[Mark T. Montgomery]

Hey guys.  Yesterday I opened up my Cerwin-Vegas out of curiosity and found that inside ther is a loos sponge about half a foot thick but dense enough to partialy impede the passage of air.  Does any of you guys know what this is for?  Since the speakers are vented wouldn't it improve the base output if I removed this sponge that is blocking the passage of air from the woofer to the port?  Could it somehow damage or decrease sound quality to remove this?  Thanks for your help guys.

[Rob Babcock]

Sounds like the spongy stuff is cabinet dampening.  Many speakers are stuffed with fiberfill or some other material to damp resonances and break up standing waves.  Sometimes it's loose in the speaker and sometimes it's attached (glued, generally) to some facet of the cabinet.

You definately don't want to remove it.  Try and see if it looks like it was glued somewhere and came loose- it may be that it's supposed to be loose.

I'm a little surprised to hear that there's any type of material in them.  C/V speakers I've seen in the past didn't bother with any little touches like that.

[Carlman]

You could always experiment to find out what it does.  It'll probably sound worse without it.  Most speaker designers don't spend money on something that doesn't add some benefit.

You could remove the foam, but, replace it with something else.  It's there to reduce internal resonance and help control the woofer's movement to some degree.  

Good luck.

[Mark T. Montgomery]

Thanks  allott for your help guys.

[IanATC]

Removed because John wanted balance.

[Mark T. Montgomery]

I'd like to try the change of wire, but as for the Xover, would I have to do any kind of soldering to change its setting or flat out replace it?  I'm really not that good at soldering stuff yet but if its not that hard and the chances of destroying the speakers are small I'll give it a try.