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Speaker cabinets: How important is inert

First let's assume that the best school of thought is for speaker cabinets to have zero characteristics of their own, i.e it's completely silent.

A lot of the premium speakers like Rockport, Magico, YG, Kharma, Wilson all boast custom cabinets which are supposed to be "dead," which will let the drivers do their jobs without having the cabinets interefere. There are also premium speakers that uses braced MDF like TAD, Tidal, the lower Rockport lines, Avalons, etc which are supposed to be almost as good.

I'm not in the market for speakers, but everytime I look and listen to different speakers, I almost always prefer the big heavy duty cabinet speakers, and not the slim shaped refined looking speakers.

So my question is - do these custom epoxy or sandwiched or aluminum or whatever cabinets make a HUGE difference over plain MDF or braced MDF, or is it just marginal? How much of the secret to a good sounding speaker is in the cabinet engineering versus the drivers?
enzo618
johnk's avatar
johnk
1,976 posts
 
Cabinet materials do have an effect on overall sound quality. Small transducers can also vibrate on baffles smearing image. Cabinet surfaces also vibrate this can cause added colorations. For me Baltic birch ply is one of the better materials for quality loudspeaker cabinets. I have used many other types I tend to go with baltic plys braced doubled baffles etc.
roxy54's avatar
roxy54
8,120 posts
 
Well designed cabinets are certainly a major factor in a speaker's overall performance, but a very "dead" cabinet is not the only effective means of producing a good speaker. Two examples of the alternate route would be the Harbeth speakers and Audio Note speakers.
timlub
2,042 posts
 
With Traditional drivers, The lower the resonance of the cabinet materials used, the less you hear the cabinets in your music. Typically this is achieved by useing very dense materials. Bracings purpose is to reduce cabinet resonance. If you can come up with a space age material, that will not flex(flexing would be a problem) or give and is "DEAD" you should have a winner. Until then, we do what we do. Tim
6550c
393 posts
 
"Two examples of the alternate route would be the Harbeth speakers and Audio Note speakers. "

What route DOES Audio Note (UK?) take? They look like a Radio Shack project speaker, and imo, don't sound much better than my first pair of SoundDesigns in 1977.
mlsstl
1,452 posts
 
With speaker drivers housed in cabinets, the fundamental issue is what does one do with the rear wave from the back side of a driver? That wave is just as strong as the front one. That energy does not magically go away, so it must be taken into account.

A dense cabinet in and of itself will only trap that energy inside the speaker and it will reemerge through the speaker cone as delayed sound. This smears the sound.

Ports and other devices work only in a lower range of frequencies. Padding and stuffing only work well at upper frequencies. However, if one is not careful, not getting rid of this rear driver energy can easily create issues in the lower midrange where our hearing is particularly sensitive.

Harbeth & classic Spendors use the BBC damped thin wall design. Other speakers use other approaches, but by itself, a cabinet that is simply dense doesn't address the issue.

Like any engineering problem, it requires a system approach to address the problem.
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