best wood for speaker cabinets ? oak,cherry, balti

Below is a thread on "real wood" speakers. I have heard the Daedalus speakers championed by Al, and they certainly sound good. Other companies, like PBN Montana, do the front baffle of some models in a 2" hardwood slab. I agree with Has2be that cost is likely a major factor in the use of MDF, and I doubt there is an exceptionless rule here. Why not contact Audionote and ask them what the would use, were cost no object?

John

http://forum.audiogon.com/cgi-bin/fr.pl?cspkr&1275949549

The one that looks best?

Seriously, you need to focus on what is best for that specific Audio Note kit.

Audio Note is a line that seems to focus a lot on optimizing the design and performance of their products.

Personally, I would not muck with the recommended design and materials unless I were really very well educated on this topic and only if I were very familiar with teh sound of the recommended design first and found a clear reason to change it.

Also, in general, there seems to be two key lines of thought that determine box speaker enclosure designs. One focuses around making the enclosure as sonically inert as possible at a price point. Most speakers follow this model.

The other focuses on using a purposefully less inert enclosure to help tune the sound, similar to many wooden musical instruments. This is a key aspect of teh unique sonic appeal of this design pattern.

I am under the impression that AN speakers fall into the latter camp. Changing teh cabinet has a major effect on the sound! The end result may sound nothing like the original if the recommended cabinet design is altered drastically. Denser, more inert wood or materials could actually work against you?

I found an article on TNT Audio from Italy . I clipped this section out and specifically noted that they choose birch plywood anywhere that they are not using solid hardwoods.

 Despite less high-tech resources the home constructor can conduct original research, which may be more relevant to him or her, to help guide design and construction decisions, rather than rely on published research more suited to production in the commercial domain.

To summarise, in these experiments, for low frequencies below perhaps 300Hz (I did not explore different frequencies, so a bass-to-mid crossover point anywhere between 200Hz and 400Hz would probably suffice) 25mm materials of any type were better than thinner materials of any type. Birch-plywood (void-free birch all the way through, sometimes known as BB grade) was slightly better then the much cheaper mdf; birch-ply also has no health hazard rumours, but is more difficult to work. You pay your money and you make your choice. I now choose birch-plywood anywhere that I am not using solid hardwood.

For midrange frequencies, 12mm birch ply loaded with foam+bitumen sheets sounded clearest in our little experiment. The human voice range sounded most natural with this cabinet configuration. Voices singing have much of the energy concentrated in the decade from about 500Hz to 5kHz, even though bass voices can reach fundamentals of around 100Hz, tenors 165Hz and even sopranos lower than 300Hz, the lowest fundamentals of each human sound are isolated 20-23dB peaks at the lower end the spectrum analysis (Driscoll p51) with the centre of a bell-curve cluster of harmonics typically a decade above fundamental (i.e. bass voice 1kHz, tenor 1500Hz, soprano 3kHz), many harmonics 12-15dB in amplitude. The 15mm chipboard official cabinet was obviously inferior in the midrange. All thicknesses tried of mdf squashed the life out of the music, but fear not if you have mdf cabinets; I will explain how to rescue them and give them a new lease of life in a future article.

For now, if you are planning a new project, or rehousing some familiar drivers, the message is simple, the home constructor has the time and resources to build far superior loudspeaker cabinets to any that can be bought ready-made at real-world prices.

Mapman
You make some very points. I am wrestling with my decision to use Baltic birch as recommended. My two passions are audio and woodworking. It seems that there are many schools of thought on cabinet design. I understand not mucking with the recommended recipe, but really want to gain enough quick knowledge to make a wise choice whether to experiment or not with this. I can always build the Baltic birch cabinets if I want to, but this is probably my only realistic time frame to make that choice.
Thanks for your opinion.

Mat,

Sounds like a fun project!

Good luck!

Just wondering, have you heard what the speakers sound like following the standard AN recipe?

USually best to taste the soup before adding seasoning!