More! Not less! The open baffle has MORE room interaction than a boxed speaker simply because it's firing out of the back of the speaker as well. Those emissions reflect from the walls in the room almost exactly like the ones from the front. The "figure 8" dispersion pattern is mostly an "on paper" concept that goes out the window in a real room. By real room, I mean YOUR room - any small room. As demonstrated with measurements in this video, the room modes are still activated by a dipole speaker. That's because all that takes is for the mode frequency to be present in the room. If it's there, the room will resonate at that frequency regardless of where it's coming from or what's producing it. My listening room has a very strong room mode at 37Hz, and you can clearly see in the waterfall and spectrograph plots that the mode is being energized. That's because the dipole sub is playing that frequency - it's in the room and the room is resonating at the frequency. If you can measure output at 37Hz, then that room mode WILL BE activated. The ONLY WAY to not activate it is to have NO CONTENT at 37Hz at all - zero - a HUGE null. Also as shown in the video, an open baffle speaker is putting a lot of energy out off axis, even out to 90 degrees to the face of the baffle in the so called dead zone where maximum cancellation is supposed to happen. As I said in the video, the output from the rear CAN NOT be exactly the same as the output from the front, and that weakens that cancellation effect at the sides. So the truth is that open baffle speakers are not the physics-defying panacea that a lot think they are. They have more room interaction (and that's WHY they sound different and WHY some of us love them) and CAN NOT solve room mode problems or make room treatment unnecessary.

@ahnenpost5237

6 ай бұрын

There is more about this subject you did not mention - may be, because it does not matter - I have difficulties to believe, that it does not matter a speaker firing back with 180 degrees phase shift. Ok, you mentioned the less output at low frequencies because of that - to get a flat response at those low frequncies you can compensate for that for a flat response in front of the speakers - but what happens with the interaction between the direct radiated sound and the back fired? How does this depend on and change with frequency? Can you fix a little of the room modes by playing with the direction, to which the speakers fire to the front (by turning them slightly and hear then or do a measurement again regarding especially the room modes, for ex the 37 Hz one? Really no difference? I think, there is. Ever gave it a try?) Additionally you can play around with the distance from reflecting walls - Linkwitz recommends at least 4 feet (a liitle more than 1 meter) - if he says so, it must make sense.

@markceci9896

6 ай бұрын

With my open baffles, the bass is reduced at the sides quite noticeably. Once I got front to rear timing set, the bass has a definite directional character that boxes don't. It also energizes the ajacent room a lot less than similar levels with boxes. Just my experience

@haveaseatplease

6 ай бұрын

Hi John, what do you think about speakers without any baffle: look at this KZread video: "No-Baffle DIY speaker system Pt 1"

@Thomas..Anderson

6 ай бұрын

>The open baffle has MORE room interaction than a boxed speaker simply because it's firing out of the back of the speaker as well. This statement clearly shows that person stating this has no clue about acoustics.

@chris55top

4 ай бұрын

You can't use the same speakers for open baffle speakers as you can for box speakers. For the exact reasons you stated. You may have researched a lot about open baffle speakers however, there are some that do work you just need to find them.

I enjoy people that are not stupid. 😂. Thanks John this channel is helping me to enjoy my hi-fi even more!!

I agree. My lack of room boom when moving from ported box subs to OB subs is probably due to less bass below 30hz. Makes sense. Ironically I don't miss that extension into those low frequencies at all. Even with bass heavy modern music I can still feel the bass punch in my body without all that low extension

I appreciate this technical content. I like to surf room modes; walking helped me to feel these standing waves and have a better understanding of my room. Thank you John.

John, I could listen to you and your theories all day. You explain things so well. I too am a hobbyist designer and have had a few victories and some losses. Question: Are you familiar with a man named Bill Woods? He was from Warkworth, ON, Canada. He was an expert designer who started on his own but was hired by Yorkville sound to help bring their PA gear to a much higher level. Sadly, he passed away a few years ago. A terrible loss to the industry. Thanks for another great video!

I've never understood waterfall plots. You made it clear to me in like three sentences. 👍

Your experience you're sharing is of high value , nothing is better then concrete real life testing ....thanks a lot😊

Very well put! Every speaker regardless has room modes and best placement. Just different more or less based on the design.

I’m so glad I discovered this channel. I need this knowledge so bad.

