Posted by Wayne Parham [ 66.137.59.15 ] on October 02, 2004 at 11:04:58:

In Reply to: Solid Oak Pi 7? posted by Dean Kukral on September 30, 2004 at 06:50:05:

Hi Dean,

I'd recommend staying away from solid hardwood when building cabinets for speakers. Use a good void-free baltic birch for large cabinets or MDF for smaller ones and put on a finish layer of nice real wood veneer. The idea is to make the cabinet as non-resonant as possible. The amounts of different wood fibers in these composite wood producs tends to break up any resonances. So I'd suggest using materials such as those and adequate bracing to make your cabinet very solid. That's the way seven π cabinets should be built.

I might add that there is a small minority of speaker builders that do just the opposite. Some like the idea of having purposely thin panels, and using them to vibrate and add something to the sound. Their idea is to voice the speaker cabinet like how the body of a guitar is voiced.

To me, the two things are different, because one is a sound generating instrument whereas the other is a sound reproduction device. With the musical instrument, the performer is creating something and with the loudspeaker, the user is attempting to copy something already performed. Hopefully the loudspeaker gives a convincing illusion that the copy is the same as the original, and doesn't sound like it has added anything to it. But the point I wanted to make is that there are some speaker builders that voice the cabinet like the body of a stringed musical instrument.

Wayne

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