I’ve never heard an open baffle subwoofer but those who have say the bass can’t be beat because it doesn’t disturb the room modes or nearby neighbors and the tone and texture is life like.
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Based on Clayton shaw's comments from this link. Spatial audio intends to sell the bottom half of their X2 model as an open baffle sub http://www.audiocircle.com/index.php?topic=153006.60 |
seanheis1, an open baffle sub, or even woofer, has advantages and disadvantages in comparison to boxed ones, whether sealed, ported, or infinite baffle. No enclosure resonances (though even the baffle, if insufficiently engineered, can itself be resonant), no room loading in the side-to-side plane (due to the figure-of-8 radiation characteristics of all dipoles, even at low frequencies), both making possible less boomy sound. But the stopping and starting characteristics of the woofer driver is a determining factor as well. The disadvantages include the less-maximum-output-capability of OB designs. Once again, the intrinsic capabilities of the driver is a prime determiner in the quality of the sub or woofer. Now, imagine taking the intrinsic advantages of the OB woofer, and combining that with the benefits of servo-feedback, long used in some very high quality woofer systems (including the bass columns of the Infinity IRS and RS-1b loudspeakers, as well as the well known subs of Velodyne). Such was the thinking of Danny Richie of GR Research, who specializes in OB speaker design, when he learned of the new servo-feedback system by fellow Texas resident Brian Ding, designer and owner of Rythmik Audio. The two put their two big heads together, and the result is their State-Of-The-Art OB/Dipole Servo-Feedback Subwoofer, the only such design in the world, co-marketed by both companies. |
There are many ways to skin a cat, or a loudspeaker. Baffle-less designs are out there, from the semi-kit products like Pure Audio, to finished louspeakers like Emerald Physics. But other designs are also baffle-free, or partially baffle-free, like most omnis. And a full range planar speaker is also free of a baffle. I have been using Ohm Walsh 2000s since 2009, and before that, Vandersteen 1Cs. So, you can count me in as part of the anti-baffle crowd. IME, a speaker with a baffle can sound baffle-less, but heroic efforts must be made to make the cabinet inert and avoid diffraction. That always means big bucks. For those of us with limited resources, baffle-free loudspeakers offer a cheaper way to take the box out of the equation. They’re not for everyone, of course, but unless I could spend a lot of money on a pair of speakers, I will stick to baffle-less designs. |
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