Room interactions can be broken down into 2 x categories, pressure and reflections.

Hey John, cool to see that you keep doing stuff on the whole topic of speaker room interaction. One thing i have to add. A dipole only has cancelations if the front and rear wave hit each other. In the midrange you need a 10 or 15cm wide baffle for that to happen. The LX521 or ME Geithain speakers have a narrow midrange baffle for that reason. In the case of the wide baffle you have a dipole at lower frequencys and two halfspace radiators front and back at higher frequencys. Thats why you have a wide radiation pattern. With a narrower baffle the radiation gets tighter and the nulls get deeper. Edit: The best way to see how much room interaction a speaker has, is to calculate the directivity at a certain frequency. There are tools for that.

Looks like even Bass has been affected by CANCEL culture.🤣

@Soundapple

3 ай бұрын

Racist! 😂 Lol

What you get is better interaction with the room with the dipoles. Thing to note is that not every open baffle loudspeaker is a true dipole. It is true that correctly designed dipole radiates as much to the back as it radiates to the front. from lowest of bass to the point where tweeter starts beaming due to size. This puts dipoles into controlled directivity group of speakers. The timbre of reflected sound is the same as direct sound, which is desirable. Also the figure eight radiation pattern puts more energy towards the listener and the wall behind the speaker and nine to the sides, so it actually excites the room less as the classic box speaker. Box speaker is also directional at the top end and omnidirectional at the lower frequencies thereby producing unnatural timbre in room. One downside of dipoles is the need for space. To prevent early reflection (

@IBuildIt

6 ай бұрын

You are just repeating all of the usual things said about open baffle speakers that are are patently wrong. It doesn't matter WHERE you put a speaker that's playing 37Hz when you have a room mode at 37Hz - it WILL be excited. Dipoles still put out enough energy off axis to reflect off the side walls, PLUS they put virtually the same out of the back. That equals MORE room interaction in total, regardless of the perceived "quality" of that interaction. Do it - run the measurements and see first hand if you don't believe the measurements I show in the video. Until you do and have the ability to actually show the results, you have no argument.

@Thomas..Anderson

6 ай бұрын

@@IBuildIt You really really should read up on things. This has been well researched (Dr. Floyd Toole, Dr. Sean Olive, etc). There is a very high correlation factor between theory and measurement that is hard to ignore. Of course you might be smarter that afore mentione3d guys..

@IBuildIt

6 ай бұрын

Still not an argument, friend. You can name whoever you want, but that doesn't prove anything. And if they are saying a speaker that's putting out 37Hz IS NOT activating a 37Hz room mode, then they are mistaken. Likewise if they think an open baffle speaker has less room interaction than a boxed speaker. Do it yourself and see for yourself, but I guarantee that you will not like what you find.

@Thomas..Anderson

6 ай бұрын

@@IBuildIt >And if they are saying a speaker that's putting out 37Hz IS NOT activating a 37Hz room mode, then they are mistaken - they re not saying that. Once again read up, don't make things up.

@IBuildIt

6 ай бұрын

Guy, read your own comment. YOU are saying that. Anyway, wasting my time here and I have better things to do.

I’m even less of an expert on sound than you are, John, but (or so?) what you’re saying makes perfect sense.

You add much clarity and detail to dispute and dispel audio myths. Many people make simple suppositions about listening experiences without any actual measurements to justify or refute their conclusions based upon impressions and not facts. Good stuff John. BTW “Stupid” seems to be the biggest “pandemic” in the world today, it’s expanding and spreading globally so your “watering hole” of reason draws us here to get sips of clear understanding of practical & truthful information. Looking forward to whatever is next.

@acreguy3156

7 ай бұрын

Fully agreed! The words "stupid" and "John Heisz" don't belong in the same sentence 👍.

@Aswaguespack

7 ай бұрын

@@acreguy31561000% in agreement there

@don7294

7 ай бұрын

The Dunning-Kruger-Death Cult is alive and spreading. So very sad

I seriously always wondered why I had heard this too!!!! Im my head before I really studied audio, I had thought people liked/used open baffle speakers BECAUSE they would incorporate the "room" more-thinking that they had a room more conducive to perfect audio reproduction both in acoustics and in staging, where boxed speakers were better at 'directing' and projecting the sound.

