best wood for speaker cabinets ? oak,cherry, balti

Birch, oak and walnut are acoustically "stupid" woods and you want to have nothing to do with them. If you must use something other than MDF use cherry. And, yes, cherry can be very different. I think, Michael Green used cherry in his reference free resonance Chameleon speakers. If I remember right he imported it from a particular mill in Canada. And the way the cabinets of his speakers were constructed required serious skill and great hearing. Are you up to this?
Acoustic guitars's top is made of spruce, right, but "the body" can be made of different woods. Of what I heard a guitar made of some sort of rosewood sounded best.

MDF is used primarily to reduce cost and is easy to work with and cheap and easy to obtain. Moisture affected like real wood is and not very durable and easily crushes at corners.

HDF ordered a full inch thick is dead an inert and a great choice for better controlling the box from resonating or flexing and is very easy to machine and glue and provides better weight to the cabinet. This is used in better built cabinets and by some for the front baffle only. Consciderably less affected by moisture and change of temperature.

17 mm Grade A A Birch Ply offers great control over flexing and resonating ( think turntable plinth) and is the easiest to work with but as a traded commodity is more expensive but offers superior results when braced properly as any choice needs to be. Not affected by moisture and humidity changes. Cuts and machines wonderful with nice clean chip free edges. Tone seems to be better when used for speaker boxes( subjective ) but as you were rightfully cautioned braced well, but all good results require that in your design.

My suggestion and what I have done with best results. Build them from Baltic Birch cross brace them internaly as much as your design allows. Don,t brace them from side to side, brace them with a box frame (like a picture frame) dadoed into place. Then cover them in solid wood that serves to further stiffen the box and no longer having to worry about what wood to choose for sound characteristics (other then weight) only astetics you can have whatever you want and not worry about chipping or ding corners of paper thin veneers. At about a 100 bucks a sheet not knowing how big your speakers will be and how much you will need if cost is a factor and you would rather put more towards even better drivers the HDF is your best substitute but at 1 inch thick and very dense it is heavy to work with.

Cheers and happy building!

Musical Affairs speakers look very interesting. But you can only audition them in Chicago.

For as long as I can remember I have always heard birch plywood is best for speaker cabinets. However, I have heard good sounding speakers made of MDF, chip board, synthetic marble and no cabinet at all.

The best product to use is one that does not resonate where you don't want it to and does resonate where it will be the least problem. You'll have to build and measure the cabinet resonant frequencies to determine that. It's basic engineering but it costs a lot of time, effort and money.