Open Baffle Experience

If you think open baffles are great, then just remove your drivers from your speakers right now and throw your wooden boxes away folks. You will be shocked how horrible your speakers sound without them. You have been warned. I’m sure Magico and others would not go to all the time and trouble to produce such expensive cabinets if the answer was as simple as having no cabinet at all!

Do not listen to folks who claim open baffles are better than box speakers. They probably cant afford state of the art box speakers which can cost hundreds of thousands of dollars. Its just sour grapes

What kenjit overlooks is that drivers and crossovers can be selected and tailored for their specific application. 

That is not true. Open baffle designs are WRONG. They emit sound that is out of phase out the back end. If you can show me an open baffle design that can emit sound IN PHASE not OUT OF PHASE from the back end then I will happily throw my box speakers away and we can all enjoy perfect sound with no cabinet resonances. I dare you

@bpoletti 

The sound coming from the back of the open baffle speakers IS out of phase with the front, 

I dont need you to tell me that. You need to convince @holmz 

Hes the one disputing that not me. 

OK, use an EQ… then the FR is perfect.

You cant EQ a cancellation can you? 

IB is about as good as it gets in transcient response.

We are talking OB not IB. 

It’s the same speaker cone… it is absolutely in time.

If it was in time, how can it be out of phase?

Out of phase compared to what? It is more like they are focussed way back at infinity.

The front and back waves are not in time with each other. Show me an open baffle that has both back and front in time.

I am wondering what measurements would tell us whether these speaker are more or less right than a box speaker??

the frequency response is a mess.

Bache says

@kenjit i agree for 100% , the open baffle desigh is made for folk who is looking for something unsual , The speaker bulders using old idea like new , Nothing magic . Depend of baffle size , sound wave from front cone meet wave from back and kill each other, The best open baffle is infinity size baffle. For size 20-25" you did not get  low base, If you dont care about listen as is, If not --get sub , NO BENEFIT

Placebo effect

Listen to the speaker designer folks. He agrees with me. 

The OB may be out of polarity, but who cares in the upper freq ranges?
You used the term “not in time”.

A lot of folks do care. Magico, Kef, B&W, Wilson Audio, Focal, Genelec, Revel,

Unless you only like listening to upper freq range then its a big problem.

Theres more closed box speakers than open. What do you gain by throwing the box away? you just LOSE all the bass. I dont see any advantages whatsoever.

@holmz 

Ok @kenjit you seem hung up on the back wave being opposite polarity from the front wave. Then in the other time domain thread you mentioned how all speakers were not right.

is it more important that:

1. The back wave be in the proper polarity with the front wave?
2. Or… that the front wave is in the proper polarity with the signal?
3. Or… does none of it matter?
4. Or… does all of it matter?

Yes I do believe that the back wave needs to be in correct polarity as front. As you know, aboslute polarity is inaudible but with an open baffle, you have both waves occuring simultaneously. It is difficult to avoid the consequent cancellations unless you physically separate the two waves. That is the whole point of having a box. 

Let’s see here — on the dipole side we have Nola, Vandersteen, Spatial, Magnepan, Martin Logan, SoundLabs, etc, and on the other side we have…kenjit.  Hmmm.  I for one would love to see kenjit debate the great minds behind all these very successful speaker designs.  That’d be a real hoot.

You can't be serious. 99% of high end speaker designs are NOT open baffle they are boxes. They are all on my side. I have already named many of them. B&W, KEF, FOCAL, DYNAUDIO, MAGICO, WILSON. 

@audiokinesis 

Also a benefit of many open-baffle speakers is that the backwave has essentially the same spectral balance as the frontwave, and heavy drapes would selectively attenuate the short wavelengths (high frequencies), degrading the spectral balance of the backwave.

You cant have it both ways. The spectral balance you refer to is nothing but polar response. The polar response of an open baffle is unpredictable at best and horrific at worst.

After owning Vandersteen speakers I clearly decided that open baffle speaker isn't in my taste of performance.

Unless you are prepared to use a sub.....Open baffle are not a good Idea....I have 2 pair and rarely hook them up anymore.

Yes open baffles are not right.