Arrays of small speakers

[Chickasaw]

I keep in mind seeing information on arrays of low-priced small speakers which is nothing but the multiple small drive units in a single enclosure for sound reproduction purposes. I remember that it was in print in magazines in the 1950s or 60s. I don’t remember much and not able to find the references. It would be either from that period or later. Please post your information about this topic. Thank you.

[Eru]

The speaker you are talking about is called the "Sweet Sixteen". It was a project by popular electronics. It uses sixteen cheap 5” speakers. This helps to move the mass of the air because it was a huge cone. The cost was very low for that and it gives a very fantastic sound. That’s it what I knew about this. I hope someone will give you more information about this.

[Kickapoo]

Ya, it was a popular Electronics project which was called as "The Sweet 16". This was consist of 16 el-cheapo AM radio speakers which was arranged in a minimal box. This thing was around 1960. When I heard it first I thought that it is some kind of sonic disaster. After that there was another project which was called "The Sweet 16+1". This was having an additional cheap tweeter.

[Felix46]

There was also a problem with the Sweet 16 speaker array. If the gaps between the speakers are reduced then it results a variety of complex interactions. Which result many more frequency response variations which was a big issue. They decided that there may be some similar array that can work but it was having 25 speakers instead of 16. It was named as Bessel array N=25.