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how much does the shape of a cabinet matter???


mlwarriner

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Many high end home audio speakers are shaped in a way that there will be no two parallel surfaces inside the enclosure. There's a ton of high end happening on those though. Not sure how noticeable it'd be on a bass cab where you have mostly low end coming out. Interesting topic though, I'd love to hear some experiments or something.

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Originally posted by mlwarriner

suppose you could elaborate? preferably in smaller words...
:)

Standing waves are where different sound waves bounce around inside the cabinet and end up either cancelling or boosting certain frequencies in an undesirable manner. Hard surfaces and 90 degree corners are the culprits.

 

Simply put, if you put some sort of foam or batting in the cabinet, you break up those hard surfaces and corners. The waves get dissipated so that they don't become a nuisance. Parts Express sells poly fill batting, as well as sheets of high-density foam in various thicknesses (AcoustiStuff?). Burdizzos used the former on his Ultralight Cab.

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Originally posted by takeout

Parts Express sells poly fill batting, as well as sheets of high-density foam in various thicknesses (AcoustiStuff?). Burdizzos used the former on his Ultralight Cab.

 

 

I've built a few home audio speakers and have always been amazed at how much of a difference acoustic fill (and how and how much you put in) can make. I've literally been really bummed and pissed off at some speakers until I put some stuffing in them, totally harsh sounding. Then after the fill, heaven.

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Originally posted by lug

The volume of the cab is the most important part. With batting, it doesn't really matter about shape too much. I have heard that you don't want a perfect square, even with batting but don't remember why.

All of the DIY audiophile nerd sites state that you should either build a cab with all-obtuse angles (like a pentagon), or using a ratio of 0.6:1:1.6 for the three dimensions. A perfect cube is the worst case scenario for standing waves.

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