Sealed commercial designs

[Mos Fetish]

(Or sealed DYI designs for that matter)

Are there any commercial manufacturers that do floorstanding, full range (that is, multi driver) speakers? Or are they all frightened off by the size and therefore cost of such designs?

[Willitwork]

Haven't seen a commercial sealed floor stander in ages, last one I owned myself were a pair of butt ugly Spica Angelus, but there must be some esoteric brands out there that still carry them. As for DIY they are also a rarity, although here's one I've been meaning to try out for a while but can't source the drivers in North America. It's an easy-to-build simple design ideally suited for comparison purposes but probably not worth importing the drivers at three times their European value not even counting shipping. I imagine they'd be even more expensive in your neck of the woods.

http://www.tnt-audio.com/clinica/nues_e.html

[Floric]

Some of the british brands (Linn, Naim etc.) used to build speakers that were constructed to be placed at the wall. These designs were usually closed to keep the bass conntrolled. The Linn Caber is an example.

But I don't know what the manufacturers do right now.

I like the sound of closed baffles if they are done the right way! Even near a wall.

regards

Flo

[CeramicMan]

I'd say that it's all about competition and being able to "sell" a product to the general public. To sell something you need: "bling", flashy lights, and good first impressions in the shop. Ported loudspeakers have all of that:

-The technological marvel of a tube that mysteriously increases the bass response, with air being created out of nowhere.

-Marketers seem to love the word "tuned" in the sales blurb because it misleadingly implies that each speaker was individually inspected, measured and adjusted with microphones and lots of TLC.

-Flatter frequency response, which works better in large department store showrooms where there's very little room gain / room loading and they play THX-certified movie trailers.


Sealed speakers have none of that. People think: "wait a minute, it's just a box! It could be hollow and crappy!" The 12dB/octave high pass filtering, which might start at 100Hz certainly wouldn't give a good impression next to all the subwoofers and 2.5-way ported speakers with a cutoff below 40Hz.

[phase_accurate]

One current Linn speaker that is closed-box and fun to listen to - although not as neutral as it could be for that price - is the following:

http://www.linn.co.uk/music_systems_komri

One of the best speakers that I have heard so far:

http://www.me-geithain.de/en/download/rl901eng.pdf

...... also closed and fully active !!!!


Many European - made speakers of the seventies were of the closed-box type. Three-way with woofers from 8" upwards.

I'd say closed-box speakers have only one disadvantage: It is a little more expensive to reach the same max SPL and cutoff frequency with a closed-box than with a reflex one.
Everything else is better !

Regards

Charles

[rcdaniel]

I owned a pair of Duntech Statesmans that were sealed; I believe these are still available:

Duntech Statesman

They had possibly the most tuneful and least problematic bass of any speaker I have owned. They major on detail and resoution, at the expense of musical communication. They seemed artificially bright to me, tho that is to do with the tweeter and nothing to do with being sealed. That said, from what I understand, many current speakers are voiced that way these days. Hmmm, those bass/mids in a sealed cab with a decent tweeter coould be sweet...

Seems like a couple of the other Duntech Classic series designs are also sealed.

Anyhow, hope that gives some food for thought.
Raymond

[Floric]

...and the people buy (or build) the speakers that have nice looking fr-graphs which were measured in acoustically dead measurement rooms. If the magazine then talks about the f3 (derived from the mesurement) then there is no one left who buys closed boxes.

Most commercial (low- to midprice) designs have a little hump in the upper bass region to get nice measurements in those publications and to present a "nice" bass in the listening room of the vendor who wants to sell a pair of spekers every ten minutes.

But there is almost nothing like a picked bass delivered by closed boxes - if they are well done. O.k. there are dipoles too and they could be even better.

best regards

Flo

[Mos Fetish]

Thanks for the replies.

I guess the next question is where are the *great* sealed designs from DIYers?

The SAF aside, for DIYers a great sealed design is surely as much a consideration as a ported design as we *don't* have t worry about those commercial/showroom considerations. We can pick and choose the drivers, and box sizes, etc. without regard to anything but our tastes and budgets.

[rcdaniel]

Oh, and don't forget what has become known as 'aperiodic' boxes - esssentially a leaky sealed box (the leakiness can be tuned) that acts like a sealed, but can be smaller.

I think HiFi World magazine designed one of these recently; Omega has designed one (Revolutions, I think); and there is a little info on Planet10's site, IIRC. Scanspeak produces the tunable vents, or you can do lyour own. From what I understand, these are easier to implement than true sealed as you have more margin for tuning. I think there has been some past discussion on some of the full-range / wide-range speaker forums re aperiodic boxes.

Cheers
Raymond

[CeramicMan]

Check out the write-up I started for a traditional 3-way design. Mind you, I haven't finished it yet and I'm only planning on building it next year, but basically it'll use 10" woofers, 4.5" midranges and 25mm tweeters.

Part of my motivation behind it is:

1) That it can use relatively benign crossover points around 200~300Hz and 4~5kHz, unlike a 2-way design.

2) The ratio of driver sizes is quite evenly distributed, making it easier to control the off-axis response.

3) A 10" woofer in a sealed box seems like a good balance considering both: room gain at low frequencies and its ability to play up to 200~300Hz.

4) Lower distortion and better power handling because the tweeter and midrange are saved from doing any heavy-duty cone excursion.

So if all goes well, it might even turn out quite "elegant" because of the lack of any glaring weak points in the design. So that's one possibility you could look at. Just customize things like box sizes, what exact drivers to use, crossover slopes, notch filters... Baffle diffraction?... Front-firing woofer versus a slim-line design?