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Wide baffle speakers .Are they better?


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6 hours ago, THOMO said:

Yes there are genuine technical reasons for using a narrow baffle.The question is do those technical considerations translate into better real-world sonics ?

It depends on what the designer does.   Changing the baffle width just moves the diffraction.   You still have to deal with it.

6 hours ago, THOMO said:

Do multiple long excursion small woofers sound as good a single large one?

It depends on (both) the resulting non-linear and linear distortion.... so it's impossible to generalise sensibly.

6 hours ago, THOMO said:

is more due to fashion

Perhaps....  Probably....  :thumb:

It's what most punters want.   More from less.

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6 hours ago, Grant Slack said:

One of the things about hifi, that 'saves' it from evolving into singular/monocultural solutions, is that it is not all that difficult for different technologies to all cross the threshold where we start to hear them as 'good' or even 'great'. If we were super-sensitive to diffraction causing secondary sound sources to spray sound at us at some distance from the origin, then narrow baffles would be an essential minimum requirement. But we aren't. And if we were super sensitive to second harmonic distortion, then high negative feedback amps and digital sources would be an essential minimum. But we aren't. So, the gear can be technically quite sloppy and get away with it. How lucky is that!

 

I just love this paragraph,  a nice summary of the sometimes arbitrary and illogical diversity of approaches in our hobby!

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I must admit the most beautiful midrange I’ve heard has been with wide speakers.
For case 1 with Dahlquist DQ10 (shape of old Quad ES57), they have no baffle on midrange(s) and tweeter and were in open space with speakers placed at different depths for time alignment;
2. big Tannoy Canterbury gold reference speakers, now they have midrange 'depth magic' and the most sweet sound from their wide front baffle boxes.

And yes the wife acceptance factor (WAF) with wide speakers can be (and was) an issue.

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There is an inherent challenge in answering the main question. If we try to form an opinion based on subjective experience, we are comparing more than one thing at a time. How often do we compare the same speaker in a wide vs narrow version?

 

If we really wanted to know the subjective impact of baffle width when all else is equal, it would take the kind of rigorous comparison that is almost never done. If we were serious, we'd take a given passive 2 or 3 way design, with a wide and narrow version and the same tuning. Crossovers would have to be matched quite closely. We'd also have to level match and compare them double blind with a short swap over time.

 

Sounds like a bit of work doesn't it?!

 

And what is the result of all that work? I haven't done this particular comparison but I suspect that many would find this listening test a little confronting. In the sense that you have to resolve the disconnect between things you are certain you can hear sighted, and what you actually can hear when put to the test. I suspect in this case, if the speakers were closely matched in response and level, the differences would be too small to identify.

 

In my experience, the ability of a speaker to image well isn't easily predicted on the basis of baffle width. Imaging is a trick that wildly divergent designs achieve.

 

Ideas like "narrow speakers image better" tend to catch on because they are simple and intuitively they feel like they should be true. Simple and intuitive ideas are easier to market and they tend to spread around easily. I think this is why so many of them are so persistent.

 

The question of wide vs narrow does lend itself very well to a DIY experiment with a DSP crossover and some knocked together cabinets.

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Even then, @Paul Spencer, assuming, as you suggested, the crossovers are to be matched closely for your hypothetical comparison, if they are optimised for one baffle width, then the other will suffer. And if we optimise them for each baffle on each speaker, then they aren't closely matched any more. 

 

Tricky indeed....

 

Regards

Grant

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25 minutes ago, Red Spade Audio said:

The question of wide vs narrow does lend itself very well to a DIY experiment with a DSP crossover and some knocked together cabinets.

Nice post.  ?   Agree 100%

 

Don't bother  ;)   You already "guessed" the answer.   ie.   Too many other (big) variables in practise .... and in "contrived" situations, it's surprisingly small ... and depends on things which can never be overcome like placement, reflections, etc. etc.

 

 

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22 minutes ago, Grant Slack said:

Even then, @Paul Spencer, assuming, as you suggested, the crossovers are to be matched closely for your hypothetical comparison, if they are optimised for one baffle width, then the other will suffer. And if we optimise them for each baffle on each speaker, then they aren't closely matched any more. 

 

Tricky indeed....

Paul is (I suspect) suggesting that you would aggressively corrected each driver (for each baffle) with DSP.

 

This wouldn't necessarily produce 100% the "best" sound ..... but it would produce the sound which the one which stripped away everything possible except the "sound of different baffle width".

 

 

Of course back in more usual situations.... as you say .... there is differing diffraction for different baffle shapes and sizes .... and so, for a certain combination of drivers, and listening setup, there will be better and worse baffle widths   (although that doesn't mean that very narrow and very wide, couldn't both be good at the same time).

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  • 2 years later...

A few years on from starting this topic it is interesting to see a growing number of wide baffle speakers making their way on to the market.These include things like the KLH and classic JBL,Tannoy,Fyne and Klipsch resissues and De Vore ,Audio Note and old BBC inspired designs.Also the market for highish efficiency,8 ohm wide baffle  kit speakers seems to be growing with some of these designs proving to be the most popular models.Troels Gravessen now has about 8 wide baffle designs and he says himself he has been a bit surprised how popular they have become.He also uses one of them as his new reference speaker despite having designs using far more exotic and expensive but smaller drivers.https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=2ahUKEwjDr-P-25z5AhW99zgGHWjOD8gQFnoECAYQAQ&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.troelsgravesen.dk%2FDiy_Loudspeaker_Projects.htm&usg=AOvVaw0OQpONDt2CFwF96hX2MZCs

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  • 1 year later...

I'm a very big fan of wide baffles, having just completed a pair of Troels Gravesen's PMS (well the nice-looking stainless plinths are still outstanding, but I'm getting there). There's a full build thread elsewhere on the forum for anyone who's interested and not seen it yet.

 

20231004_154952.thumb.jpg.00568799124f250fbce85374a494473b.jpg

 

There's something unique about the imaging compared to narrow baffles and I think there's more to it than just diffraction. The way that the recording environment comes across is quite special. Live recordings take on a whole new dimension.

 

My previous speakers were 231 mm wide, so f3 about 500 Hz. The PMS has an effective baffle width of nearly 600 mm, so f3 about 200 Hz.

 

Compared to the narrow baffle, all the energy in the 200 - 500 Hz region is in 2 Pi rather than 4 Pi space. This, I believe is quite a significant contributor to how the speaker sounds. A narrow baffle puts the same energy into the room, but in a very different way.

 

Edge diffraction should also be fairly well controlled, as the round over has a radius of about 50 mm.

 

20231004_155549.thumb.jpg.5090020721fe04c0c1c9679c4d0f57d3.jpg

 

There doesn't seem to be an awful lot written about wide baffle designs. I'll have to trawl through the AES library and see if there's anything interesting there.

 

As has been mentioned already, the WAF for a wide baffle is not exactly high, though my aesthetic choices of stainless and carbon fibre did help somewhat in this regard. She's never going to love them, but as long as she tolerates them, I reckon I'll be OK 😉

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