[srb]

I think I'll let the wood of a Stradivarius or a Steinway speak for itself, hope a recording engineer with excellent microphones and recording technique can capture their beauty, and let the speaker drivers move the air without any resonance or movement from the speaker cabinet or baffles, whatever they are made of.
 
Steve

[S Clark]

I think I'll let the wood of a Stradivarius or a Steinway speak for itself, hope a recording engineer with excellent microphones and recording technique can capture their beauty, and let the speaker drivers move the air without any resonance or movement from the speaker cabinet or baffles, whatever they are made of.
 
Steve

Yes, instruments resonate.  That is why a piano sounds like a piano.  But a speaker has to sound like a piano, a vocalist, and violin, a drum, or whatever is called for.  It must be neutral.

Off topic a bit but recently in the news, a Stradivarius was played blindly against a modern well made violin at a university music department.  The professors couldn't pick it out.

[WC]

I'm surprised there isn't a market for a 24" to 30" tall powered eq'd sub that could double as a speaker stand. But that's another topic all together.

Such as these.

[tull skull]

Danny, do you remember the Rauna line from Sweden? Cast concrete cabinets. Ported, maybe even a t-line. Got good reviews. Would love to hear your thoughts on these....
http://www.6moons.com/audioreviews/jan/rauna.jpg

 

[WC]

Danny, I know you really like crossovers, but what if the speakers are run full range. Like many of the fullrange drivers. Now I underdtand that there is no perfect full range driver. The smaller ones lack bass and the larger ones roll off the high frequencies, but subwoofers and helper tweeters can be added with their crossover points being less noticeable to it's sound quality.

[nrenter]

Such as these.

Well...Yes and No. I don't want to take this thread off track.

[SoCalWJS]

I think that a mini monitor sits on a desktop or stands, etc. If it reaches from the floor to ear height (seated), that takes it into the floor standing category.
OK then, traditional design.
I'll ask some questions then, and I have absolutely no idea of the answers.
How much does the shape of an enclosure influence the sound? I know that once you have chosen the drivers and decided on vented or sealed, a minimum volume for the enclosure is determined (and internal bracing taken into account). The enclosure can be made larger than that, but do you start making tradoffs or losing performance when you go much larger?
Do you get benefits in making the enclosure deeper? Do non parallel surfaces have advantages in reducing interior standing waves? Or does sufficient internal damping (no rez) take care of any of these issues?
I think that extremely rigid enclosures have the advantage of adding as little to the resonance of the enclosure as possible and gives the greatest liklihood of adding as little coloration as possible to all of the various sounds a speaker has to recreate.
The shape of the front baffle can add to the appearance of the speaker, but will this make it tougher on DIY'ers?
Should any steps be taken to time align the drivers, or can this be done sufficiently by sloping the front baffle?
As far as pesonal preferences, I think the picture you showed of the "solid granite" speaker or something like Avalon Acoustics look better than a purely rectangular cabinet. I am not a fan of the clear acrylic look though.

[Danny Richie]

Danny, do you remember the Rauna line from Sweden? Cast concrete cabinets. Ported, maybe even a t-line. Got good reviews. Would love to hear your thoughts on these....
http://www.6moons.com/audioreviews/jan/rauna.jpg

I had one customer that owned a pair of the small ones and really loved them. I never heard them though.

[Danny Richie]

I think that a mini monitor sits on a desktop or stands, etc. If it reaches from the floor to ear height (seated), that takes it into the floor standing category.

Yep, but the reason I asked about that is that the top level mini-monitors are typically listened to well out into the room and on stands and not sitting on a book shelf. Just like the small floor standing versions.

[pslate]

I think the small tower is optimal. I always worry about speakers on stands, even using museum putty.

[Danny Richie]

How much does the shape of an enclosure influence the sound? I know that once you have chosen the drivers and decided on vented or sealed, a minimum volume for the enclosure is determined (and internal bracing taken into account). The enclosure can be made larger than that, but do you start making tradoffs or losing performance when you go much larger?

If the front baffle area stays then same then you can manipulate the volume and tuning to change the bottom end without effecting anything else.

But any changes to the baffle shape around the drivers can greatly effect the response.

Do you get benefits in making the enclosure deeper? Do non parallel surfaces have advantages in reducing interior standing waves? Or does sufficient internal damping (no rez) take care of any of these issues?

