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Open Baffle speakers??

Sitka

Sitka

Active Member
OK, I admit it, I'm a dummy about open baffle speakers (don't know s,,, from shineola). What is the big idea? What, if any, is the advantage of an open baffle speaker? Are they short on speaker cabinet building skill, materials, what? Certainly, they must be less expensive to manufacture.

I admit that I have never owned any or even listened to them, so I am willing to try to keep an open mind.

Are they worth a try? or just hype and puffery?
 
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Building a good box is really pretty difficult. Anything less that a really good construction isn't going to work well for a speaker box. Far more bad ones are built and few good ones. Anybody that's done it can tell about the precision required to do it right.

But even when you get there, the sound still comes from a box. Once you get used to the boxless sound, it's pretty easy to identify and hard to NOT hear. Sound coming from a box just isn't ever natural sound.

The secret to Open Baffle is to plan the right kind of baffle, use the right kind of drivers and know what the limitations are so you work with them rather than fight against them.

OB can excel. Once you realize how far you can get for the effort and expense, you won't go back. Climb out of the box and into great sound!!

EV3
 
There was a design back in the late 50s-early 60s called a "boffle box". It was a Hartley design that was an open back enclosure that had a series of frames placed front to back with the first frame having a round hole directly behind the speaker the diameter of the speaker and subsequent frames having decreasing size holes until the last frame was solid. The frame was a 1x2 frame covered on one side and wrapping around the frame's edge to create a friction fit in the enclosure. The material used was a felt/jute type carpet pad ....not rubber backed.

The holes were cut in the pad.

I heard one made by a guy in the 60s and it was a tight sound with a lot of kick. I don't remember the woofer but he used a University Cobraflex midrange and an EV tweeter. Mono system. Bigggg sound.
 
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Sitka said:
OK, I admit it, I'm a dummy about open baffle speakers (don't know s,,, from shineola). What is the big idea? What, if any, is the advantage of an open baffle speaker? Are they short on speaker cabinet building skill, materials, what? Certainly, they must be less expensive to manufacture.

I admit that I have never owned any or even listened to them, so I am willing to try to keep an open mind.

Are they worth a try? or just hype and puffery?
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I was wondering the same things.
I have to say that I had not heard of OB before joining this forum.
What I've taken away from the little I've read so far is OB's, like any other components in the sound chain, have pluses and minuses and you will find strong proponents and opponents. Very much like tube vs. solid state, Ford vs. Chevy...
But it adds to the dazzling array of different ways people have come up with to reproduce sound and I find all the different discussions and opinions very interesting.
 
I have a pair of University 312 tri-axials in cabinets now but I have been toying with the idea of an OB....:cool:
 
The combination of good full range drivers, in correctly sized baffles, placed properly in a treated listening room, can produce a very pleasing result.

IMHO, if you’re looking for a fairly cheap driver, that can produce a great result (without having to add bass augmentation)(YMMV) the Lii Audio F-15 is a good way to dip your toe into the world of open baffle.
 
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Open baffle speakers can sound very good, but they require very careful positioning in the room, and in some rooms, they simply may not work. The front wave and back wave are not isolated from each other, so they interact, cancelling bass, and the reflections of the back wave have to be managed (as much as possible) by positioning the speaker at a specific distance from the back wall, so the reflection constructively interferes with the front wave. And the difference in time may be audible.
Which is why enclosures are popular. The back wave is absorbed, or it is used in a Helmholtz resonator to increase the bass (again, delay may be audible). Positioning in the room has effects, but less unpredictable, and way more domestically acceptable. But cabinets resonate, and all box speakers suffer to a greater or lesser degree - they sound boxy. That is a big part of why speaker never really sound like real life.
Even simple speakers in a big (whole sheet of plywood, or more) baffle in a big room can sound great, with lively, full, bass. But few people want whole sheets of plywood in their living room. So compromises are made, and suddenly the whole enterprise pays off way less than hoped.
 
Legacy, Magnepan, Magnaplanar, Martin Logan, all build speakers with open backs. I have heard them all and don't like them. Their frequency response and anomalies and their dispersion patterns are all horrible. I guess if you want the sound as if listening in a bath room those are the speakers you , but if you want faithful low distortion speakers with very deep bass extension, controlled dispersion patterns keeping the sound off ceilings and floor where early reflections can compromise the sound you need to look else where. Yes they can be more efficient and they can be smaller, but look what you are giving up. Namely accuracy for an illusion.
 
