Potential subwoofer enclosure material

[Refindex]

One of my friends works for a kitchen countertop business. She sells this solid surface product called "high pressure laminate". Appartently she claims that it could be used for speaker enclosures because of it's strength and acoustical properties. I checked it out and it's about 1/2" thick and incredibly strong and dense. Not to mention there's all kinds of colors. The only drawback is that it's pretty expensive at retail prices.

Despite the cost. Anyone think that this can be used for building subwoofer enclosures?

[planet10]

Only as far as adding a chunk to the top of the woofer.

For a woofer you want a very stiff cabinet with all potential resonances above the woofers stopband so that it will not produce any signal that might excite a resonance. Stiff becomes the key ingredient. Dense is counter-productive and in this case does not bring extra stiffness.

Using 12mm quality plywood (well braced) would give a better box than the 12mm solid surface material. I would suggest 15mm minimum and if you can a pair of push-push woofers to actively cancel the reactive force and drawmatically reduce box-load.

dave

[scottjoplin]

Originally Posted by Refindex

I checked it out and it's about 1/2" thick and incredibly strong and dense.

Is it stiff too?

[scottjoplin]

Originally Posted by planet10

Dense is counter-productive

Why?

[planet10]

Dense lowers a panel's resonance which is exactly the wrong direction to go. Light and. stiff is better than dense and stiff, but really stiff materials are often dense (ie stranded bamboo plywood) so people often think dense is good.

dave

[scottjoplin]

I see what you mean, dense can be quite ambiguous. Dense implies heavy, when I'm not sure that's necessarily so? Anyway, I see what you're getting at

[planet10]

Density is a measure of mass/volume, and says nothing about stiffness.

Carbon fibre would be a good exotic material for a sub box… and it aslo lends itself to non-rectangular boxes.

dave

[scottjoplin]

Originally Posted by planet10

Density is a measure of mass/volume, and says nothing about stiffness.

Lead for example

[GM]

Yeah, need to know its MOE, which isn't listed in any of its technical specs. The pressure bonded laminate will increase it, but doubt it would raise its HDF? panel high enough without needing double thickness, though bracing could, so for folks that can do good 45 deg corners it might be worthwhile to use instead of adding laminate to an MDF/whatever cab.

GM

[academia50]

Maybe this will help .....

You should consider the material of the kitchen furniture as MDF, I suppose .....


12.21 What is the best material to make speaker boxes out of? Why?