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Why are there so many wooden box speakers out there?

I understand that wood is cheap and a box is easier to make than a sphere but when the speaker companies charge tens if not hundreds of thousands of dollars for their speakers, shouldnt consumers expect more than just a typical box? Are consumers being duped?

Back in the 70’s a speaker engineer found that a sphere was best for a speaker. A square box was the worst and a rectangular box was marginally better.

The speaker engineers have surely known about this research so why has it been ignored?

Cabasse is the only company doing spheres. Should wooden boxes be made illegal

kenjit
majew001
19 posts
 

+1 @budjoe 

Olsen study used a miniscule 7/8" speaker. Mounting larger speakers would be more problematic and require proportionately much larger cabinets. Would be interesting to see some research on larger spherical speakers though.

 

Happy Holidays!

jbl-4345
58 posts
 

I LOVE WOODEN BOX SPEAKERS.  LONG LIVE THE KING

coralkong's avatar
coralkong
681 posts
 

There are a handful of users on here that I would love to ignore, and never see another post or reply from them, ever.

Kenjit is one of them.

 

tecknik
483 posts
 

I think it has to do with the natural tone from wood, why is it most musical instrument are made from wood and sound so great.

simonmoon's avatar
simonmoon
529 posts
 

I think it has to do with the natural tone from wood, why is it most musical instrument are made from wood and sound so great.

 

Wood used for musical instruments, and wood used for speaker enclosures serve a completely different purpose.

With musical instruments, the wood is supposed to resonate and become part of the sound.

Speaker enclosures, no matter what they are made of, are supposed to be as acoustically inert as possible. 

Scientists have spent centuries trying to reproduce the signature sound the wood of a Stradivarius violin makes.

Scientist and engineers have spent decades trying to get speaker enclosures to not have any sound.

Make a violin out of, say, constrained layer damped wood, and it would sound horrible. Make a speaker out of highly resonant wood that is poorly damped, and it would sound horrible.

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