RC-7 Center Speaker and the Tapered Array Concept

[Robert Dilliplane]

Hello All

I recently was told by a member of the product support staff at Klipsch that each woofer on the Klipsch RC-7 actually produces different material. In a recent hearing test, I was able to confirm this. I always thought that each woofer produced the exact same material, whether playing music or dialogue. Can anyone elaborate on this for me? I believe Klipsch calls it the Tapered Array.

[The reason I ask is that I recently replaced the left woofer on my RC-7 and noticed that it seemed to be much quieter than the right woofer, producing much less material in terms of dialogue. I then switched the woofers and the majority of the material continued to come from the right side (which was now my new woofer), allowing me to confirm that the woofer I had recently pruchased for replacement was indeed functioning appropriately.]

[wuzzzer]

The woofers are crossed over so that they both don't play exactly the same frequencies of sound. There's some overlap, but nothing like a traditional center speaker.

The reason why Klipsch does that is that sound reproduction can be affected when two drivers try and reproduce exactly the same sound at the same time. Acoustic anomalies such as comb filtering happen (lots of info on comb filtering if you search on here or google).