Omnis/bipole/dipole speakers have a sound that “typical box speakers” don’t and many of us love it. I presently have wide dispersion box speakers which also gives me some of that sound. Live music (indoors) has more sidewall interaction that you get from most box speakers.

One of the GR Research OB servo subwoofer options is rare in that the twin driver has one 12" driver facing forward and one back and the enclosure is designed so that they are in the identical position. Servo subs are a topic all to themselves and this is the exception rather than the rule as far as speaker/sub design goes. Perhaps the reflections from the sides of a well designed OB speaker add to their ability to create a good soundstage. This is sheer speculation on my part. I really enjoy these insights/opinion John. Thank you for your willingness to challenge dogma.

@IBuildIt

7 ай бұрын

The servo just keeps track of where the cone is so that it can get the maximum amount of bass from the driver (using a ton of power...) without running past the excursion limits of the driver. So functionally no different from other subs that optimize the amount of bass that's possible from a driver.

@rikardekvall3433

7 ай бұрын

@@IBuildItand makes it faster, stopping more controlled and a cleaner bass, right?

@IBuildIt

7 ай бұрын

The cleaner bass idea is another fiction. The number one factor that affects the clarity of bass in a room is the room itself and how it deals with the excess energy that bass dumps into it. You can stop a woofer cone on a dime, but that's neither here nor there if your room continues to ring for a full second after.

@rikardekvall3433

7 ай бұрын

@@IBuildIt Yes, we know that the room makes the most impact on the sound. You and other speaker designers say the same. But it doesn’t hurt to tweak the low bass with a servo controlled woofer. That little extra notch in the search for good bass. But with no acoustical treatment, then it’s all wasted. Keep up your great tutorials.

Thanks for another great presentation. Like you, I am a fan of dipoles. I think the great advantage of open baffle speakers is the reduction of early reflections at mid-range-ish frequencies. Hence, one is hearing less of the room at these critical frequencies. Put another way, open baffle speakers alter the time interaction with the room at certain frequencies allowing one to hear more of the first arrival sound unaffected by early reflections while still allowing a degree of ambience from late reflections. Thanks!

@IBuildIt

4 ай бұрын

How was it a great presentation when you completely disagree with what I said?

@brucermarino

4 ай бұрын

@@IBuildIt Thanks, John. My first reason for calling your work great was the quality of the presentation. Secondly, I agree with you that dipoles have much room interaction. My focus is that some of these interactions are separated in time from the direct, first arrival, sounds. My favorite designs are line source dipoles since they tend to reduce early reflections to the sides and also off the floor and ceiling. My point is about the timing at the listening seat, not the overall amount of reflections. So, I see us as in general agreement and I was taking it a step further to explain the attractive sound of dipoles. Am I missing something? Thanks again!

@IBuildIt

4 ай бұрын

In a previous video I showed the in-room measurements of the 3-way open baffle speakers I designed (possibly to sell) and those measurements show very clearly what I talked about in this video. The side cancellations that guys assume reduces the first reflection are not strong enough to actually do that. There is still a ton of output reaching the sidewalls from the front of the dipole, but ALSO from the back. Ergo, more room interaction, not less. Just as many first reflections from the front as boxed speakers. What you are saying is what nearly everyone says and it assumes the side cancellation is much stronger than it actually is. Especially in a room, that cancellation has very little impact on the output above 100Hz.

@brucermarino

4 ай бұрын

@@IBuildIt Thanks. I'll have to check that out.

Good video, thank you for an intelligent and fair comment on the Open Baffle speakers theoretical expectation and real room interaction. You are so right, it seems there is still a grave misunderstanding regarding the existence in the room of two very different sound behaviors, almost like having two rooms, as someone said: at low frequencies the room modes are alike static pools of intense bass alternating with nulls that change configuration with frequency and are related directly to room dimensions; not much to ameliorate here, except to move out and get an even larger space to lower thus the frequency where the room mode issue manifests. Above the room modes the name of the game is : propagating sound waves, reflection, absorption, deflection, interference, cancelation, resonance and reverberation. One would measure sound, above the room modes, all around a dipole only outside an anechoic chamber and is obviously due to reflections, and not because the transducer-baffle system acoustic propagation model is lacking, God forbid ! In my experience the Open Baffle room interaction is more benign, in most cases, than boxed speakers. I use no room treatment myself and I agree with the late Siegfried Linkwitz opinion that a normally furnished, moderate lively room, is quite conducive to music listening. Regarding the alternative, one note that a dipole doesn't push as hard the driver for the same loudness level, nor hinder (pressurization) the driver membrane motion the way a box speaker does. More so, eliminating the passive crossover is another step up in resolution and linearity and offer Room correction with most DSP solutions, or one could use parametric equalizers to improve sound reproduction if analog crossovers are preferred. Thus, the sound of the Open Baffle speakers, when properly executed, remains relaxed, resolved and organic.

