My speakers are a 12 inch 3 way design: 40 inch high by 14 inch wide. I am aware of the problems of wide baffles. Is it recommended to treat the front baffle to minimize it's effects? (i.e. foam, etc) TIA
In theory the ideal situations would be infinite baffle or no baffle at all, either would minimize diffraction (except for the fact that a zero width baffle is impossible because drivers are baffles themselves)
So anywhere in between you will have a baffle step and diffraction ripples proportional to the baffle width. Pick your poison. Personally I like wide baffles with a curvature or large bevels/roundovers, they push the baffle step lower and increase midrange efficiency, but that works best with large drivers and big horns on those wide baffles.
Come to think of it, a baffle completely covered with foam certainly can't hurt, but it's not going to be as effective as you might imagine once the wavelengths get comparable to the thickness of the foam and aren't affected by it.
some good info here: https://www.linkwitzlab.com/diffraction.htm
So anywhere in between you will have a baffle step and diffraction ripples proportional to the baffle width. Pick your poison. Personally I like wide baffles with a curvature or large bevels/roundovers, they push the baffle step lower and increase midrange efficiency, but that works best with large drivers and big horns on those wide baffles.
Come to think of it, a baffle completely covered with foam certainly can't hurt, but it's not going to be as effective as you might imagine once the wavelengths get comparable to the thickness of the foam and aren't affected by it.
some good info here: https://www.linkwitzlab.com/diffraction.htm
Agree, the baffle reflection is a good kind of reflection because it coincides with the normal radiation. It's just like a waveguide, they are like large baffles and the waves travel along them. It's what you do with them that counts.
People have been saying for decades that narrow baffles image better, but I don't believe it.
People have been saying for decades that narrow baffles image better, but I don't believe it.
Hmm, make it > ~36" wide (~58" eff.) like the pioneers did and you bypass the BSC issue by moving it so low the room will likely cover it and then some unless well away from any walls or at worst be a narrow band boost.
Regardless, never hurts to protect the tweeter from edge diffraction and the midrange too if still > ~160 deg/~600 Hz.
If you take a baffle that's doing it's job properly and you add damping material to it, you'll tend to create diffraction. That's ok, adding a roundover also creates diffraction but in both cases it's happening in a controlled manner.
You can hurt more than help applying dampening to a baffle surface. I've seen some weird issues in the upper midrange with tweeters ie sudden dips and peaks in the response. Best thing to do is to keep the baffle smooth and flat, plus use large radius round overs. Those little felt rings that they sell also do more harm than good, unless you use foam around the tweeter perimeter and recess the tweeter in the baffle, sort of like Dunlavy used to do.