Speaker Damping Material

[Retrosonic]

Hi guys.

Hopefully someone can shed some light on this subject.

I'm about to install a pair of Full range Audio Nirvanas in a new set of cabinets.

The AN specs call for sound damping material on the upper half of the cabinet, no more than 1 inch thick.

Now, other than fiberglass, which I am not going to use, what other damping material will not hurt the bass response?

The AN people say NOT to use the egg crate type foam because it eats up the low frequencies. No good.

Would anyone have an online source?

Many thanks for any help.
Retro Rick

[sarrisk]

Hi ,
In my DIY pair I used DYNAMAT in the wall behind the driver. You can take a look about DYNAMAT here : http://www.dynamat.com/index.html

costas

[wakibaki]

I used a kind of glassfibre insulation substitute you can get here, it's made out of coke bottles.

I can't give you comparative data on it's performance tho' because I can't give up the use of the speakers long enough to mess around with it. Can't be that bad...

w

[Retrosonic]

Thanks guys. I hear that "No Rez" is the way to go.

[VictoriaGuy]

Have you contacted David at Commonsense Audio? He's been quite helpful when I had questions about my AN speakers. He would probably have some suggestions for US-sourced materials.
I used 1" acoustic insulation material (yellow, fiberglass based?) and it seemed to work OK.
John

[Retrosonic]

John,

You say that it worked "OK". Were you less than happy with the results? Did you do the entire cabinet, or just the top half?

[VictoriaGuy]

Originally posted by Retrosonic
John,

You say that it worked "OK". Were you less than happy with the results? Did you do the entire cabinet, or just the top half?

Rick-
I did just the top half, as per the suggestions from David at commonsenseaudio. I don't trust myself to detect much in the way of differences without setting up an A/B type of test, so I haven't experimented much with different materials (not having a 2nd pair of enclosures and speakers).
I'm happy with my AN10s- but again I don't have a wall of speakers for comparison.
Which AN speakers do you have? Which enclosure did you build?

Cheers
John

[Cliff45]

Hello all-

I have used this type of material, made by Owens Corning, in quite a bit of acoustical treatments over the years:

SelectSound Acoustical Board

This material seems to work very well for "broadband" absorption, and I see no reason why it could not be used inside of a speaker enclosure as well. I have seen folks use what is commonly called "duct board" for this type of things as well, but that is a semi-rigid yellow "fiberglass" product that seems too dense (to me) to be of much use in broadband absorption applications.

A lot of the pro-audio speaker enclosures I have had apart over the years seemed to have a white, fluffy type of filling either loose or in blanket form inside. Some people seemed to call that stuff "Dacron fill", from what I remember.

I was able to order a minimum amount of that Owens Corning material from my local lumber yard, they deal in Owens Corning products.....

HTH

[Retrosonic]

Hi John.

I have the AN 10 inch cast frames. Right now they are in a pair of old advent cabs and I am NOT impressed, BUT I hear that in the right cabinet they can be great. The are certainly great in the mids. The bass is what I'm trying to get right.

I had the big 5.6 cabs built per their spec by a professional cabinet builder.

[Retrosonic]

Cliff, I think that stuff would be the last thing you would want inside a speaker enclosure, it would suck up the bass.

All youre looking to do with sound damping material is to eliminate standing waves so that they dont travel back thru the speaker cone and mess up the mid/bass.