Why are there so many wooden box speakers out there?

@kenjit

nonsense. You cant patent a shape. Why hasn’t anybody patented the rectangular box?

You may be able to patent an implementation of a shape. Apple irritated the always irritable interwebs by protecting their rectangle with rounded corners, I can’t recall how/if that ended.

The research shows it is the perfect shape. Speakers are there to reproduce what you play through them. They are not instruments. High end speaker companies know this.

I think Cabasse speakers are fabulous btw. I wouldn’t be surprised if certain elements of their implementation were patented, but haven’t checked. I agree spherical or semi-spherical shapes are wonderful and I’d like to see more of them.

Gallo made both entirely spherical speakers and used spherical housings in complex speakers, like their discontinued Reference models. I think he sold the company (not sure) but you could buy their Strada models recently (they being two midrange spheres and a curved tweeter).

There have been others that I can’t recall immediately.

We also have the egg-like Devialet.

And there are complex curvilinear shapes, B&W’s shell-inspired Nautilus, and Laurence Dickie’s later work as Vivid Audio.

And we have numerous simple or complex curved planes on numerous models. Previous generation Audio Physic had curved sides or backs (the current reference models are tilted rectangular prisms but don’t sound worse). Magico still do (and those giant Magicos are complex curves). Focal Utopia series generally don’t have any flat elements. Nor do certain Genelec series. KEF Muon. And so on.

B&W had one but we are not talking about subwoofers we are talking about regular speakers

Why not? Boxes may be the common/utilitarian/cheap box of choice, but variations exist as attempts to improve sonics and aesthetics. B&O make a complex polygon that approximates a sphere. High-end REL models are curved like grand pianos. Gallo made a cylindrical tube. Tune Audio make a lavish vertical horn. Genelecs SAM series are spiral sections. Avantgarde Audio make those fabulous-looking stacking spiral horns. And so on.

To be less flippant, your assertion that a sphere is somehow "perfect" is fundamentally in error. ALL designs, including spheres, are engineering tradeoffs.

Its not my assertion olson did the damn research back in the 1950. All shapes were compared and the sphere had the smoothest response. Nothing has changed since then so the result is still true.

Look at it this way, even if the U.S. military wanted to spend a BILLION dollars developing a "good" speaker, they could most certainly do that. But in no way would it be "perfect". Such an animal will never exist.

We are not talking about perfection. We are simply saying why are all speakers wooden boxes when the research has shown that they should be spherical?

"We are simply saying why are all speakers wooden boxes when the reserach has shown that they should be spherical? "

Now, what research are you referring to? Can you provide a link? 

@dill 

yes heres a link

@kenjit

yes here’s a link

Interesting how close the two 'truncated pyramid and parallelepiped’ examples were to the sphere. And better than the hemisphere. Andrew Jones should be stoked.

But note the somewhat limited scope of measurement: 100-4000 Hz and single point microphone. A good start but you’d probably take the investigation further. Interesting also that the discussion focusses on diffraction rather than internal dynamics.

We also have to consider the compromises involved in full-range or co-axial driver implementations. The former especially with respect to suitable SPL and dynamics, the latter with complex diffraction from the drivers.

Look at KEF Blade for example: co-axial treble/mid but separate bass drivers to achieve sufficient dynamics in the lower octaves (Devialet adhere more closely to the sphere but take a similar approach).