Ariel-esque speaker baffle design

[Ang]

I'm looking at 4 Acoustic elegance dipole woofers, 2 td 15m's and a variety of compression drivers and horns scattered around my living room.

Idea is to put these in an active system (DEQ+DCX) to be completed by end of summer.

I want to try a completely dipole setup. So, if you could design the "ultimate" open baffle... baffle for the 15m+waveguide, what would a good width be for proper off-axis response?

I've tried various setups in Edge and read through some of JohnK's dipole text. Since I can hammer the response into line with the DEQ and the mid is 15" is there anything to worry about? Again, will experiment once I've built it, but would rather not commit to some incurable baffle dimension.

Thinking about mounting the baffle on a frame of 80/20 modular aluminum so it can slide up and down as dictated by seating position.

[roger_lew]

Hi Ang,

I see that you are a fellow computational neuroscientist.

It sounds like you are building more of a beyond the ariel-esque ob. It also sounds like you know the theory. I would advise not letting the theory get you stuck in indecision. OB baffles are super easy to prototype. I would just start cutting. You can iteratively work to what you find optimum.

The trend seems to suggest that smaller OBs image better, but they also require more EQ. Stig's baffleless approach exemplifies this extreme. Lynn's approach, as I understand it, is to go passive and to try and minimize the amount of EQ needed so that low power SE triode amps can be used. My OB falls closer to Lynn's approach. It is a 3 way passive with active shelving. I power it with a SE mosfet amp. I have a 24" Hartley in infinite baffle so the OB only needs to make it to 70Hz.

As Pirsig's narrator in Zen and the Art of Motorcyle Maintenance so eloquently put it we aren't working with parts we are working with concepts.

Roger

[Ang]

Thank Roger. I may just go for narrow baffle relative to 15" and a wide roundover, then see how much it can be tweaked with XO adjustments.

and yes - compneuro leaves precious little time for speaker, but if you're ever giving a talk at Pitt or CMU let me know and you can have a listen to whatever I come up with.