I have found that even if the volume is the same the shape can make a pretty large difference in the sound. Mid-range areas for instance sound much more transparent in a deeper box. And absorbing the internal standing waves is more effective than reflecting it with odd shapes.

Should any steps be taken to time align the drivers, or can this be done sufficiently by sloping the front baffle?

Everything effects everything. Even if the drivers are physically aligned there is still the phase effects of the crossovers to deal with. So it could be negated.

I have had time and phase coherent mini-monitors in here that didn't image as well as any of my other mini-monitors. The baffle size and surface reflections may have been negating any benefits though. There could well be clear benefits to being time and phase coherent.

[Danny Richie]

Back on enclosure types. When I was working with these stacked layers of void free Baltic Birch I was really impressed with the difference the cabinet made. The bass was really clean and free of coloration. The mid-range was also really clean, and clean beyond the norm for a boxed speaker. It was as clean as open baffle designs but not quite as transparent.

[Danny Richie]

I can see why these things get expensive now. Everything about layering up the Baltic Birch is expensive. The sheets are about $90 each and each sheet makes only one speaker. Then there is CNC time and programming cost. Plus the front baffles....

I had ten sets of these made for my N2X kits.



They were not cheap to have made. Then the shipping cost on a pallet load of them from Cananda was not cheap....



Then there is the time spent gluing them up and sanding them....



I ended up selling them for exactly what they cost me to get them here. They didn't just fly out the door either. I still have some left.

Yep, any commercial speakers made this way will not be cheap. This is not an economical way to get solid enclosures, but there is no denying the end result is very good.

[saisunil]

How about solid Granite:

I really love the sasons ... but they are cost prohibitive ...

[SoCalWJS]

Looks like the stacked Baltic Birch is out then. Have you found anything else that sounds as good/better? Is there a way to take MDF, in a thinner size, and doing something similar? Would MDF gain anything in rigidity doing this? Regardless though, how would you do this solution for DIY? I can see flat packs (maybe).

Do you prefer having the baffle front shaped so that the driver is forward of most of the surface - i.e., there is only a minimal portion of the baffle surrounding the driver itself, just enough for the attachment of the driver to the frame, or is a solution similar to "diffraction-be-gone" as good?

[freerider]

I always liked the look of the Magico line, with their aircraft aluminum cabinets.  Interestingly, they also have a line of floor standing stacked birch cabinets.



There's some mumbo jumbo here that I don't quite understand, with respect to stored energy and such. 

[vettett15]

Seems like you could do the same stacking design with MDF and get good rigidity out of it... What if you provided a template or a "test" piece which DIYers could use with a flush trim bit to make their own pieces?   Does a mini monitor have to be a 2 way or could it be a 3 way?

[Danny Richie]

The Magico that you posted pics of looks real cool, but look at all the surface reflections that they added. The front baffle is way to huge. That will have a real negative effect on imaging.

It reminds me of a speaker I designed for Mike Devin many years ago.



The ribbons are real sensitive to the surface reflections. So I designed a front baffle that swept back on either side of the tweeter. This not only measured the best but sounded the best.

Mike made two trips down from Michigan for this design.

The upper section used a Raven R2 ribbon and a pair of Focal Mids. The lower end was covered by some 12" Audio Technology woofers.

After the shape was solidified, he took the cabinet to work (at GM) scanned it with a three dimensional scanner on one half then mirror imaged it to get the other half. He then used the CNC machines to cut a mold that he then molded in concrete. Yep, a concrete front baffle.

The ugly one in the pic is the test cabinet.

[HT cOz]

Cutting anything in an interesting shape is best left to CNC. Otherwise, I predict extreme frustration for the diyer involved.

[AJinFLA]

So if any of the other manufacturers, like Turbo (Rynn from Vapor), AJ, or others want to contribute or share there experiences and reasons that they went the direction that they went, then that will be fine.

I got bored sitting on the sideline yelling "OMG, not another cone 'n dome, those speakers suck!" and then tepidly recommending stuff, which I had deluded myself into thinking I can do much better.
It's a lot more fun being in the game.
Btw, I still concur with you that it's better, though often impossible, to compare stuff in the same room, system etc, with the same music. Rather than, hey 12 yrs ago in Taiwan, I heard....

cheers,

AJ