edges are sealed.  The drivers are all in phase and the horn shape acoustically couples their outputs.  I don't really know if it would work, to be honest, but I will build it this summer. 

I plan to build it from 3/4" marine plywood or MDF using some Infinity Reference woofers I have laying around, unless I can dig up some nicer drivers.  No other bracing not shown.

Martin King's site is one of the best for learning about horns in general and specifically about quarter-wavelength tapered horns and transmission lines.   The math is a bit intense.  Danley's unity concept is a bit different.  Go to his website at www.danleysoundlabs.com and download the technical information he published about his speaker designs.  Very interesting reading (if you're into such esoterica, like I am.)

virusx8x, on the front view you are looking into the horn opening.  The angled face baffles (that the drivers are mounted into) slant toward center, meeting at the rear.  The circles are representations of the drivers seen at a slanted angle, so that the larger is closer to you and the smaller is farther away.  They wouldn't appear perfectly round seen at such an angle.

The side view is actually nothing but plain wood as the drivers face into the horn, but the circles in DYohn's illustration represent the drivers positions in the structure.  They are seen as "face-on" (round), showing that the slanted sides of the pyramid horn are vertical from top to bottom.

David, I'll check out Danley's site, thanks.