Suggestions for minimizing acoustic resonances in large sealed box ?

[Paul W]

Looking for a wide variety of suggestions for minimizing acoustic resonances and reflections inside a very large sealed enclosure. Not panel resonances, but standing waves and reflections.

Need a fairly broadband solution, or a combination of solutions, to be effective from bass to 1k.

Ideas?

 

[PigletsDad]

Matrix construction, which also helps with panel resonances.

Put internal dividers in two (or three if you are very clever) directions. These have holes in to allow some air flow, but break up the plane waves.

 

[BlueWizard]

Well, the most obvious is to line the inside of the cabinet (sides and back) with fiberglass, polyester, or acoustical foam insulation. Some prefer to line the walls, other prefer to loosely fill the cabinet.

The other is to not have flat parallel surfaces. The cabinets could be built with curved sides or in a shape similar to a pentagon (more like pentagon-ish).

You can get some construction ideas for both curved sides and multi-sided geometic shapes from this discussion-

Bendable plywood-mdf combination-
http://www.diyaudio.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=116653&perpage=25&pagenumber=1

Of course to keep the cabinet itself from vibrating or resonating, you need adequate bracing.

Just a thought.

Steve/bluewizard

 

[sreten]

Hi,

For sealed lining the box (needs to be good acoustic foam) does not
make much sense (it does for vented boxes). Stuffed in the way to
go with anything sensible - BAF (polyester pillow fill) usually.

/sreten.

 

[Hezz]

My understanding of the old methods for the best sounding closed boxed systems were to use a combination of acoustic foam on the sides of the walls and a near complete filling of polyester batting and fiberglass cut in 1-2 inch size squares. The stuffing density is important and need experimentation for best sound.

Some also drilled a couple of small holes 2-3 mm in diameter to make the enclosure slightly lossy and aperiodic. This can improve the sound a lot.

Of course, adding the matrix bracing and baffling inside will also help and it's best to use a combination of all methods and balance as necessary. As has been stated the wall lining is probably less important than the inner volume stuffing. For midrange you will want more stuffing. For bass driver you want somewhat less so you don't over damp the bass response.

 

[noodle_snacks]

Build the box so it doesn't have the same dimensions in any direction (so standing waves are all on different frequencies). Any bracing "matrix" or otherwise should also be built with lots of entropy in placement (but the same for each pair).

 

[Hennie]

Theorize, select the best concepts and then experiment. Connect your measurement microphone to the internal volume of the box and you will see the effect of cavity resonances. You will have to measure a number of points inside the box. This may help you to select the bst concept and to optimize it.

 

[JimT]

Use the Golden Ratio for dimensions.

 

[Brett]

What about a tapered 'tube' a la the B&W Nautilus (the snail shaped one) though it need not look like a snail.