Fast, fun, Inexpensive OB project

Unless the speaker is rigidly held in place it will move. Newton's laws says it has to accelerate and therefore move even if the amount is very small. OB speakers like the Manzanita have much less mass than a full box speaker and will therefore accelerate and move more. (F=ma)

If the speaker is held by a typical TV wall mount there is very little resisting force to hold it in place. In fact, those mounts are so loose as to effectively act like springs.

Now whether that motion has an audible affect or not is the real question. I think you might be able to make the case that it causes Doppler distortion, but I don't know if anyone has ever done the analysis.

Nevertheless, many audiophiles go to great lengths to weight down their speaker stands with sand or even concrete. Is that really necessary or is it just audiophile paranoia? I don't know. Just saying.
 
I would like to see a measurement proving measurable displacement or acceleration of a speaker of any mass inder normal programme content. Otherwise the argument of acceleration really is not relevant.

But i guess someone who has access to an accelerometer should chime in here...
 
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Re Doppler distortion, a bit of a misnomer, this is an interesting article Doppler Distortion in loudspeakers

There will certainly be a small reduction in SPL due to movement.

Yeah, I agree. The main reason to add mass to the base is to eliminate, or at least minimize, the reduction in SPL due to the speaker enclosure moving in the opposite direction to the cone.
 
so is WAF. in the case of something obtrusive in the room that sits 3' from the wall, WAF has to be 00 (double zero).

i'm uncertain, but i believe that in-wall (custom) design blows OB out of the water.

Doug Ronald and The Wall of Sound

Well, we can put your uncertainly to rest. In-wall speakers do not blow out other types for audiophile level listening to music. Perhaps for HT use they offer some advantages, but that's not what this forum is primarily about.

Here is a link to a video by Paul McGowan, who has considerable expertise in the area of sound quality.

Can in-wall speakers ever qualify as high-end? - YouTube
 
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Well, we can put your uncertainly to rest. In-wall speakers do not blow out other types for audiophile level listening to music. Perhaps for HT use they offer some advantages, but that's not what this forum is primarily about.

Here is a link to a video by Paul McGowan, who has considerable expertise in the area of sound quality.

Can in-wall speakers ever qualify as high-end? - YouTube

actually i was being polite by saying 'uncertain'. i'm quite uncertain that in-wall will blow out OB any day of the week. and i'm NOT talking about off the shelf packages, i'm talking about custom calibrated systems.
 
This has become a significant detour from the discussion of Manzanita OB speakers and I see little point in continuing it. You initially expressed an interest in building Manzanitas, but discussed your intentions to use them in a very unconventional way close to the wall on TV mounts. When several experts told you that would be a bad idea and would not sound good you rejected their advice as though you think you know more than they do.

But then you have gone even further by proposing an in-wall implementation and claiming that it will ‘blow out' anything else based on a report by some amateur who has built such a system. You apparently have ignored the video I suggested by Paul McGowan, a true expert on the subject, that disputes your claim on in-walls offering superior performance to other types for true high fidelity purposes.

You are certainly entitled to believe what you want, but don’t expect many people here to accept your word on what offers superior performance. I think most of us know better than that.
 
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This is a build thread and I would like it to remain that way. Nothing wrong with some chat here about how OB works, or the Manzanita in particular. But there are more than enough theoretical threads in this forum - it would be a shame to spoil an actual build thread. :p
 
thanks for the interjection. i wasn't trying to diverge from the build. i really did consider building one to mount on the stands to see how it would sound. perhaps if it was ob with an down-firing woofer in a box, it might work better.

but then it wouldn't be a manzanita and would not belong here.

thanks for the pointer on ob to wall separation.
 
So to wrap up and finalize my Manzanitas tonight I:

1. Used alligator clips to scale the level of resistance in the customizable part of the circuit. I found 4.5 ohms to be over my personal brightness threshold. 6.5 ohms was overly dull, my youngest son at 12 who hears much better than me and plays guitar affirmed that 6.5 was too much. We dropped it and both agreed that 5.5 ohms was a value we both liked. Maybe in a month I'll tweak it .5 ohms up or down after I get some long term exposure.
2. Hot glued everything into place to finalize my crossover and eliminate any resonances or vibrations.
3. My son noticed some weird resonances (as did I) around the tweeters on one baffle. Turns out that my little circular 1/4 inch baffle that I had around my tweeters had some type of interaction with the baffle that caused a noise. I hit both of them with rope caulk and made sure to seat it aggressively so that it interposed itself between the 1/4 inch tweeter baffle and the main baffle.
4. The officially completed Manzanitas are now on their shake-down cruise and sounding like they should - which is to say they sound excellent. I'm going to use them as my daily drivers for an extended period of time and see if I end up having any additional tweeks. I'll take some glamour shots when I feel they are 'perfect' and when I have some more natural light.