Hello,
For my next speaker project, I was thinking of sandwiching a thin layer of rubber between 2 18mm pieces of Baltic Birch and use it to make the baffles to isolate it from the enclosure.
Has anyone tried this? Would I gain anything?
For my next speaker project, I was thinking of sandwiching a thin layer of rubber between 2 18mm pieces of Baltic Birch and use it to make the baffles to isolate it from the enclosure.
Has anyone tried this? Would I gain anything?
I would recommend that you look for the "Midrange experiment with Auto sound panel deadener..." thread by Remlab.
Are you going to glue the rubber and wood together?
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Are you going to glue the rubber and wood together?
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I've made a few speakers with the front held on by tension springs against a soft gasket, that worked, I'm not sure if it's easy to find a good glue for rubber/wood.
Good way to concentrate all the reactive vibrational energy just in the baffle instead of sharing it across the whole box.
dave
dave
It's one way the pioneers did it, albeit also with rear-mounting the driver to the 'floating' / decoupled baffle, usually via some form of lengthy screw attachment to the motor structure.
My intention is to make the baffle the whole width and height of the box and glue the inner piece of the "sandwich" to the rest of the box. The driver will be screwed to the outer piece of the "sandwich" and the rubber layer between the 2 pieces. Do you think this would work?
What type of glue would I have to use? Once harden, wood glue might not dampen as well as, say contact glue, that stays somewhat tacky.
Thanks Cracked Case for suggesting the "Midrange experiment with Auto sound panel deadener..." thread by Remlab. Similiar project but he used an aluminum baffle. Not sure the result will be the same but it's a good read.
What type of glue would I have to use? Once harden, wood glue might not dampen as well as, say contact glue, that stays somewhat tacky.
Thanks Cracked Case for suggesting the "Midrange experiment with Auto sound panel deadener..." thread by Remlab. Similiar project but he used an aluminum baffle. Not sure the result will be the same but it's a good read.
Unfortunately, I think to fully understand the benifites, I think you'd have to make several speakers, using different "soft" layers, from felt, foam, cork, rubber, sorbothane, and green glue - measure the results and see how they perform. I can't see it would make it worse though.
Me. No.
The antithesis of my approach. Maximum mass and bracing to spread reactive vibrations across the entire box mass and material, reducing the chance enuff energy gets into a panel, and working to eliminate the excitement of resonances. With the rubber “gasket” the entire energy will be loaded into the 1 panel that represents the outer baffle.
If the tuning of the rubber layer is just right, then it will isolate that baffle from the rest of the box, but if it is tuned for that unlikely to damp the resonating baffle.
Might work. But i would not be surprise dif it does not.
dave
I like to use cork between baffle and cabinet. I do not use any glue. Only screws - last Way longer than foam.
Great for when you get the itch to try new drives.
Great for when you get the itch to try new drives.
Hobby Hifi did some measurement of diffenrent damping methods and the best one was MDF/Plywood-4mm Bitumen-Hardboard constriction layer.
On my traffic light spreakers, I did something similar; the fronts are held on by springs against a cork gasket, however holding the gasket in place are two square steel bars that compress the cork against the front baffle by Allen bolts and ny-loc nuts; these have the effect of both stiffening the fronts, and adding damping.
I was thinking about the Celestion SL600s, with their lightweight Aerolam (alloy honeycomb ) enclosures, because they're so lightweight there's little mass to store energy, hence little overhang; if the front baffles were de-coupled from the rest of the enclosure, wouldn't it achieve the same thing, but with added damping?
Before going full out on such a project, it would be interesting to take apart an existing speaker and replacing the baffle with the one suggested and measuring the effects. Unfortunately I don't have a set of speakers lying around waiting to be hacked.
Decoupling will have the baffle moving in the opposite direction of the cone by both air pressure and Newtons second law (assuming that the driver is attached to the front baffle. Even if the baffle moves a fraction of mm it is a large surface.
I have always been happy with the "Holey Brace" method of cross-bracing the entire cabinet to spread vibration and/or resonances, as I have used it in my own Pensil version cabinet. It's like knocking on a piece of hardwood, even if it's just 18mm ply.
Curious: How about using the usual plywood cabinet construction (and/or with holey bracing), and then lining parts of the insides with corkboard sheet? Will that improve any dampening properties or any other advantages?
Overview article about several of these topics below.
EAR isolation mounts are also mentioned. That seems an easier way to isolate the driver if that's your goal. I think there was another paper a few years ago that discussed those in this application also, but I can't find it at the moment. I think I have a note about it at home though, if you're interested.
https://audioxpress.com/article/speaker-design-driver-induced-vibrations
EAR isolation mounts are also mentioned. That seems an easier way to isolate the driver if that's your goal. I think there was another paper a few years ago that discussed those in this application also, but I can't find it at the moment. I think I have a note about it at home though, if you're interested.
https://audioxpress.com/article/speaker-design-driver-induced-vibrations