Sitka said:
I admit that I have never owned any or even listened to them, so I am willing to try to keep an open mind.

Are they worth a try? or just hype and puffery?
Click to expand...

Get a cheap pair of car speakers (or anything with a high qts), mount them on some scrap wood or even cardboard. Find out for yourself or you can allow the outdated/negative responses here to make up your mind for you. While still a smaller market, open baffle speakers are gaining in popularity through both diy and newer commercial sellers for good reason.
 
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twiiii said:
Legacy, Magnepan, Magnaplanar, Martin Logan, all build speakers with open backs. I have heard them all and don't like them. Their frequency response and anomalies and their dispersion patterns are all horrible. I guess if you want the sound as if listening in a bath room those are the speakers you , but if you want faithful low distortion speakers with very deep bass extension, controlled dispersion patterns keeping the sound off ceilings and floor where early reflections can compromise the sound you need to look else where. Yes they can be more efficient and they can be smaller, but look what you are giving up. Namely accuracy for an illusion.
Click to expand...

The ultimate goal of sound reproduction should be for it to be as ‘real’ as possible. My open baffle setup has brought me closer to that goal than the traditional box speaker set ups I’ve used. That has been my experience. YMMV.
 
twiiii said:
Legacy, Magnepan, Magnaplanar, Martin Logan, all build speakers with open backs. I have heard them all and don't like them. Their frequency response and anomalies and their dispersion patterns are all horrible. I guess if you want the sound as if listening in a bath room those are the speakers you , but if you want faithful low distortion speakers with very deep bass extension, controlled dispersion patterns keeping the sound off ceilings and floor where early reflections can compromise the sound you need to look else where. Yes they can be more efficient and they can be smaller, but look what you are giving up. Namely accuracy for an illusion.
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Actually, dipole speakers have less reflections off the side walls, ceiling and floor compared to most all direct radiating designs.
 
Yes, way better than most point source speakers. That I might agree with. But as you get below certain frequencies where woofers are not in boxes the spread the sound everywhere. And when the woofers are asked to produce sounds up to C5 on the music spectrum you are now compromising the most important fundamentals a HiFI system has to produce. Mids spreading sound around can be a problem too. But as you say ribbon and electrostatic line arrays can be very well controlled. But thats not what I am talking about. I am talking about two and three way cone systems with no backs.
 
twiiii said:
Legacy, Magnepan, Magnaplanar, Martin Logan, all build speakers with open backs. I have heard them all and don't like them. Their frequency response and anomalies and their dispersion patterns are all horrible. I guess if you want the sound as if listening in a bath room those are the speakers you , but if you want faithful low distortion speakers with very deep bass extension, controlled dispersion patterns keeping the sound off ceilings and floor where early reflections can compromise the sound you need to look else where. Yes they can be more efficient and they can be smaller, but look what you are giving up. Namely accuracy for an illusion.
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Add Dahlquist and Alon/Nola to the OB list. Great sounding cone based speakers, that can be easier to drive than electrostatic based speakers.
 
I wouldn't consider the Dahlquists and Alons OP speakers - the mids are open baffle, but not the bass drivers.
 
The main advantage of an open baffle is no coloration from a box. If the baffle is done CORRECTLY(I see MANY done wrong) and you use the right driver/s then you will probably never go back to a box speaker. It is truly an eye(ear) opening revelation. That is IF you have the room for them and are able to set them up properly. You may also have to implement a subwoofer or two to handle what the open baffle cannot.
 
Responding to an older thread because I heard some OB speakers last night for the first time. They are Spatial Audio M6's. In my friend's large open room and with his equipment, they were producing the best sound I've ever heard. They simply disappeared. No matter how hard I tried, I couldn't locate where the sound was coming from, but, at the same time, I was able to hear the positions of the musicians in the sound field. And the sound stage was huge with great depth. In my set up, with KEF LS 50's, I'm able to get a similar effect if my nose is pointed directly in front of me, but if I look at one of the speakers I can easily locate the sound coming from it. I would love to have a pair of the Spatials but they would never work in my room.
 
Nat said:
The front wave and back wave are not isolated from each other, so they interact, cancelling bass...
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This partly true. The front and back waves are isolated from each other by the baffle. However, at low frequencies the baffle isn't big enough, so the low frequencies cancel. The LF response is determined by the size of the baffle.
 
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