Open Baffle Nearfield

[balance]

Hello,

I was wondering if anyone could point me in the right direction regarding open baffle nearfields. Most of the OB stuff I've seen here or elsewhere on the net is HUGE! I would like to experiment with nearfields based around a 4 or 5 inch driver. The general purpose would be to compliment my current studio monitors: Yamaha NS10M and Auratones. Neither of these are great speakers, I know, but they are highly useful for mixing. Essentially, I am in search of transparency (who isn't I guess.) My thought is that since microphones are not housed in resonant boxes, neither should speakers.

Any links, thoughts, suggestions...? I appreciate it!

Brian

[chipco3434]

All I can tell you is that my current speakers are OB line arrays using the PE NSB's that are discussed widely on the net. I never listened to OB's before building these. By contrast, I think it would be very hard to go back to the "box" sound. Comparitively, the sound seems much cleaner and, obviously, a lot less boomy.

I use Tuba 18's (rolled up horn) on the bottom ~ <180Hz. These are boxed, but they are vastly different than the standard band pass and vented dreck.

[johninCR]

Hi Brian,

I have two sets of OB's that I use in the nearfield at my desk. Maybe you'll be lucky and not have to have a computer monitor in front of you acting like a black hole. With one set I use a Fostex FE206E with a 10" realistic driver for bass support. The other is just a Fostex FE127E. With the 206 I can run without a sub, but the 127 needs one or at least a helper woofer. Baffle size is really something you have to experiment with because there are just too many variables, but in the nearfield you don't need big baffles and cardboard makes experimentation easy. If you can integrate a sub into the picture, then quite small baffles can work great.