First Open Baffle Build Questions

fforblahblah · « **on:** 27 Oct 2020, 02:05 am »

Going to be building my first open baffle speakers and I'm looking to get some opinions. My amp is the Decware SE34I.3 and the idea is to build something small along the design of the Caintuck Betsy. Baffles will be made from either red oak or 1" birch ply, both of which I've got in stock in my wood shop.

I've got a couple of questions and am interested in hearing all opinions.

1) Is the shape of the baffle essential? I see that Caintuck offers a barrel and a tombstone shape. Is this purely an aesthetic or does the shape alter the sound? I can't build them any bigger than 30x18 probably because of the room.

2) Drivers I'm looking at are the Alnico Betsy and the Lii F-15 and Lii F-12. They all seem to have pretty stellar reviews but I'm curious to hear more if anyone has a strong opinion.

3) Do they have to go on the floor? Ideally I'd be putting these on top of a cabinet and the base of the speaker would be about 2 1/2 feet from the ground, about the same distance from the wall behind them. The right speaker would end up about a foot from the side wall.

4) Wings or no wings? Obviously the Caintuck speakers are a bare baffle, but looking around at other designs I see plenty with either hinged or fixed wings coming off the back of the baffle. Presumably these affect the bass response and help shape what's coming out of the rear of the speaker?

Thanks!

JohnR · « **Reply #1 on:** 27 Oct 2020, 08:07 am »

The shape of the baffle does have a significant effect on the frequency response. The worst thing you can do is put a small driver in the center of a wide baffle. You can explore the effect yourself with software like The Edge.

planet10 · « **Reply #2 on:** 27 Oct 2020, 08:35 pm »

Quote from: fforblahblah on 27 Oct 2020, 02:05 am

1) Is the shape of the baffle essential?

Baffle shape makes a difference, but i think that the shape of the Caintuk ones is mostly cosmetic.

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Do they have to go on the floor?

Any placement that essentially increases the baffle size helps improve the bass.

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Wings or no wings?

Wings increas ethe effective baffle size without increasing their visual aspect from the front, but one has to be mindful of cavity resonances (have a look at Martin King’s H-frame woofer article to get a better handle on that.

fabe

fforblahblah · « **Reply #3 on:** 3 Nov 2020, 11:44 pm »

Thanks for the answers so far. Has anyone heard the Lii F-12 in an open baffle around this size? Based on some things I've read in a different forum, this is the one I'm leaning towards the most but since this seems to be by far the most active Open Baffle forum around hoping somebody has some concrete opinions on the Lii drivers before I order them.