Open baffle speakers

Hello all,

Just wanted to add my personal experience with "open baffle" design speakers. Over 40 years ago I was fortunate to purchase one of the iconic examples of open baffle speakers, the Dahlquist DQ 10s Phased Array as a mirrored imaged pair.  I loved their sonic purity and transparency then and I'm happy to say that they are still going strong after 4 decades.  They've been driven by various amps over the years and sounded great no matter what was feeding them.  Yes, reviews had some knocks over the bass response (factory woofer is a 10" Advent unit) but a subwoofer solved that minor issue.  Also the DQ 10s are somewhat power hungry, driven in part by the 5 crossovers in each speaker.  I've found a source, Regnar Dahlquist, for Dahlquist parts and upgrade kits.  New poly caps, low oxygen p to p wiring, new pots, gold plated binding posts and woofer rebuild.  I built my own stands for them as the factory stands were "missing" when I purchased them from Federated Electronics.  Salesman cut the price and threw in a pair of Monster Cable 12 gauge speaker cables.  Sweet deal at the time.because of that.  I now use them exclusively for stereo music driving them with a Prima Luna EVO 400 Integrated tube amp.  These were remarkable speakers in their time and are still pure and transparent.  Thus closes my contribution to the "open baffle" discussion.  My exposure to the open baffle concept is limited but has been rewarding.

There are a couple of opinions referencing the Dahlquist DQ10 "...lack of imaging...".  In my experience Speaker imaging in most part is impacted by three components, placement of the  speaker(s), speaker design/build and the acoustic dynamics of the listening area.  Also to clarify the woofer in the DQ10 is a non-ported sealed unit so that driver is not "open baffle".  Jon Dahlquist and his engineering design staff described/introduced the DQ10 as a "5 speaker Phased Array, open baffle" design.  The vast majority of industry reviewers and audiophiles  then and now still view it in that light. It's ground breaking design remains a highly regarded speaker in the evolution of the audio industry.    I'll close by sharing that a brilliant university professor ended a lecture that I attended with the following, "Opinions, by their nature are always correct"  She then added as we were about to exit, Oh, do you agree with that observation, what is your opinion of that?  Consider that as we shall dialogue on that at our next gathering.  She was a pistol that always motivated us to think.