Cabinet building advice for revelator system, trying to achieve reference std.

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Hi all,

I've been offered a set of revelator drivers suitable for a 3-way system. I was plannin on buying them to build into what I hoped would be reference level speakers.

My concern is a lot of threads on the forums have comments that if you havn't made a cabinet before this is likely to go very wrong.

What's the general advice, and what are the pitfalls? My plan was to build acoustically isolated sealed boxes for each driver, fully packed with wadding and carefully braced inside.

I'm currently building my first speakers but these aren't finished yet so idk how well they're going to turn out!!!
 

ra7

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Joined 2009
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I would say there are two main aspects to cabinet building: damping wall vibration and absorbing internal waves.

I've gathered some links over the years reading this forum. The general ideas I have formed are:
1. Damping vibrations: there is never enough bracing to stop panels from ringing. The only way is damping the ringing. To do this, you choose a material and thickness, and then sandwich two layers of the material with some kind of absorber in the middle, such as green glue. For example, two 1/2 inch MDF sheets with green glue in the middle. The outside sheet acts as the weight that will help damp the internal vibrating sheet.

2. Absorbing internal waves: Put about 2 inches of fiberglass on each wall. For the longest internal dimension, put 2 inches at the middle of the longest dimension. This should be sufficient to absorb the longest standing wave.

Then ofcourse, there is diffraction from the edges. I've read reports that rounding or chamfering doesn't do much, whereas some others swear by it. Model it in The Edge. Know what the ripple will look like.

For more reading:

Composite wood techniques:
Resonance Frequency

Cabinet absorption materials and thickness to kill standing waves:
http://www.diyaudio.com/forums/multi-way/215133-box-colourations-really-22.html#post3086482

Links to cabinet construction techniques and good practices:
http://www.diyaudio.com/forums/multi-way/215133-box-colourations-really-33.html#post3095731

Panel damping:
http://www.diyaudio.com/forums/mult...tely-supressing-back-wave-13.html#post3119287
 
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