wide baffles and baffle step

@avanti1960 wrote: " wider baffles create the need for additional crossover components and complicate the voicing recipe. "

That has not been my experience. With a sufficiently wide baffle, no dedicated baffle-step compensation circuitry is needed. If some baffle step compensation is still called for, it can be accomplished by choice of low-pass filter component values, with no increase in parts count.

To my ears, a baffle-step compensated narrow cabinet does not have the lower-end impact and articulation nor the dynamics of a wide baffle which does not need baffle step compensation.  So imo each approach has its place. 

"imaging and high frequency dispersion is handicapped as well by wider baffles."

Yes and no. If edge diffraction is minimized, baffle width isn’t an issue as far as imaging goes.

But if there is significant edge diffraction, then yes imaging is better with a narrow baffle.

What happens is, the diffraction at the edge of the enclosure sends a false angular cue to the ear, and the farther away the edge is, the longer the time delay and therefore the greater the false angle. This holds true up to the point where the baffle edge is about nine inches away (corresponding to a 19-inch baffle width, assuming a 1" dome tweeter); at that point the time delay is great enough for the "precedence effect" to kick in and at suppress the false localization cues. (This is one of the reason why high-end recording studios often flush-mount their main monitors: Doing so pushes the arrival time for the first reflection past the point of generating significant false localization cues, so that the imaging cues on the recording can dominate.)

As for high frequency dispersion, a teeny tiny baffle around the tweeter does result in wider dispersion at the bottom end of the tweeter’s range (think "eyeball" tweeter atop the cabinet). Whether or not this is desirable is debatable from a tonal balance standpoint, but I can see it being desirable from an imaging standpoint.

Duke

Duke
Agreed.

Thank you, Duke, @audiokinesis , for bringing your specialized and hands-on knowledge to this issue.  What you refer to lower-end impact and articulation is something that I remember as experiencing first-hand when I auditioned the Spendor Classic 100 directly against the Spendor D7.  From the 100 there seemed to be just more music coming at me, something that at the time I thought of as "wave launch".

Thank you very much, arion and twoleftears. 

Imo "wave launch" is a good description of what a wide baffle does well.  I don't know whether it is technically precise or not, but the image it conjures up in my mind is of a sound wave getting a better "push" off of a wide cabinet than off a narrow one.  

A horn can be thought of as a special case of a wide baffle, with the baffle wrapped forward to get a still more efficient "wave launch" within its angle.  Or on the other hand a flat baffle can be thought of as a 180-degree horn, effective down to the frequency where the "horn" is too short relative to the wavelengths... and that's where the "baffle step" kicks in.  

Duke

Duke - I disagree, unless you meant to say out of phase wave launch bounce... the big baffle has two “
advantages” the power response and the averaging engine that constructive and destructive interference off a large baffle creates. In a time and phase correct design, both of those are of course not positives.
Snell of course had more complex shapes but in the end it’s a two dimensional horn....