Is there any advantage to 2 tweeters. 1 facing forward and 1 facing back? I have seen this on a few "higher end" speakers.

My speakers are open 5" (modified) FR drivers on top of the boxes and a woofer (firing down onto the floor) and a bass vent on top near the 5" driver (with an acoustic surrounding bass vent, with a coaxial effect). They are holographic off the scale and the cleanest med I ever heard (sounds like aluminium ribbon drivers). But are totally just cardboard! It's that seamless silver med to treble sound that is so super even in tonality (like a ribbon med to treble driver made of aluminium and sprung tight)! That's the only speakers I can imagine it to be (other than what they really are). 😅 And the woofer makes the voice sound warm enough (with a bit of critical tweaking). I get to make it sound how I want, from lean to round and anywhere in between. It's somewhere between a lean, and a round voice sound that gives the strongest imaging! (My opinion). And along with even sounding med, dipole and point source, you get the most holographic sound possible cos it's got several factors combined to do it. Driver mods (for me) is another factor.😅

Hey John, What about first reflections? Since a room's sidewall is often within the null of the figure-eight, there should be at least some impact on the first reflection's arrival time and amplitude at the listening position? If so, might this fall into the "less Interaction" camp? :)

@IBuildIt

7 ай бұрын

Look at my measurements from 1 meter away. You can see that there's still plenty of sound that will be reflecting off the sidewall even at 90 degrees off axis.

Yes. one of the points is...The typical room in a house is "too small" to use a "boxed" bass enclosure. The benefit of the open baffle design for drivers producing omni-directional frequencies is they are canceled out in the fields on either side of the speaker baffle. You are correct that it then takes more bass driver to produce the same output. I welcome your challenge/discussion and will be watching the comments.

@IBuildIt

6 ай бұрын

Ever listen in a car with a good system? Or a pair of closed back headphones? There's no such thing as a room that's too small for a boxed speaker.

I wonder if there's a more pronounced dipole cancellation in time-windowed measurements. Maybe there's a perceptibly different ratio of direct sound+early reflections vs late reflections with open baffles as compared to boxed speakers.

I actually tried it out by measurement. The rumors that the neighbours hear less sound when you use a dipole simple is wrong, it is identical. I had two speakers, one a dipole, one a ported box. I placed both of them at the exact same position (one at a time) and adjusted the volume of some sine test tones until it had the same "volume" at my listening position (in direct line of the speaker), measured with a microfone and the app "Spectroid" (shows volume per frequency and time). I measured the volume in the room below and noticed, that both speakers produced exactly the same "volume" in the room below. By the way, both speakers were placed on a pillow to remove mechanical coupling to the ground. Frequency was measured at a room mode and at no room mode, no difference. Thus, when adjusting power to gain the same volume, both open baffle and normal speakers were idential in their radiated power. That's why I decided not to build an open baffle speaker.

An interesting experiment would be to build a box with drivers facing forwards and backwards and take measurements at various angles with them wired as both a dipole and a bipole.

John, is your 37hz room mode front to back, or side to side? If it’s front to back, then of course it would also be excited. From personal experience I disagree about exciting room modes, the side to side ones are much diminished in my experience.

@IBuildIt

7 ай бұрын

Both, my room is square. But room modes don't work like that and sound isn't as simple as that. If there is 37Hz playing the room, no matter where it's happening or what's producing it, it will excite the mode.

Yeah, I proved for myself that the "less interaction" thing was nonsense about nineteen years ago with my "open baffle" INF10 experiment.

#johnheisz - how do you treat a room for open baffle speakers? Do you have video on that? Thanks!

