Open Baffle Basics!

hey everybody welcome back we got a good subject for this week and uh may break it up into a couple of different segments because it may be a little long but we're going to dive into um the world of open baffle speakers we're going to look at the different baffle shapes the width of the baffle and how that affects things diffraction issues surface reflections versus narrower baffles we're going to then dive into some explanation of side wings and why we use side wings the way we do we're going to look at the flat baffle versus a w frame or an h frame baffle and we're going to talk a little bit about application of the open baffle speakers and how they're different than a sealed box uh and we've got some examples here um one that i worked on last week uh that i haven't shipped out yet it's on its way john i'm going to get your box fixed to send that back to you and we're gonna look at one of the very first open baffle models that i designed and take you forward into kind of where we are today with open baffles and how far we've gone and just how far you can go with open baffles as we've talked about some in the past open baffle speakers are a lot easier to integrate into the room sometimes like if you go to some some of the shows and you realize that those manufacturers are showing up with an empty hotel room and they're dropping a quarter million dollars worth of gear into that room and just turning it on and more often than not the results are usually bad behind sometimes by bad i mean that the room is killing it i mean it's not that they don't have good products it's just that they're not set up very well and they didn't bring any room treatment and they're not doing anything other than just loading up the room and sometimes we have room boom room reflections we got all kinds of things going on that they just can't help a lot of times uh i've heard some of these exhibited at the shows and the overall sound is generally pretty good even though there's a lot of a lot of things that may be holding these back and as far as the electronics not exactly high-end gear on them not an expensive system but still beating out a lot of those really high-end speakers because they're not really loading up the room like an average speaker what happens is the output from the woofers and even the mid-bass driver it cancels at 90 degrees off axis so essentially what you're doing is you're pushing air from one side of the room to the other instead of a woofer that's in a box that's pressurizing that room and causing a pressure wave that goes from one end of the room and back so the way it energizes the room is a lot different and about canceling at 90 degrees off axis it's minimizing a lot of those issues and with speakers like this when you've got a lower section that you can control if you do have a little heaviness in the bottom and you have that flexibility to balance it out i know with all of our open baffle speakers that use external external servo subs you have a ton of flexibility there so even if you are hitting some high spl levels that's more than the room can sustain and your base levels are high you have that ability to balance it out and make it into a smooth response so um these have sounded fairly good at shows compared to a lot of other more expensive systems just because there's a smooth overall response and there's no problems for me when i go into the different rooms at the show and that's when i can get away from our own room usually at a show that's one of the benefits of having multiple exhibitors showing with you together a lot of times you leave them in charge of the room and you can get out and go eat come back and switch with them and some point during the day you can run off and visit all your colleagues and friends that you're close with say hello to everybody hear what their system sounds like and if you're lucky you get to go around the show and hit some of the highlights that you've heard uh from the other exhibitors that you talk to after hours or the show goers that may tell you great rooms to go to then you can go and hit some of those rooms so i've been in lots of rooms and lots of shows and for me when there's a response issue a room issue it stands out really quickly you know i'm used to really high-end systems that are in completely treated rooms and a balanced response so when you're hit with room boom or something that's overwhelming everything else it's it's hard for me to get away from it it's like somebody shining a flashlight on my face while i'm trying to see something you just can't unsee it and that's the way it is a lot of the exhibit rooms either electronics mismatch or something there's always something but you get some guys that exhibit really well even with budget level systems you get guys that don't have outstanding systems they don't blow me away and think wow that sounds fantastic but there's the absence of problems everything's balanced everything's set up well everything sounds smooth you can just sit and listen to the music and you guys have asked me sometimes name some of these other companies that you've heard that you like the way they've sounded at shows because you think it's uh it's only about us it's not it's not just about us there are a lot of companies out there that exhibit pretty well um most of the years that i've walked into the elac room those little speakers that andrew is usually demoing is a balance sound he's not overloading the room he's got them set up well in the room sometimes not even with much room treatment in the room and it's a budget level system it's not blowing me away but there's no problems it's a balanced system i noticed it with some of the rhymer speakers in their room a little higher quality across the board but nothing wrong you could just sit there and enjoy the music um clayton shaw uh with special audio anytime i've been to his room the output levels have been very balanced and he of course has the advantage of it being an all open baffled speaker and i know you guys have seen him maybe on new record day in an interview that ron did with him that was a great interview he has good products um and he's got uh all open baffled products and like i said they they're not loading up the room so they're easy to take out of the box sit on the floor plug them in and get really good sound and he exhibits really well there's quite a few others that i've been to over the years i think wow they they did really well for the show they really help themselves but the ones that really have the advantages is when you start going to open baffle applications like like clayton you're minimizing room interactions so that's a big that's a really big end and we've gone i guess probably the last five or six years that we exhibited at rocky mountain audio fest we had open baffle speakers not only do we have both from baffle speakers we brought curtains that went around the room to block a lot of those reflections off the walls we had behind the curtains big tube traps in the corners we had diffusers set up appropriately where they needed to be center stage to the sides we sit and listened and moved things around and treated the room and made it work really well so that's one of the reasons we've gotten all the accolades that we have at shows all the awards from different magazines best sound at the show cost no object the last year we were there a lot of that is because we've got open baffled speakers we're not overloading the room we've got 100 flexibility on the whole lower frequency range in some cases we even put servo controlled woofers in the in the rear of the room in the corners and ran them out of phase from the speakers up front and we totally balanced the room response so we had a smooth response with no issues and excellent sound so if you guys will go the extra mile with your room treat your room set things up properly if you have the right open baffle speaker you're going to get great sound and we're going to try and do everything we can to help you set up your open baffle system and get you as far down the road as we can i think i'm going to cut here we're going to end this segment and then we're going to come right back and we're going to get into baffle widths and how that affects the response and all the things that go along with that so uh hit the subscribe button if you haven't and there's a little notification button down there you can click and that'll give you notifications of our videos whenever they come up and thanks for watching tune in for the next one

Channel: GR-Research

Views: 68,540

Keywords: best loudspeakers, measurements, audiophile loudspeakers, crossovers, DIY Audio, preamplifier, audiophile, tube amplifier, fullrange driver, amplifier, audiophile speakers, Danny Richie, low distortion, drivers, subwoofers, Tuesday Tech Talk, open baffle, fast bass, loudspeaker, hifi, diy speakers, audiophile music, baffle step loss, crossover design, comb filtering, GR-Research, speaker upgrade, high end, audiophiles, bic dv62si, polk s20, kits, upgrade, lta, infinity, linkwitz, orion

Id: h7N-tH7tTNs

Length: 9min 36sec (576 seconds)

Published: Tue Sep 15 2020