Open Baffle vs Box

@helomech Thanks!

audiosaurusrex


I think there is one more aspect of the new Spatial M3 that you will only know for sure by trying them at home....that is the saphire (ceramic) mid/tweet driver.

(from the Spatial Audio page on Audio Circle..." new wideband, large dome unit which operates from 500Hz to 40kHz"....and...." the 2 woofers operate in parallel below 100Hz, so the impedance drops to 4 Ohms.... Minimum is about 3 Ohms over a very narrow range)."    So, the way I read this....both 15" woofers operate together below 100hz...one 15" woofer covers 100-500hz and then the ceramic driver covers the rest.

I heard the original M3 non turbo units at Spatial in a somewhat small rectangular corner or their speaker assembly area in Salt Lake...and they sounded darn good...not a hint of brightness...so I'm guessing these sound even better....and with the 60 day home trial, the only thing you risk is a couple hundred bucks of return shipping....

gochurchgo, what you get is a confused mess lacking in both punch and rumble. As the wavelength of the reproduced sound gets longer than the driver is wide the sound gets increasingly more omni directional. The wavelength of 100 Hz is around 10 feet, far longer than a 12 or 15" driver 
is wide. The rear wave of a woofer is 180 degrees out of phase with the front wave and both are omni directional. They cancel each other. Stand directly to the side of an open baffle woofer and there will be no bass. Now depending on the distance to the front wall the rear wave will bounce off the wall and come back at you at a different phase angle and things get more confused. Contrary to popular belief increasing the size of the baffle board does not help at all. Low frequency sound is very powerful and can travel long distances in air. Ask anyone who has been within 10 miles of a plane breaking the sound barrier. 
For all the difficulty in building a proper bass enclosure the results are well worth it, even more so given modern high power amplifiers and digital bass management. So why wouldn't this work with dipole sub woofers? Well, when two sound waves 180 degrees out of phase sum you get zero. More of zero is still zero.

Very interesting posts from everyone. Makes me think that the people who love open baffle designs are much like the Vandys fans of which I’ve been for many years. Either lovem or not so much. Speaking with Clayton he believes that open baffle designs will ultimately dominate the market at some point. My room is 14x16x8 old style cape with hardwood floors pretty open area rug and no window treatments. Using a Krell Digital Vanguard to drive them. I liked that the Vandys have a wide open soundstage and sound pretty good even from the next room. So do the Spatial’s have a narrower sweet spot? And is placement as critical as with the Vandersteens?