It might be that the firing out of the back, and then from the wall to your ears, almost in phase with the front firing is not as bad as the firing at 30, 60 and 90 degrees. With open baffles and cardiod speakers people try cancel that effect.

the signals are also out of time when yoy stand in front of the speaker having diffrent affect on diffrent frequencys😊

9:11 Hi. I’m an inventor who hasn’t delved into speaker building, but I have pondered it. I am drawn to back-to-back speakers of reversed polarity (so they wiggle in phase with each other backwardsly). One can put tubes of varying lengths between, and it provides valuable space between the planes of the forward and backward drivers, allowing for curved interfaces and, well….

@richardtheweaver4891

5 ай бұрын

Going further, I wonder why nobody makes a butterfly speaker. Why not condense the concept?

This means planar or electrostatic speakers are the only ones able to radiate front and back without any variation?

Hi John.. Being a carpenter for over 40 years, I’ve long been admirer of your channel . Anyhow, regarding your exploits in reaching acoustic Nirvana with your speaker builds.. May I suggest that you have indeed reached a level of sound resonance, that would be completely acceptable to the majority. I believe what you should focus on now, is simply making them look sexy .. Do this and is my belief you will sell units like hotcakes.. Best wishes with your endeavours Respect KCB..👍😁🇬🇧

Imho the advantage of open baffle is prevent box coloration you can hear through the cone of the speaker , that's why I old German speakers they isolated the chassis with tissue ...and filled lots of damping

I knew of a girl in Nashville who was talked into getting a digital piano that she could carry around to venues. To afford it, she had to sell her old upright grand. After setting up the digital piano in her apartment studio and playing it, she realized she'd made the worst decision of her life, and lost her creativity for many months. Is there a good speaker design that would not have affected her so negatively? Electronics have gotten very good at pushing a sound into one end of a wire. Getting it out of the other end is still very tricky.

yess indeed, open baffles fire at the wall from the behind. then all that output gets reflected from the wall, so it seems you got most of the wall reflecting it, radiating it. thats why them audiofools think its a good setup and the speakers "vanish". however, indeed open baffle does not radiate sideways. so they get less interaction from the side walls of the room, but a heck of it from the rear wall.

Please look up "no baffle" dipoles. They sound much better because these are closer to an ideal dipole 8 dispersion. Essentially a no baffle speaker is one where drivers are bare and used for frequencies below the dipole peak.

I love my duo 2 in vertical open baffle on top of towers 800hz to 5khz cut the dipole peak@ 1,2k with youtube equalizer

Dipol speakers can only Sound good If they stand far away from the Back wall the reason is: early reflections cause Bad Sound. Dipol speakers got much more early reflections in rooms than normal speakers. Best OB would be a OB Line Array 1.8m away from the Back wall with good damping and Diffusion and the early reflections Points (Line Array because the floor and ceiling reflections would Not be a Problem anymore) (And Most ppl prefer a closed/Vented/PR sub under 250 Hz cause they Like the Feeling of the kick of the Drums) Yes Ob subs can sound good but you will notice Something is Missing, even If it goes down to 16Hz. Sorry for my bad english.. Love your content greetings from Germany.

I wonder if one could design a driver that has a cone at both ends with the voice coil and magnet in the middle, instead of a cone at one end and a magnet + basket at the other end

John, I subscribed about one month ago or so. Do you have a video about room treatments in the 110 Hz range and lower. There's a fellow named Dennis Foley who runs Acoustic Fields. He sells wall treatments for this range but the prices are through the roof. I have no doubt his systems work but at $30,000 for my room, which is 22' x 34' x 7.5' it had better prepare our meals and do the dishes!

@IBuildIt

7 ай бұрын

Best to avoid that channel and his products. He's wrong on a lot of science with regards to room treatment and is mostly a salesman for the products he produces.

@acreguy3156

7 ай бұрын

@@IBuildIt Good to know. Thanks John!

@vikassm

7 ай бұрын

Plenty of rubbish on that channel, Buyer Beware!! Check out the prices for their "Acoustic Charcoal" :D

I remember when i first got Magnepans, years ago. After everything id read on forums i fully expected to hear next to nothing when i stood at their sides.

Drop a pebble in a rectangular container of water and see what happens. Where the pebble is dropped determines which walls of the box gets the largest amounts of water sloshed against it and how it dissipates in that fluid container. The waves will start propagating in uniform bands until the nearest wall is encountered and then the wave energy takes on the aberrations due to the container shape. The back wave of speaker in a box enclosure reaches that "wall" limitation and is reflected back into the driver cone surface causing wave cancellations/standing waves to occur much sooner and with more intensity than if they are allowed to spread into a much larger space (e.g. - portion of the listening room) into which the back wave of a dipole speaker gets its first reflections. This may partially explain why open baffle speakers sound more "natural" or akin to the original performance sounds.

