Late to the party here but…Great musicians playing amazingly beautiful sounding music do not play in spherical inert halls. One of the worlds Best Sounding Halls is the BSO (Boston Symphony Hall). Basically a wooden box …like my Cornwall IV speakers.
Why are there so many wooden box speakers out there?
I understand that wood is cheap and a box is easier to make than a sphere but when the speaker companies charge tens if not hundreds of thousands of dollars for their speakers, shouldnt consumers expect more than just a typical box? Are consumers being duped?
Back in the 70’s a speaker engineer found that a sphere was best for a speaker. A square box was the worst and a rectangular box was marginally better.
The speaker engineers have surely known about this research so why has it been ignored?
Cabasse is the only company doing spheres. Should wooden boxes be made illegal
183 responses Add your response
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The problem with that is every song you play through them will have a wooden tone. The speaker should reproduce a wooden tone if the recording contains that. Otherwise it should not. Its WRONG
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The Youtube channel "Real World Audio" has an interesting bit about real wood "live" speakers and their potential benefits. "Live and Dead Cabinets Both Alter the sound" is the Youtube title. The standard line is that real wood cabinets generate too much resonance - much more so than plywood or MDF. However, the author argues that real wood speaker cabinets can be very useful for producing the tone of wooden musical instruments if tuned properly. Some years back I was scouring Ebay for one of those CF series Klipsch speakers designed by a young Ray Delgado, and one of the listings included a photo of the inside where it was clear that the cabinet was made of solid quartersawn white oak - a thing not often seen even in the early 1990"s. The CF series was not generally successful because it "didn't sound like Klipsch." My question is still "what did it sound like?" |
More Kenjit crap: "That just means you need to improve your hearing before you start improving your speakers. How do you expect to enjoy the benefits of better quality speakers if your hearing isnt good enough?" - I don’t "need" to do anything you could possibly suggest. I enjoy listening to my system. The music is more important to me than the components. I will never listen to your poor advice. BTW: What is your make believe system? |
Of course perception plays a role too. So youre wrong. All those things can affect the sound you hear indirectly. |
@Dill
That just means you need to improve your hearing before you start improving your speakers. How do you expect to enjoy the benefits of better quality speakers if your hearing isnt good enough? Or perhaps your room is so bad that any differences are just being obscured? Find yourself a good speaker tuner locally and get them to come round and listen. |
^That^ is not a bad exercise… However the grill or box colour, the material and the shape of the speaker are more things that I would suspect an interior decorator, or Feng Shui master, would care about. |
Kenjit hurled: "The first step towards PERFECTION is to listen to your speakers and then write down a list of all the things which are imperfect about them." Ok done, easy, sophomoric exercise. I found nothing imperfect about my speakers, I also found they where not perfect either. So, since nothing is perfect, I can't find them perfect. BTW: neither can you ... |
I’ve said it before. The kenidjit is cheapening this forum. A forum that is meant for discussions about high end audio, bettering the sound of your system and then there is the sales part of the forum, which is also about the sale of high end audio. again, imagine this is your first visit to this site, and this is the first thread you see. Kenidjit should be made illegal. And it’s so obvious, there is no system for him to post. |
In the real world, I’m a marketing guy, As a partner in a regional shop that has prospered through all the changes in delivering marketing communications over the last 37 years, our team knows one thing for sure....perception is reality. The entire process of branding, clarifying the difference between features and benefits and various calls to action is based on encouraging consumer choice. The process is elegantly simple "Why chose to spend my time or money, or both, on a specific product or service?" |
Have you heard of something called a mistake? Audiophiles are WRONG all the time. They think they hear something which either doesnt exist or is NOT what they think they're hearing. I've made the same mistake multiple times. This hobby is not easy Dill its not for amateurs. If you think you can get perfect sound out of a wooden box, then you are completely WRONG Dill. Serious audiophiles spend millions of dollars and their entire lifetime searching for perfection. Many of them never find it. So dont you dare claim that you have found the right speakers and expect me to believe you. What you mean to say is that you have found something you are able to tolerate but they are riddled with flaws and you are willing to tolerate those flaws because you have no other options. The first step towards PERFECTION is to listen to your speakers and then write down a list of all the things which are imperfect about them. Do it Dill and then come back. |
"There is no right or wrong though thats the problem you have Dill." - I have no problem as I am neither right or wrong. "It is not supposed to sound like anything. So if you have a preference for one speaker over another then one or both of them must be WRONG. The goal of this hobby is to find the RIGHT speakers and dismiss the WRONG ones. Anybody that thinks otherwise is WRONG." - Do you read what you type? That is the most ridiculous thought you have spewed to date and that is saying something. Lay off the scotch and get back on your meds. BTW: I have found the right speakers and you sir, are WRONG. |
A speaker is not an instrument. It is not supposed to sound like anything. So if you have a preference for one speaker over another then one or both of them must be WRONG. The goal of this hobby is to find the RIGHT speakers and dismiss the WRONG ones. Anybody that thinks otherwise is WRONG. |
The answer is simple and has been pointed out to you for quite some time, post after post, thread after thread, month after month: It's the speaker you like listening to. Perfection is a chimera, a red herring, a ploy to troll by and which seems to give your life meaning. You need to get a life without sucking it out of others. All the best, |
There is no right or wrong though thats the problem you have Dill. You even said so yourself just now. So how the hell would you know who to believe? Is it the proponents of open baffle? Or the ESL? Or the closed box? or the ones that champion reflex, sealed or transmission lines? Is it going to be Harbeth with their resonant cabinets? Or the Magicos with their horrifically dense and solid boxes? Spheres or boxes? constant directivity? or not? You have opened up a real can of worms havent you Dill, just in time for christmas. |
"They were small boxes mounted on a pair of stands in what looked like a fairly small room." - I do not have stand mounted speakers. "If you want perfect sound you must have 20hz to 20khz reproduction." - There is no such thing as "perfect sound", it is subjective. "You have a lot to learn." - no doubt, however it won’t be from you, I listen to the ones that know what they are talking about.
