I finally decided to have something made that was more pleasing to the eye, than just cutting boards, made into open baffles.

I found someone to make some new ones out of live edge walnut slabs. He did a fine job on them.

It’s funny how changes in material, shape and driver height, affect the overall sound of open baffles. I’ve spent the last day or so adjusting placement, as well as changes in bass amp crossover and volume settings.

I guess the fact that walnut is not as hard as acacia, had an impact, plus the thickness of the new ones are slightly less than the old.

Thanks James!

Those are beautiful, Geno. Congratulations on your new acquisition!

I believe baffles are almost like tube rolling. So much character comes from the material, shape, height, etc.  Of course moving them around helps too, but the material plays such an important part of the resonance and tone. I wouldn’t worry about the walnut not being as dense as acacia- think about the body of an acoustic guitar, spruce is low density and not great structurally, but what a tone it has. The lack of density is what makes it so warm and beautiful.

Tone aside, your new baffles are visually stunning.

Lookin’ good, Geno!

Randy

Quote:


Now you tell me!?!?  The drivers are mounted straight into the baffle. What is the worst that could happen?

I could use this type of mounting. I had this as a back up, depending on how accurate dude was with his hole cuts (he used a jigsaw). I can change to these if needed.



Thanks John (I think )

Geno, that’s friggin beautiful! I have a soft spot for walnut as well!

Hey Phill! I believe we talked at the 2022 Decfest about your just acquired dream job and the long commute every morning. Is that you?

None the wiser than most 70 year olds my thoughts:

The speaker cone in an open baffle is very well isolated from the supporting frame with the spider and cone surround doing this but the frame and motor structure is attached in most cases soundly to the baffle. The sound generated with the mechanically detached voice coil, spider, cone, and surround bounces from the baffle projecting out to the listener before meeting the backwave bounce produced by the aforementioned parts at the edges of the baffle. The baffle resonates at its fundamental frequency[(s)solid natural wood will have many different resonant frequencies as compared to engineered wood] that can vary with different materials, shapes, and sizes with the sound generated by the cone et al. The baffle resonance will pass to the solid mounted frame creating slight movement of the motor structure therefore creating a mask of certain frequencies.
I would also add when suspending the speaker frame from the baffle an air tight seal would be needed between the frame and baffle to eliminate the density issue you speak of.

Hope this makes sense.

Don't know a thing about open baffle designs ..but that wood used in those is gorgeous Geno. Also my wife while looking at those speakers ( she agrees..gorgeous)  she also noticed your cd cabinets. Can you tell us where you found those? Sorry off topic on that.  ps ..love the wall of musicians too  

Hi Geno, sorry to hear your SQ went down when the beauty went up. The easiest place to start would be to take some thin plywood and make those wings on either side of the w15 go all the way up the sides of the 10’s. If you used thin enough wood you could flex it to curve with the natural edge of the slabs. From there you could experiment with a small separation wing between the drivers. On my Liionides style speakers posted in “the next project after the last one” I played with the ribs that join the top and bottom face plates extensively before cutting the final pieces from hardwood. I landed on a design that was larger on the insides than the outsides, with a gentle French curve going from bottom to top. No separation plate between the top and bottom driver.
Maybe just try clamping some extension wings up the sides of the 10’s temporarily and see what happens?

Here’s a couple photos of the back of mine (right baffle). These were tuned to my room, with the w15s crossed over at 90hz.; the yours will likely be different.

Regarding John’s comment about the wood flexing, I wonder if rear mounting your drivers would be advantageous, taking advantage of the foam ring?

Uh, gosh. Ok. Throwing a second one in that shows the Acoustic Fields carbon BDAs. The diffusion and BDAs were probably my best investments. The lower center absorber is removed in the rare event that we watch the television behind it.

Mike,

I forgot to respond to you.

Thanks for the compliments - you and the Mrs.

I’m sorry, but I got the CD cases roughly 25 years ago. Found them in some catalog. This was before I even had my first computer.

Best,

Geno

Well, I spent the afternoon yesterday working on my baffles. It was recommended to me to add some rigidity/mass to the back, so I added horiz/vertical stiffeners, knee braces and attached the side wings to the vertical stiffeners.

They are much more solid now, and I feel that the sound is better too.

Also experimenting with a birch ply ring around the full-ranger, just for shits and giggles. I’ll have to go a bit bigger, to influence the sound more. I was just curious to see what effect it would have.