"You're getting output from the back of the speaker." That strikes me as a common sense reason for more room interaction.

Isnt the back wave 180 deg out of phase, or anti phase. Anti phase is anti room node, is it not?

Open baffle speaker emit opposite polarity wave to the back. That cancels the room mode to a certain degree.

Would it be wrong to say that no matter what speaker you use, whether box, OB or any other type, the moment that you change the space they are placed in, the entire experience changes. Same speakers in 10 different rooms means 10 different results. I'm I wrong ? And would it also be wrong to say a cheap speaker can sound almost great depending of where it is as opposed to an expensive speaker in a bad pace ? Just thinking out loud.

If you have an open coffin speaker, do you get more room effects with or without a body?

@IBuildIt

7 ай бұрын

Depends, does the body have bullet wounds?

@RambozoClown

7 ай бұрын

@@IBuildIt Does the caliber matter?

@IBuildIt

7 ай бұрын

.22 for treble, .38 for midrange and .45 for bass, of course.

Most open baffle speakers I've seen use two enormous woofers & a tweeter, I'm not sure why? So your design using a midrange driver is possibly unique. Of course, a midrange driver on a wide baffle will not be a dipole. The driver front to back distance around the edges of the baffle will induce weak comb filtering instead. Keep up the good work!

I love open baffle speakers but my two 10" powered subs put out more bass than my OB 15" subs. However, the !5's sound cleaner.

@sudd3660

7 ай бұрын

have you taken into account the frequency response at listening position, and did the testing with the woofers in same position?

@scottypalmer2158

7 ай бұрын

@@sudd3660 No measurements yet other than listening by ear

the open baffle speakers don,t excite th hight and width room modes ussualy around 60hz but they still excite the length which is around 30hz.about the midrange i agree they interact more than convential speakers.

Jes more interaction with room is good thing with wented box speakers, woofers and better frequency response with less piks and dip especially 60-90 Herz with open baffle 6:06

I had no idea that anyone actually thought that. Isn’t it obvious that theres more room interaction? 🤷🏻‍♂️ Can’t anyone hear that?

Open baffle speaker systems clearly work but for 100 years audio designers have been enclosing speakers in cabinets. Now the extra materials and work involved all add to the cost, so this wasn’t done for no reason. Correctly designed speaker cabinets improve the overall efficiency of a speaker system in terms of converting electrical power into audio power. For the majority of listeners a ported cabinet system is more convenient and easier to drive for any given volume level. Cabinet systems can use smaller drivers which also is a consideration in crowded domestic situations.

All the open baffle speakers I have ever heard were fatiguing. What type of experience is the listener looking for? For me, it's 15 rows back, dead center at Carnegie Hall.

The long touted claim is, ... due to the manner in which they interact with the room, dipoles generate a higher level of direct sound and diminished amount of room sound to the listener. It's not the magnitude of the rearward energy that's important, it's the polarity is the mechanism here. Thus in dipole the energy doesn't pulse the space with a coherent pressure wave (as does a monopole). Listeners in rooms appreciate the velocity component of the propagation in addition to the pressure. We experience sound so radically different then mics capture that energy. It seems our discernment is high, yet our aural memory flawed.

@misterhat5823

7 ай бұрын

"Listeners in rooms appreciate the velocity component of the propagation in addition to the pressure. " Any proof of that?

@FOH3663

7 ай бұрын

@@misterhat5823 Yes

@IBuildIt

7 ай бұрын

Explain how a monopole pulses a coherent pressure wave in a way that's different from a dipole.

@FOH3663

7 ай бұрын

@@IBuildIt Acoustic polarity. It's somewhat akin to what's done in live sound, steering of the LF to null the peak summation in a given direction (the mics), and optimize the forward experience. Imagine from above looking down at a source in a ripple tank. An out of polarity figure-of-eight, vs. a coherent omni-directional pulse. All that seems like a given to me, I could be wrong. A vital element here is likely intensity as well, which is the product of pressure and velocity. Two identical dBSPL measurements can be perceived much differently. The same SPL is experienced with greater intensity when the velocity vector is additive ... nearfield, in the forward main lobe. Thus, they generate elevated direct sound and diminished room sound (negative contributions from the room, acoustic distortions). Like you said John, there's more there 𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘳𝘦. Fortunately, that's accompanied by little penalty.

