void free ply has no issues....it just costs a fortune.
If people can find decent ply (even 7 or 9 ply), no one needs to really waste $$$ and source BB. Build the box properly and all this discussion is a whole lot of audiophile subjective opinion. Its up there with cables sounding different. Audiophile imagination is UNMATCHED
Honestly, You are either drinking the audiophile kool-aid or you are not. Just choose what matters and move on
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Very interesting discussion here ! I have to say that i have build around 30 pairs of enclosures and i have tried a lot of construction and dampening materials including lot of experimental sandwitch constructions in the process. It is surely very important to have a good enclosure without leaks and parasite vibrations that can affect the main signal that is to be reproduced. I think that the best way is to measure the panels with accelerometer to be sure. At the end, i believe that it's enough to make a good MDF enclosure with a lot of bracing and that we should focus much more on the room acoustics and directivity/reflections/phase issues. Those factors have much, much bigger, i dare to say critical influence on the perceived sound than differences between MDF and other mentioned materials if we just make the box "right". It is almost funny to see that some audiophiles are endlessly experimenting with enclosures, expensive cables and gold-foil capacitors but their systems are very often placed in very, very poorly (un) treated room with tiles on the floor and absolutely terible acoustic enviroment.
1. of all the more commonly used cabinet materials MDF is the worst
2. dont confuse expensive cables with actual speaker design
3. it is granted your room acoustics are sorted out and you place your speakers optimally
I think it's sad to see so many jump on the bandwagon to ridicule those who value good quality passive components, but your overall point is valid. In particular, the room's acoustics and those other speaker design criteria are overlooked far too often and with disastrous consequences.
A lover of good source components and amps could easily turn around here and ask, if you had a good cd player, amps and a good room did you really need to build 30 sets of speakers to find a good sound? Or still not found a good sound? Or were the speakers for other people??
Simon,I think it's sad to see so many jump on the bandwagon to ridicule those who value good quality passive components, but your overall point is valid. In particular, the room's acoustics and those other speaker design criteria are overlooked far too often and with disastrous consequences.
A lover of good source components and amps could easily turn around here and ask, if you had a good cd player, amps and a good room did you really need to build 30 sets of speakers to find a good sound? Or still not found a good sound? Or were the speakers for other people??
Yes, these speakers were mostly for other people. I am still searching for better sound of course and i did not intended to insult anyone here. I just think, that if we will build two similar enclosures, one from MDF and second from plywood with a lot of bracing and the same dapening inside an measure the sound levels generated by the speaker enclosure itself, the differencies will be minimal, fraction of a decibel and nonexistent/ masked at one meter perhaps
That doesn't explain why we hear the differences though, but it does raise a point that is personal to me: I've not compared two otherwise identical boxes made from different materials. I don't think there's the time in the day to do it! I think when we change something, we often change several other things. How often do we carefully isolate one variable and listen to that change? Never, because the scientists who would carefully isolate one variable wouldn't trust their ears
so our quest to answer an important question 'What are the characteristics of a better material for enclosure?' comes down to MDF vs plywood?
if the OP had posted a thread 'How can I make a reasonably good louspeaker enclosure, using the tools at my house and materilas that cost as little as possible?' we could say we answered the question.
Ok, so in my opinion the best enclosure material is sandwich made from two layers of MDF, with aluminium honeycomb glued between them.
Its an addiction
I have at least a dozen pair of speakers here i could live with.
dave
I have. Dave. That's dangerously close to a poetry
It was. Before we did identical builds Chris was ambivalent, MDF (which for many builds is free) and BB. After he wasn't.
dave
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