BTW, Cambridge Audio CD player. I like a man who understands value. I got my Azur last year and I have not desire to "upgrade" to one of those other trendy $2000 CDP. Money's better spend on software.

Gar.

Are you suggesting that properly fan braced mohagony cabinet with a rosewood back and spruce top would be bad sounding? :)

Be fun to make up some smallish units for fun and measure them.

I dont work with MDF anymore. I never liked it and used it beacuse it was good for veneering. well, it just plain suck most other times!
I do all veneer work over birch ply now.

Ther's more to be said for a 'tuned' cabinet than one made from 4 inches of concrete?

Bill

My understanding is that solid wood is not used for the same reason that your kitchen cabinets, quality bedroom furniture, and doors are not solid wood - it expands and contracts with the changes in humidity. Eventually something as large as a woofer would be likely to split or crack open at a seam.

Am I wrong about this?

But unless there's a resonance available due to the combination of the shelves and their supports that excites microphonics in your tubes or a resonance in your turntable, I can't think of any reason for the difference.

Best,
Charlie

The issues surrounding solid wood construction in cabinet making and staircasing/doormaking are ones of technique. A very good reference is Fine Woodworking's "On Period Furniture". It's certainly easier to veneer composition materials, but it's not "better" than solid wood.

The grounding in early veneered work would qualify as high art today. The grounding was frequently built from true Mahogany – veneer was adopted as a way to achieve effects not otherwise possible or impractical (book matching, large radius curved work, etc...)

The difference between a Goddard highboy and a loudspeaker is that, whether you perceive it so or not, a loudspeaker is a machine. Machines have different requirements from furniture. Inertness of cabinetry is one important criteria poorly satisfied by solid wood construction.

Can you create a beautiful piece of furniture by veneering a composite ground material? Sure. Is it superior to a solid wood construction properly done? I don’t think so.

I have thought about my bedroom dressers, which have solid sides built up from strips about 5" wide. Also my kitchen table top is solid wood.

Why, then, do they go to all the trouble of making floating panels for cabinets and drawer bottoms, if not because of expansion? I suppose it is as you say - you can use solid wood if you know what you are doing.

I have a bunch of oak (two guys I used to work with and I bought it in 1990 from some guy who cut it and planed it; $100 - it is worth ten times that now :), and it would be nice to build my woofer cabinets with it, but I thought that would lead to problems. Do you think that it would work ok? I had planned on using it for my mid-horns, but oak plywood for the woofers.