All box speakers vibrate. No way around it. ’Ye cannae change the laws of physics Jim.’
So what to do?
Well, with existing speakers, if you really feel there’s an audible problem - there might not be if the designer has factored in cabinet vibration/ output into the desired sonic signature they wanted - you can try to stand them on something which might attenuate some of their cabinet vibrations. Sorbothane, springs or footers etc. Townshend Audio have a long history of looking at isolation but they are not the only ones. In my experience these products can help where the sound can tend to get slightly ’muddy’ with certain recordings.
With cabinet design there are usually two approaches. Make it either extremely rigid to try to force these resonances up the frequency range (hopefully out of the listening range) or alternatively make the cabinet lossy (BBC style) so they disappear beneath the bass floor where our ears are the least sensitive.
Or alternatively you can opt for planar types and open baffles where the box resonances are naturally less of a problem.
There is a third approach, quite rare nowadays, akin to transmission lines, is to try to carefully use the unavoidable resonances (why fight the impossible?) in the same way as musical instruments do, ie to actually enhance the sound.
I think Russell K loudspeakers employ this strategy and they certainly have their fans. The piano firm Bosendorfer used a similar approach for their loudspeakers, but I don’t know if they still do. In any case I would always prefer a speaker with slightly too much life, and maybe not measure absolutely ruler flat than one that does but has too little life.
None of the current solutions are perfect but hey it’s only 2020 and we still await the next major engineering breakthrough.
It could be closer than we think if AI keeps evolving at its predicted rate.
So what to do?
Well, with existing speakers, if you really feel there’s an audible problem - there might not be if the designer has factored in cabinet vibration/ output into the desired sonic signature they wanted - you can try to stand them on something which might attenuate some of their cabinet vibrations. Sorbothane, springs or footers etc. Townshend Audio have a long history of looking at isolation but they are not the only ones. In my experience these products can help where the sound can tend to get slightly ’muddy’ with certain recordings.
With cabinet design there are usually two approaches. Make it either extremely rigid to try to force these resonances up the frequency range (hopefully out of the listening range) or alternatively make the cabinet lossy (BBC style) so they disappear beneath the bass floor where our ears are the least sensitive.
Or alternatively you can opt for planar types and open baffles where the box resonances are naturally less of a problem.
There is a third approach, quite rare nowadays, akin to transmission lines, is to try to carefully use the unavoidable resonances (why fight the impossible?) in the same way as musical instruments do, ie to actually enhance the sound.
I think Russell K loudspeakers employ this strategy and they certainly have their fans. The piano firm Bosendorfer used a similar approach for their loudspeakers, but I don’t know if they still do. In any case I would always prefer a speaker with slightly too much life, and maybe not measure absolutely ruler flat than one that does but has too little life.
None of the current solutions are perfect but hey it’s only 2020 and we still await the next major engineering breakthrough.
It could be closer than we think if AI keeps evolving at its predicted rate.