Well, I just went through what I was supposed to absorb 52 years ago in physics class regarding cabinet resonance in materials. It is two pages out of 550.
I'll put it up, if anyone is interested.
I then looked at Olson's book on speaker design. (our bible for many years) Not much.
Finally, I got out Martin Colloms book 'High Performance Loudspeakers' and found out, to my surprise, how my WATT1's cabinet was designed. WOW! And Colloms stated on p.299: "Both mechanical impulse tests and listening have shown that this quality of enclosure has a dramatic effect in improving sound quality, particularly with transients, subjective dynamics, stereo focus and depth; as it shows that despite considerable improvements, we still have a long way to go in the field of commercial enclosure design. However, this performance is achieved at high cost, approximately 15 times that of a normal enclosure of this size."
And now I have the WATT's big brother at my disposal!
I'll put it up, if anyone is interested.
I then looked at Olson's book on speaker design. (our bible for many years) Not much.
Finally, I got out Martin Colloms book 'High Performance Loudspeakers' and found out, to my surprise, how my WATT1's cabinet was designed. WOW! And Colloms stated on p.299: "Both mechanical impulse tests and listening have shown that this quality of enclosure has a dramatic effect in improving sound quality, particularly with transients, subjective dynamics, stereo focus and depth; as it shows that despite considerable improvements, we still have a long way to go in the field of commercial enclosure design. However, this performance is achieved at high cost, approximately 15 times that of a normal enclosure of this size."
And now I have the WATT's big brother at my disposal!
Like I Said: http://www.diyaudio.com/forums/multi-way/245965-how-much-cabinet-sound.html
Includes some contribution from folk who have done recent work
Includes some contribution from folk who have done recent work
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Personally I find such extreme obsession with enclosures to be rather comical. Have you ever stopped to consider the walls, ceiling, floor, windows, furniture, and all the various other objects that are in the room you're listening in? And that's not even taking into account the acoustics of the room. The room and the objects in it all respond to an acoustic stimulus, no differently than a loudspeaker enclosure does. And ironically, the most common practice is to couple the loudspeaker to the floor with spikes.
Of course you could argue that you don't want the loudspeaker enclosure to make things even worse, but given the typical listening room, that's rather like advising not to fart in a windstorm so as not to make it even worse.
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Jacco,
Four walls and a floor and a ceiling is about as close to typical as I can describe a room. You can have windows and doors in many different locations, hardwood floors or concrete, carpet and padding or not, soft furniture or hard, what could ever be considered as typical? It would seem to me at least that every room is different, size and shape and materials all will make a difference in how a room will finally sound. There seems to be nothing to relate to a typical sound room except that this is where you are listening to music.
Four walls and a floor and a ceiling is about as close to typical as I can describe a room. You can have windows and doors in many different locations, hardwood floors or concrete, carpet and padding or not, soft furniture or hard, what could ever be considered as typical? It would seem to me at least that every room is different, size and shape and materials all will make a difference in how a room will finally sound. There seems to be nothing to relate to a typical sound room except that this is where you are listening to music.
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Yes, imagine how bad a musical instrument would sound in there, with all those reflections and resonances a guitar wouldn't even sound like a guitar!</sarcasm>
I'm with you there. Spikes mostly do the wrong thing. I think they were invented as a way to keep large speakers from rocking on carpet (and when you think about it, a carpeted floor is already pretty well damped). But then people reasoned that if they help on carpet, they should help everywhere, so they started using spikes to couple their speakers to bare hardwood floors, aka "drums".
At the other extreme, I recall reading an article from some high-end guy who claimed that vibrations from loudspeakers, coupled through the floor, would travel faster than sound in air and be detected by a listener before the air-borne sound, hence causing some premonition of the sound before it arrived, producing some sort of audible distortion (or something like that). I wondered what he thought would happen if someone started beating a bass drum placed between his speakers.
So far, as to the Sashas, I am now outgrowing the Comcast source that I am using. I really can tell the compromise when I use the Comcast feed with 'The Prairie Home Companion' broadcast that I listen to almost every week as an audio reference. They really are SOLID sounding, it is a subtle but real improvement over the WATT's that I have. I, of course, have turned off the sub-woofer, it is not really necessary, anymore.
In comparison to the Sequerra Met 7's there is a real improvement, but for casual radio, including rock and roll, the Mets will go back to the Comcast feed, when I switch over to my better audio feed.
In comparison to the Sequerra Met 7's there is a real improvement, but for casual radio, including rock and roll, the Mets will go back to the Comcast feed, when I switch over to my better audio feed.
nezbleu,
There is a major difference in the speed of sound in a any solid vs air or any gas. The way I look at those little spikes is that you should in actuality have less transfer of energy into the floor through the small surface area of the spike vs the entire surface area of a speaker enclosure sitting directly on the floor. That is for sound that is traveling through the floor. Now the speaker cabinet bottom could generate plenty of sound as a radiator to the air so which is better is a question by itself.
There is a major difference in the speed of sound in a any solid vs air or any gas. The way I look at those little spikes is that you should in actuality have less transfer of energy into the floor through the small surface area of the spike vs the entire surface area of a speaker enclosure sitting directly on the floor. That is for sound that is traveling through the floor. Now the speaker cabinet bottom could generate plenty of sound as a radiator to the air so which is better is a question by itself.
Of course there is a difference in transmission speed in gas, liquid, solid, but who cares? If a live instrument were played in your room, it would excite even more structure-borne vibration that a loudspeaker, especially something like a drum or a bass. I would suggest that the absence of structure-born vibration is a bigger cue to "fake" sound than the opposite.
None of which has much to do with enclosure panel resonance. If we assume that what comes out of the speaker drivers is an accurate representation of musical sound, what comes out of the enclosure panels is sure to be less accurate.
None of which has much to do with enclosure panel resonance. If we assume that what comes out of the speaker drivers is an accurate representation of musical sound, what comes out of the enclosure panels is sure to be less accurate.
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