Are cardboard enclosures any good?

Also foam, explendid experiments turned out succesfully!
Also double fullrange: try a 5" and a 8" screwed onto a baffle of an enclosure
Use Mundorf Premium 8.2 uF ONLY for the 5"
That's said to be a great speaker.
Try Beolab last one,15 speakers multifaceted baffle enclosure, narrow the directivity as it's allowed by the powerful DSP and the 3-5 amplifiers on board, you can make the most incredible scene reconstruction at your house. That's said to work
:p
 
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Design: Dimensions will be same as the reference speaker: front baffle 18 cm wide by 26 cm in height for proper comparison.

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More pictures: The speaker driver in question mounted on an open baffle that was used for my earlier project. With proper equalization, bass boost, that is, I could listen all day. The clarity is astonishing. Makes me wonder, with a proper car door behind it, or, not having a car door, a wooden baffle or even a
cardboard one, will it not sound better?


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By the way are card doors any good as baffles?

Car doors seem to be a very very bad place:

As a general rule, speaker baffles are mounted in cars to cancel noise interference and improve sound dynamics. They also offer protection to your door speaker from dripping water inside the car door and add extra cushion between the speaker and the metal door panels.

https://improvecaraudio.com/are-car-speaker-baffles-good/

The next picture is the baffle itself, cut out with a small exacto knife, carefully as I could. As you can see one side is cut out too much at the top. It was fun cutting out a speaker front baffle, especially after I had glued two cardboard pieces together for thickness .

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After cutting I duly mopped up a few cardboard pieces from the floor and that was it. No mess no fuss, no noise, and the environment loves it.

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I'd layer the boards in varying 'directions' for better strength. This kind of technique was used extensively as from the 70's when we started seeing a lot of curvy furniture.

If you're doing open baffle, make the baffle larger, and forget the boxes, or compare an open-baffle with a DIY box just for fun.
 
The term "corrugated cardboard" sounds so mundane in the present context.

Let's go all audiophile and call it "acoustic fluted composite"! :cool:

Around 20 years ago, British firm NXT came up with the idea of generating sound by vibrating a flat panel of corrugated cardboard with an "exciter". This comprised of a flat coil glued to the cardboard and which was 'energised' by a neodymium magnet. This lead to the development of the flat panel, or distributed mode, loudspeaker.

This opens up another area of DIY experimentation. Why not build a cardboard speaker completely from scratch! :)
 
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This comprised of a flat coil glued to the cardboard and which was 'energised' by a neodymium magnet.
Worth trying out. I did contribute to another thread of building a speaker from scratch. The 'exciter' sounds exciting, I may buy one and try it out, recommend and publish plans, like I want to do here for the Cardsonde1.

What is the sound quality like, though, I heard that quality is not the best. There is a thread though form DML. Browsing.

https://www.diyaudio.com/community/...ll-range-speaker.272576/page-349#post-7163287
 
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Testing: (sides, bottom and top only)

A rough plot of frequency response with flat EQ. Sounds boxy, and with a hand against the cabinet, resonant frequency of the cabinet is about 128 Hz.
Clarity is present, with some increased bass response against the open baffle.
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Commercial speaker, woofer, tweeter, crossover. Same amplifier same dB at 420 Hz as a starting point. Looks like we have work to do. Oh and it is ported.

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They are good. Spent some time listening to familiar tracks and I heard things I never heard before. Totally taken in by the music, with proper equalization (shown) the balance was very good: I heard all the instruments in good proportions. Pop/light rock music.

The bass? Acceptable, but the speakers have to be about a metre away from the wall. Which is a problem without speaker stands.

It's not the material but the speaker placement that was critical, moving the speakers into the room gave more bass and sound overall: a pebble thrown into the middle of a pond will generate more waves and transfer more energy to the water than a pebble dropped near the shore. That seems to be the theory.

Cardboard speaker stands anyone? I know some of you can't stand the idea. Speaker placement is essential, no point in designing speakers without ensuring proper placement.

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Yes, it is placed on a garbage can. Thought some of you would like that.

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Pull your speakers away from the wall to reduce reflection​


My first step towards better sound was pulling my speakers away from the wall. I had been getting over-emphasized bass reflection from the close proximity. Bringing them out about 6" gave me tighter, cleaner bass with improved detail.

https://www.crutchfield.com/S-0E8eQRHeos7/learn/home-stereo-speaker-placement.html

So now I have to become an interior designer as well. Here we go.

The home environment presents a multitude of problems/considerations in choosing a location for our speakers. Room layout, furniture, esthetics, accessibility by children and pets, and, not to mention our sometimes contrary domestic cohabitant(s)! The ubiquitous Wife Appeal Factor (WAF) is often an important gauge in making a decision. To keep things simple, we will concentrate upon the ideal, and assume you have unlimited freedom.

https://www.gcaudio.com/tips-tricks/speaker-placement/

"assume you have unlimited freedom". That's one approach.
 
Great thread BasicH, I actually just finished my DYI 1.0 desktop system with cardboard speakers last night. Sitting here listing to Holst "The Planets" in the background and it sounds fantastic. I assumed your thread would be about DML speakers -- I assume most people on this forum are somewhere between "heard about" and "totally sick of" that topic; save for the real experts who don't want to talk to you unless you have 2 engineering degrees and read patents for fun. As speakers, I think cardboard is fantastic, in fact, plenty of speakers are made of paper. But enclosures?

Going back to my first car when I was 16 and my friends and I wanted decent car audio for cheap. I remember a friend showing me some other guy's truck he was driving that day and it had 6 speakers and an eq booster and sounded horrible. Well, all the speakers were either sitting on the floor or barely mounted. The number one lesson I learned during that time about speakers was that they need to be mounted firmly and solid as possible. That guy could have taken the least of those speakers and built a plywood face frame for them -- at this point, the "box" is secondary to the solid mounting, and the only problem here is a mere face frame is stiff enough but not heavy enough (attaching the speaker to the chassis is the way to go for this reason). Cut a couple of holes in your desk and mount your small speakers there, even though there is no box per say, the sturdy mounting will make them sound pretty good. Cardboard just isn't stiff enough to mount a speaker to.

If you haven't tried the DML angle yet, invest 13$ into a couple of these little exciters.

Get a medium sized Home Depot box (small isn't enough) and cut it to get a triangle base and see how that does for you. I have string loops so I can detach and hang them. I plan on a separate thread for my 1.0 system, but basically, those two box speakers and a 18$ 6.5" (sub?)woofer, and 60 watts total amp power and it sounds huge. My ears are ringing from yesterday and just have it real low right now to recover.

Best desktop speaker in the world -- and it's cardboard:

box2a.jpg
 
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well despite material choice your ignoring a basic engineering principle which is to make the enclosure rigid and non resonant, have you considered using braces to increase structural rigidity? i think if you do you will find your missing bass output....
Well thanks for the advice, but what would I brace it with? More cardboard? I always wondered if the airflow around internal bracing causes resonances.
I could press on the walls of the speaker when playing, have done this before, and add more wall thickness.

I hope it does increase natural bass output (did you see the 3 cm port at the bottom? Seems to have a slight effect.

I could listen all day but I can't look at it all day, so the finish needs improvement as well as construction.

I am seriously considering a passive radiator, I already have one on the SONY XBS and it works. Let's see whats available online: The usual 60 days delivery time .. anyone have experience with these? 60 days...


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