Every big label music release has a spatial audio release and hundreds of legacy songs are being remaster for spatial audio every week. All of the major Digital Audio Workstations (DAWs) now have the ability to process and produce multichannel audio for different formats. I work in the industry……follow the money.
Unfortunately none of the streaming movie services I have used here come anywhere close to the bluray in sound quality. Even the popular Netflix is heavily compressed. And its like they all have a high pass filter above 30Hz. May be to protect the subpar soundbars and tv speakers.
Andy19191, well, obviously. We can have enclosure without baffle (sphere), and baffle without enclosure (gradient system), so you've missed my point.
What i ment there is no reason to do flat baffle, or single monolithic enclosure containing multiple transducers.
Single cubicle box with x number of transducers slapped on to it is easy to make, it's just not optimal, for any of the transducers. It's a trade-off taken from acoustic performance in favor of easy construction. Now that a printer can do any shape virtually with same cost, one could optimize structure for each transducer separately. Monolithic box is too big to print today cost effectively, so divide and conguer, go hybrid, use imagination.
Really, anything is possible. You could stick to flat baffle if you wanted to, but considering using modern manufacturing technique there is no significant difference in manufacturing cost between less or more optimized structure, ehich requires forgetting tradition of building boxes and start looking acoustics.
If you are commercial business, there is of course all kinds of requirements for a product like R&D cost, target sector and so on. However, on diyland we are limited only by our imagination. And physics, obviously. And, in the end, if there is no audible difference between a box, and some fancy shape, obviously one could choose by something else than audio performance, like ease of build and aesthetics. So, anything goes, what ever suits you.
What i ment there is no reason to do flat baffle, or single monolithic enclosure containing multiple transducers.
Single cubicle box with x number of transducers slapped on to it is easy to make, it's just not optimal, for any of the transducers. It's a trade-off taken from acoustic performance in favor of easy construction. Now that a printer can do any shape virtually with same cost, one could optimize structure for each transducer separately. Monolithic box is too big to print today cost effectively, so divide and conguer, go hybrid, use imagination.
Really, anything is possible. You could stick to flat baffle if you wanted to, but considering using modern manufacturing technique there is no significant difference in manufacturing cost between less or more optimized structure, ehich requires forgetting tradition of building boxes and start looking acoustics.
If you are commercial business, there is of course all kinds of requirements for a product like R&D cost, target sector and so on. However, on diyland we are limited only by our imagination. And physics, obviously. And, in the end, if there is no audible difference between a box, and some fancy shape, obviously one could choose by something else than audio performance, like ease of build and aesthetics. So, anything goes, what ever suits you.
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Exactly where I'm headed!
1/4" ply with proper bracing makes a light(somewhat) and stiff cabinet!
Audiophiles see large speaker manufacturers using MDF and think MDF must be the best material for speakers, but they're only using
it because they need the efficiency of CNC routering/cutting and a good paintable surface.
Fair points about my post on streaming services. Fact is there are several 100m people / families using them and the number is increasing. This seems to be rather a lot higher than Sky. Then comes things like H96MAX boxes. Just how many have been sold and used. That's a black hole that gives access to a number of streaming services. How long will it last - pass. Costs are low and competitive as they need to be to be successful. Popular with what might be called younger people / popular once someone knows they exist.
People are inclined to chase money in a totally different way to the commercial sides of things. Costs and what they get for it. Hence availability of blue ray disks. Easy locally a while ago. People would fork out for very recent releases - do they now?
Music. I wonder how many subscribe to services. It's probably a huge number. Go spatial on that and what will happen - license fees will increase cost. Same with movies really.
Sure there are trade off and similarly there is in the general hifi area considering that from a purists point of view. People want small and compact and accept av receiver performance as it comes. However manufactures aren't stupid. They consider what people will notice. They are mass market items and the distortion these days will not be of the same type as they used to be.
People are inclined to chase money in a totally different way to the commercial sides of things. Costs and what they get for it. Hence availability of blue ray disks. Easy locally a while ago. People would fork out for very recent releases - do they now?
Music. I wonder how many subscribe to services. It's probably a huge number. Go spatial on that and what will happen - license fees will increase cost. Same with movies really.
Sure there are trade off and similarly there is in the general hifi area considering that from a purists point of view. People want small and compact and accept av receiver performance as it comes. However manufactures aren't stupid. They consider what people will notice. They are mass market items and the distortion these days will not be of the same type as they used to be.
A sphere has a curved baffle rather than a flat one. Or does it? To me a baffle is the front part of a speaker the driver/s are (usually) bolted to that plays a significant role in forming the sound radiation pattern. Hadn't occurred to me others may use the term differently.
Not sure modern manufacturing techniques are of great significance for non-flat/box shapes given fibreglass, concrete, bending plys, turning,... and similar have always been viable low cost options for DIYers at home. My first design in the 70s was a rounded cylindrical shape using cast resin and plywood. It was no more difficult to put together than a conventional box although, in truth, it needed a second go to address the things I got wrong first time. So perhaps a bit more difficult but still all quite doable.
What has changed between the 70s and today is that I now want a precisely calculated acoustical shape whereas then I wanted smooth large radii. This is something a 3d printer can help provide today (as can NC machines) that would have been pretty challenging for a speaker DIYer in their garage in the past.
Can't you do the same thing with a jigsaw and some patience? Seems like I saw someone make a labyrinth enclosure by cutting the pattern in a bunch of pieces of plywood and then gluing and clamping them together.
Translam cabinets are wasteful ugly things (to my eyes) that can provide stacked 2d curves that vary gently in a straightforward manner. Unfortunately, if done well the smooth guidance of sound from driver cone to waveguide to external cabinet is going to involve strongly varying curvature in more than one direction. This would require angled complex curvature within a single lamination that changes substantially from lamination to lamination. If confident one could perhaps have a go with a file, a lot of patience and care, some marking and templates and, in my case I am pretty sure, a lot of filler. If that way inclined likely to be something to be proud of if done well though. Personally I would rather program an additive or subtractive NC machine to efficiently do the awkward stuff and finish the surface by hand.
I have seen some pretty ones,butit is VERY wasteful, and even theg parts that are used have touse more material since itis being used in the wrong orientation.
dave
It is creative but not me. Smallest drivers I have used for midrange and woofers are 8". I will stick with more "traditional" methods.
Rob 🙂
While I don't think the above example is necessarily as bad as we are making it out to be, this is definitely just one small example of what's possible with 3D printing. Hexibase is probably more what this community is looking for, though the emphasis is on car audio and other portable form factors most of the time. My favorite has been the enclosure materials comparison he did a while back. I've heard a myriad of alternatives to pure infill, like injecting caulk or glue/sawdust mix into the cells with a small hole in the enclosure. Bambu labs even makes a compelling carbon fiber 3D printer for less than the price of a wood shop. It may be that someday, 3D printed elements will be fully integrated into the traditional building methods, with inert bracing and complex baffle shapes/waveguides atop bulky wooden frames. Now, the limitation on size is typically because of the print surface, though larger printers may change that in the future. I'd love to toy around with a superb quality 2.1 system like the old logitech computer speakers (but good), or complex multiple entry horns, and 3D printers are the place to do just that.
And in all fairness to you, Im not sure the whole Spatial Audio/MCM thing is a good thing.
This is semi-DIY. They used several DIY tools to make it. https://www.diyaudio.com/community/...-design-the-practical-way.354772/post-7517489
I used a Canadian product on my last project. Premcore Plus. Very light weight cabinet grade plywood but it did have more gaps between the layers than a Baltic birch sheet.