Interesting enclosure knowledge from 1955

[robmid]

Food for thought.

 

During this forced opportunity to learn more, I have been brushing up on the comprehensive loudspeaker section of the 1955 edition of the Langford-Smith Radio Designers Handbook.

 

This chapter makes me wonder why so many expensive speakers are still using 'boxes' with sharp corners when this knowledge has been around for so long.

 

Enclosures must be a large component in the cost of manufacturing quality speakers, so are sharp enclosure corners a cost cutting exercise?

 

Cheers Rob

[Cafad]

In my opinion, yes, very much so.

 

 

[pwstereo]

Ease of part preparation, ease of assembly, easy of packaging and shipping, they'd all be factors in commercial speaker design and manufacture.  It'd be very interesting to do some blind listening tests with two pairs of speakers, same driver and crossover set, same cabinet volume and porting/bracing/panels/materials/etc, but one with a diffraction reducing box/baffle design and one with a traditional rectilinear box/baffle design. You'd wonder if it was a big deal outside an anechoic chamber though, so many room effects and other factors to confound the removal of diffraction artifacts at the speaker.

 

It makes me think of stealth design for aircraft, smaller panels with angular intersections and irregular edges.

[robmid]

There is a pair of enclosures in the for sale section that was part of a kit. I have the same ones and performance is superb with Satori 6.5 inch woofers. Unfortunately, I paid $800 for mine and waited 4 months for delivery.

 

[bryansamui]

It's strange.. You have guys like Alan Shaw (Harbeth) who spend a lifetime designing/ building a rectangular sharp angled plywood box crudely screwed together with not much inside it either for $7,500. Clearly, you aren't paying this money for the box or the drivers ( it' s not like making a musical instrument) you are paying for the 10,000 hrs it took for him to develop the box, crossover and the drivers and he thinks it the best shape for a Cabinet.. I am no Physicist so i don't know. Irrespective of how wonderful it sounds, it seems expensive for simple rectangular furniture. 

[HypnoToad]

Of course cost comes into it for a lot of companies, if they can make a pair of speakers for $100.00 and sell for $1,000 and they can compete with other speakers in the $1k range that's all that matters to the bottom line.

 

Some manufactures seem to look at it from a sound quality perspective, Sonus Faber doesn't use a lot of sharp edges but the purchase price reflects that.