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@Dill I remember your speakers Dill. They were small boxes mounted on a pair of stands in what looked like a fairly small room. This is not what you call a high end speaker system. If you want perfect sound you must have 20hz to 20khz reproduction. Yours will only go down to about 100hz and even then its already rolling off. The wood used in those boxes would be better off in the fireplace than for trying to get high end sound out of it. Speakers are not instruments Dill. The boxes are supposed to be silent. You only want the drivers to move. You have a lot to learn. Dont you think its time to improve your speakers? |
But you’ve been warned. By all means tread carefully! Hey, I found the fabled KSS speaker system! All the best, |
I'll have you know I am the inventor of the KSS speaker system (Patent pending). Perfect best of both worlds system comprising diffraction less sound field and boxless sound technology. Wood is best for the fireplace not making speakers. If you want to hear your drivers and not your boxes you will need to do something about it Dill, you have been warned. |
Still waiting Kenjit for proof of what you claim to have said, done or built. Tired of the flapping gums unless you can’t handle the truth. You really have no standing ... The only thing you have proved so far is thespeakerdude’s point. "It is better to be thought a fool, than to open your mouth and remove all doubt." If the shoe fits ....
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It doesn’t matter if it was from the seventies or not. It was correct and that is the key point that speaker companies have to understand. On the other hand, there is no modern research on speakers. If so, how come we are not seeing that reserach being applied to the products we see on the market? I have seen nothing new. The wooden box is ubiquitous and it needs to be made illegal. Andrew Jones has just released a speaker called the Mofi point source. In case you have not noticed he has applied the theory from the 70’s and although its not quite perfect, it does at least disprove your insinuation that the reserach done in the past is outdated and wrong. Come along now, repeat ten times after me: Long live the kenjit Standards!
Oh come on as if they are the only possible way to do a round speaker? Thats like saying if you like box speakers just buy a B&W? Are there not different ways to build box speakers so that audiophiles may prefer one box over another? Obviously there are. So why should round speakers be any different!
What do you do in the professional speaker industry? If I guessed that you make square boxes, would I be right? |
Pay no attention to the fool behind the curtain, |
I would have no way of knowing the " correct shape ". Again it is very dependent on the material used. The idea that giving the rear waves off the back of the drivers random walls to bounce off of is fine only if you expect those waves to bounce around. If the materials of the cabinet are designed to take the energy (back waves) and convert that energy to heat, well then that is a different animal. |
I completely concur with your conclusions. Spheres are the correct shapes to be used. Boxes are only for convenience not for sound quality. Andrew Jones has used something that is faceted so he has clearly applied my theories. But unfortunately he couldnt do a sphere as it is not easy to do a wooden sphere. If Magico could lower their prices down by about 90% then I think that would even the score. That would enable manufacturers to produce spheres at reasonable prices. |
What did you think they were going to use, a high quality cabinet that moves the back waves away from the drivers ( we don't want to hear the back waves do we ) then with the waves moving toward the rear to a material that will covert the energy of the sound waves to a vibrational energy. So what would be a good material to do that. you might ask. Well it turns out carbon fiber resonates at a very high frequency. Those high rates of vibration do create heat. Yes lets turn that rear wave energy into heat. Those little molecules in that fiber are just jumping all around. What does this all mean. Take a nice wine glass and ping. Makes a ringing sound. The just touch it your finger and it is easy to stop the vibration. Works well in a composition setting with carbon fiber and even light foam, almost like an air space. Well my head is going to explode so enough for now.
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Wood used for musical instruments, and wood used for speaker enclosures serve a completely different purpose. With musical instruments, the wood is supposed to resonate and become part of the sound. Speaker enclosures, no matter what they are made of, are supposed to be as acoustically inert as possible. Scientists have spent centuries trying to reproduce the signature sound the wood of a Stradivarius violin makes. Scientist and engineers have spent decades trying to get speaker enclosures to not have any sound. Make a violin out of, say, constrained layer damped wood, and it would sound horrible. Make a speaker out of highly resonant wood that is poorly damped, and it would sound horrible. |
+1 @budjoe Olsen study used a miniscule 7/8" speaker. Mounting larger speakers would be more problematic and require proportionately much larger cabinets. Would be interesting to see some research on larger spherical speakers though.
Happy Holidays! |
@rick2000...an interesting variant on 'playing a guitar', but....*shrug* On one hand, I've got one of those SAE parametric eqs' myself in the 'shop' system. An adjunct to the receivers' tone controls, allows to zero in on the details of which the devils create....*G* @fisher_400 , yeah, damn few injection enclosures pass muster...usually too light, too thin, too small with drivers to match... Not saying small isn't beautiful...nice bookshelf stuff out there but typically of a 'practical' size driven by a given frequency range... I'm sidestepping the whole enclosure issue basically, because I can. Not that a box of any design wouldn't work, I just rather not go there. Minimalist at heart, and generally stuck with smaller spaces. And the challenge of doing so beckons. *S* |
