best wood for speaker cabinets ? oak,cherry, balti

For as long as I can remember I have always heard birch plywood is best for speaker cabinets. However, I have heard good sounding speakers made of MDF, chip board, synthetic marble and no cabinet at all.

The best product to use is one that does not resonate where you don't want it to and does resonate where it will be the least problem. You'll have to build and measure the cabinet resonant frequencies to determine that. It's basic engineering but it costs a lot of time, effort and money.

I too have been thinking of building a set of speakers, possibly Audio Note, in the future. The following link to a forum thread on Audiocircle references an interesting material to be incorporated in constrained layer speaker cabinet construction. This looks like an interesting and potentially rewarding tactic for someone seeking to build inert as possible cabinets. http://www.audiocircle.com/index.php?topic=92198.0

Panzer holz

Below is a thread on "real wood" speakers. I have heard the Daedalus speakers championed by Al, and they certainly sound good. Other companies, like PBN Montana, do the front baffle of some models in a 2" hardwood slab. I agree with Has2be that cost is likely a major factor in the use of MDF, and I doubt there is an exceptionless rule here. Why not contact Audionote and ask them what the would use, were cost no object?

John

http://forum.audiogon.com/cgi-bin/fr.pl?cspkr&1275949549