Open Baffle Nearfield

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#1
Hello,

I was wondering if anyone could point me in the right direction regarding open baffle nearfields. Most of the OB stuff I've seen here or elsewhere on the net is HUGE! I would like to experiment with nearfields based around a 4 or 5 inch driver. The general purpose would be to compliment my current studio monitors: Yamaha NS10M and Auratones. Neither of these are great speakers, I know, but they are highly useful for mixing. Essentially, I am in search of transparency (who isn't I guess.) My thought is that since microphones are not housed in resonant boxes, neither should speakers.

Any links, thoughts, suggestions...? I appreciate it!

Brian
 
#2
All I can tell you is that my current speakers are OB line arrays using the PE NSB's that are discussed widely on the net. I never listened to OB's before building these. By contrast, I think it would be very hard to go back to the "box" sound. Comparitively, the sound seems much cleaner and, obviously, a lot less boomy.

I use Tuba 18's (rolled up horn) on the bottom ~ <180Hz. These are boxed, but they are vastly different than the standard band pass and vented dreck.
 
#3
Hi Brian,

I have two sets of OB's that I use in the nearfield at my desk. Maybe you'll be lucky and not have to have a computer monitor in front of you acting like a black hole. With one set I use a Fostex FE206E with a 10" realistic driver for bass support. The other is just a Fostex FE127E. With the 206 I can run without a sub, but the 127 needs one or at least a helper woofer. Baffle size is really something you have to experiment with because there are just too many variables, but in the nearfield you don't need big baffles and cardboard makes experimentation easy. If you can integrate a sub into the picture, then quite small baffles can work great.
 
#5
Wow, 10yrs since last post. The video essentially shows a baffle less full range driver. Sure it sounds pretty good and of near field enough, it's same as a large headphone in your ear.

Lots of threads with baffle less designs here. At some point you need bass reinforcement if you are any distance away.
 
#8
well, I had some 3" tang band (w3-871s) on open baffle as an ambiophonics demonstrator.
Worked better as a q-sound demonstration actually.

10" away, they had bass, lower than the 1/4 wave cancellation point.

Further away, less and less bass till not much below 500hz @ 10'.

So, 3-6' away ?

I'm not sure.
 
#9
I don't recommend OB concept for nearfied or desktop near wall.
They need quite a lot of space around and easily get to be multi-way. In nearfield sound gets really weird, not suitable for monitoring.

For amusement, perhaps...
 
#10
This is what I'm thinking. I like the late reflections, ok in my small room for small group recordings but it doesn't work so well for orchestra, I'm starting to look at other ways to get much later "reflections" (delay) for sense of a larger space.

How do you mean sound gets weird nearfield, why?
 
#11
^Dipole needs space around and also distance with low freq/long wavelength summation to happen. Combining dipole source to monopole bass and often monopole or bipole treble easily makes radiation and delay, and thus sound signature to variate too much between frequency ranges. Combining and controlling these is quite a challenge! First there is feeling of added space and ambience, but it might be too much, specially for monitoring purpose.
 
#12
^But it would be a fun test. If one wants to try it, use cheap or recycled drivers and pieces of board that are lying around! Then minidsp or some other multiway dsp and 4-6 channels of amplification. Lots of tweaking and measuring expected!
 
#13
Well, the perfect dipole does seem to require 4-way, at least, don't want to go there 🙂 I have a Jordan Eikona in VTL cab with removable back, so, OB at best 😉 separate U-frame woofers, so bass isn't an issue for my nearfield listening to the widebands, I do have fun playing with them for sure 😀
 
#15
Both me and the speakers are far enough from the walls, I was wondering since I'm nearfield whether there isn't much point to the wideband OB's? The bass is a separate issue, I like the sound of the U-frames. As I said, works well for small group but not orchestra
 
#18
Juhazi said:
^Dipole needs space around and also distance with low freq/long wavelength summation to happen. Combining dipole source to monopole bass and often monopole or bipole treble easily makes radiation and delay, and thus sound signature to variate too much between frequency ranges. Combining and controlling these is quite a challenge! First there is feeling of added space and ambience, but it might be too much, specially for monitoring purpose.
Click to expand...

Oh, one word missing "..uneven" or "varying"
 
#20
Coaxial MT should be nice for nearfield dipole, but it would have to be 3-way again. I would try that with new TangBand 8" coax, because of moderate cone resonance allowing high xo. The tweeter doesn't radiate backwards, LR2 around 4kHz might be worth trying. Yes there is cone resonance 3-5kHz, but xo smooths it quite a bit. I recently listened to SEAS MR18 as dipole MT, it has more resonance but I couldn't hear it. WM xo depends on how much distortion is allowed for the dipole midrange, the lower the better, around 300Hz.

TB new line of Coax FR drivers

TB W8
W8-2314_S.jpg
 
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