Last night I had a crazy idea. Of course it happening about 3:00am while laying in bed trying to sleep. That is:
Why not build the new OB 7x (w/XBL^2 woofers) kit but leave the back off the enclosure of the lower woofers. If there are full dividers between each of the XBL^2 woofers, but the back is off, wouldn't that esentially create four woofers per side in a open baffle U configuration? If my understanding is correct, the U configuration would enhance the lower frequencies while keeping the open baffle sound throughout the entire range of the speaker. Since the lower woofers would only cover the lower frequencies, the open baffle MTM would remain intact and unchanged. I only heard of the U vs H configuration while reading the subwoofer thread at Kevin Haskin's circle, so my understanding of open baffles is minimal at best. Since the dimensions of the box would remain intact, stability would be a non-issue, and the vertical off axis response (and horizontal for that matter) would also be unchaged. One could just put speaker cloth over the back of the woofer section and it would still look like the regular OB 7 but just have more open sound. I wonder how low a fully open baffle speaker like this would play.
What do you open baffle guys think of this idea? How flawwed is it?
