There are two issues here - modifying existing designs and retro-fitting existing speakers. Each has its considerations.
If someone wanted an HT3 with a RAAL tweeter, we're game. But I'm not sure it makes all that much sense. Where do you stop? If we were going to re-work the HT3's for the RAAL, we might want to take another look at the midrange as well. Oh, and we'd probably want to re-tune the woofer section and incorporate some passives. Gee, we'd probably end up with a much more expensive speaker...something along the lines of the SoundScape 10's
The fact is, the current HT3's are a very good design and I don't know if I'd want to mess with it at this point.
As for retro-fits, that makes even less sense. While we would certainly do just about anything a customer would want, driver holes would need to be re-cut and, since the edges would be rough, the speakers would probably need to be re-finished. The labor involved makes it an expensive process. Then, of course, there would be the cost of new tweeters and new crossovers.
As for whether or not the gains would justify the cost, I recall when we first worked with the LCY tweeters, we looked at re-working all of our designs to incorporate it. But when we compared LCY designs with G2 designs, it just didn't seem to make much difference. Upgrading all models didn't make sense since the sound quality wouldn't change much at all.
I suspect the same would be true here. Yes, the RAAL is better. But how much difference would you hear? When you look at re-working an existing cabinet, swapping out the tweeters and replacing the crossovers, I doubt any gains could be cost justified.
There is no end to the tweaking that could be done with any design. But at some point, I think you just have to go into production and hope people like the decisions you have made along the way. I personally like the driver combinations in all of our speakers (or we wouldn't build them) and don't see any compelling reason to change them. When "new" and "improved" drivers some on the market (which they will), we will simply design new speakers to take maximum advantage of them. To me, that seems like a better approach since you are not tied to any existing design element that would prevent you from getting the most out of these new drivers.
- Jim
