Open Baffle Experience

Hi Erik, I would think that you have the experience to do this well. I’ve built a few and they can be very enjoyable.

In general, for bass, the larger woofers work better... I used a 15 at one time and 2 12’s once and 2 10’s another....

Try to keep your QTS between .5 and .8, My experience says look for a .6 and keep it under .8 if you can. VAS and XMax matters. It all depends on the room, stay mindful of response curves, remember that you are now firing from the rear also and room boundaries come into play more easily. If you use a mid, still look at QTS. It is less critical as you move up in frequency, but I would still try to find .5 to .6 QTS.

If you get them built, pull them out in the room listen and slowly move them back toward the walls little by little until you find the boundry reinforcement that fits your taste. Initially, you may find that you don’t have much taste. If you like, don’t hesitate to add another woofer, even a 15, air movement is the key to get bass moving, but stay aware of your room and boundaries that you may have to deal with. I have no doubt that you can pull this off. Use your experience and your ears, you’ll be fine.

"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"  

This shows a mis understandng of open baffle.   If drivers were facing each other and fired toward each other, we clearly have cancellation.  An open baffle fires forward Sound waves and they move forward.  When the rear waves fire out of the rear, they are not directly battling the front wave causing cancellation.  Ralph had the right idea.  The rear waves take time to bounce off of rear or side walls and end up coming forward firing in the same direction and reinforcing the front wave, the front and rear waves do not meet head to head causing cancelation.  What you get is a delayed effect for much of the frequency causing a spatial effect, which I assume is why a certain speaker company chose that name.  The real challenge is moving enough air at low frequencies to produce satisfying bass.which can be done.