@IBuildIt

7 ай бұрын

That's where the problems start, when the behavior of sound in a large room or outdoors is used to describe how it behaves in a small room. They are not the same at all, and that's especially true for bass. The tricks used and the science behind live sound in big venues don't apply to small rooms. Bass immediately swamps the capacity of a small room to contain it and that's why there is a Schroeder frequency to note that division and why it needs to be treated like "pressure" as opposed to velocity. All attempts to "direct" it or "shape" it will fail. The only thing bass in a small room responds to is damping, and you need a lot to make any impact at all.

Siegfried Linkwitz went thru thru all these details long ago

Can we call this the "Olive Branch" video?

The biggest thing I often hear about open baffle is they won't handle as much power.

literally NOBODY says that OB speakers have less room interaction.

@sudd3660

7 ай бұрын

i have seen it said on some forums, but mainly they talk about side interactions. and not the whole output of the speaker.

I am not a fan of open baffle designs, because they cannot produce sufficient deep bass due to cancellation.

Your room is the box speaker simple as that

For mid and highs yes not for the bass on the other hand those mid and highs are easy to controle in a room. But If you have more in one region than before and less in the other Fc-200 it balenced out to my opinion. basstraps are way more intrusive in some one's space. Is there some one in fluid dynamics with a better anser. In the and guess its like tubes its obout flavor. I now peeps who like OB Fc-5000 others Fc-20K To me I would say less room interaction in general. And the bass feels more directional. And have you ever, in your life seen a tweeter shake the room.

Modes or nodes? That is the question.

Sorry, new subscriber h😂re - Have you created or tested a model where you box in the bass speaker only? I always wanted a pair of Dahlquist DQ-10s and I believe that’s what they did.

My 1959 house is a speaker box.

I'm pleasantly surprised to find most of the commentary here is positive. I have been *almost* single handedly fighting against all the false claims spewed forth by the open baffle cult. Most of the wild claims center around the aspect of "superior/deep bass" from these devices. Just sticking to the topic at hand, I have made suggestions to the cult, to simply take your open baffle and move it outdoors. What happens to the bass? Pretty much gone. This suggests that open baffles are indeed MUCH MORE room dependent than their mono-pole counterparts. Simple as that. I've got plenty more to rant, but will leave it at this, for today.

It doesn't NOT interact with the room. It interacts with the room differently.

Great to see some straight talkin in the audio world. Well done vid.

There are a lot of "truths" in hifi that needs to be challenged. People can't see the difference on objectivity and subjectivity. We all have a preference on what we like. Some are very sensitive to distortion in the treble others want a little more body in the lower midrange. Then is our listening rooms different from each other so different spekers perform in them. There are a few people that can't get over that you don't like the same sound as them. These people are annoying and vocal and is one of the reasons I don't hang out in hifi forums any more.

I don't think open baffle is good for the average person that doesn't have a treated room and cabinets reinforce the output

You are waving your hands a lot. In school the professor called that a "hand waving argument"

I'll take the advice of an experienced thinker who's not exactly stupid over a self proclaimed or appointed expert any day.

True. Also I find open baffle speakers a bit philosophically suspect. Imagine that your goal is to reproduce the experience of listening to an orchestra 5 to 10 meters away from you (by using loudspeakers 3 meters away from your listening chair for example). Would it make sense for the sound waves to partially change direction 180 degrees, hit the back wall, and then move towards you again out of sync with the first wave (and from a different angle) after having travelled 2 to 7 meters from the instruments they originated from? ;)

The room is fully a partner with the open baffle speaker. IMHO it should be tuned every bit as much as the speaker is...

If you can hear it then it's interacting with the room.

@nathandaniels4823

7 ай бұрын

Unless it cancels itself out at the listening position because the polarity is 180° out of phase….in which case you can’t hear it but it’s still interacting with the room

@NakeanWickliff

7 ай бұрын

huh? There is a difference between direct sound and reflected sound. You (hopefully) here the direct sound FIRST and much less than the reflected sound. But there is absolutely sound you hear that is NOT interacting with the room.