Open baffle speakers

 

 

deep_333

1,285 posts

10-05-2024 at 03:43am

Danny knows some stuff and is probably capable of designing a box speaker that can blow someone’s socks off too. But, the latter would end up costing more than what his target market would be willing to pay (i.e., diy guys fishing for high value stuff and very modest pricing).

He is a small business/ lacks the resources of the bigger gigs to keep prices down. OB is the easier way out to satisfy his targeted customer base/modest price bracket requirement.

My earlier comment was hinting at some other coaster clowns (not Danny) who know absolutely nothing about speaker design...but seem to be minting with their open baffle overnight speaker "expertise/extravaganza"....Am sure the next venture for these guys would be "high end" cable design...very easy to become a high end cable design expert PhD overnight as well.

"Danny knows some stuff..."

Have you ever owned a pair of GR Research speakers, or spoken to Danny Richie?

"Can’t keep costs down..." Have you taken a look at the cost of his custom drivers? The M165 is $35 and the M165NQ is $139. The M165NQ is awesome. Have you heard the M165NQ driver and how outstanding its midrange clarity is? It is better than the Scan-Speak 8545. I have compared them directly in my Merlin VSM speaker with a custom crossover.

"Modest price bracket requirement for his targeted customer"... I have Ayre KX-R Twenty, Ayre QX-5 Twenty, and Ayre MX-R amps. Am I not in the demo?

Danny’s speakers offer incredible value because it’s him and one other employee. His overhead is a low as possible. "Smart Money" knows what Danny is doing and they’ve heard it and chuckling about people still buying Revel, Klipsch, etc. etc. etc.

"OB is the easier way out to satisfy his targeted customer base/modest price bracket requirement."

Have you watched the development videos and read development threads of his OB speakers? Have you priced a pair of NX-Otica or NX-Treme with 2 pair of dual OB subs? That is not "easy way out" or "modest in price".

He thinks OB is the best, period. Danny can afford to develop any driver he wants and his OB stuff is designed to be the best, regardless of price. He’s not just making cheap speakers to make some money. This is a passion for him. He wants his speakers to sound the best it can be, period.

I have been there and heard it myself. This is not "budget" stuff. It is a magic mix of hardcore development without the overhead and "accountant speaker designers" having a say in the design, parts, and materials.

It’s spectacular, and people who have heard it sometimes have a revelation about what they thought was "right and good" for decades.

Ask me how I know.

 

Also, I am of the opinion that when sound is coming from the rear and bouncing willy-nilly about the room, it may give a sense of depth to the soundstage but can’t really be good for imaging compared to a nice closed-back point or line source, or even time-aligned speaker.

@toddalin How it works is if the rear of the speaker is far enough from the wall (about 5 feet) then there is about a 10millisecond delay of the rear firing information to reach your ear. If a bit less than that, the ear will interpret it as harshness (which is the same reason side wall reflections should be avoided) but at about 10mS, the ear can interpret the information as echo location.

The result is a more palpable soundstage. IOW, it is excellent for imaging. BTW most ESLs and planar speakers like Magnaplanars are open baffle so this should come as no surprise.

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.

I don’t believe that Dalquist DQ10s really qualify as open backs.

The woofer is in a separate sealed container (closed back).

The lower midrange has a thick piece of padding that covers the back of the cone to remove any rear radiation/reflection.

The two dome tweeters are sealed and the piezo is a sealed horn.

https://pinkfishmedia.net/forum/proxy.php?image=https%3A%2F%2Flive.staticflickr.com%2F65535%2F53161980583_3e92fd31bb.jpg&hash=32606d143ec35aa0dea6837f7fa9a0a6

 

The DQ10 was not an open baffle speaker in the purest sense. It was a speaker with numerous time aligned baffles. It was a beautiful sounding speaker that could not image.

One has to be specific about what they are calling open baffle speakers. The are bipolar speakers, both sides radiating in phase and dipolar speakers, the sides radiating out of phase. Most open baffle speakers are dipoles and most are planar speakers of one sort or another, ESLs, Ribbons and Planar Magnetics. Trying to do this with multiple dynamic speakers has never worked well. This brings us to line source speakers. Line source speakers project sound more effectively than point source speakers. Acoustic power drops off at the cube of the distance with point sources, but at the square of the distance with line sources which is why you see them at large concerts. Due to their construction, planar speakers fall naturally into the line source category, with some irregularity. For a speaker to project as a line source it has to be longer than the wavelength of the lowest frequency it is to reproduce. For a free standing speaker to project 20 Hz as a line source it would have to be 60 feet long! There is one major caveat. If the line source terminates at a barriers, a walls, floors or ceilings it will maintain line source behavior down to 1 Hz. Dipolar line sources, like any dipole does not like making bass below 100 Hz. This is particularly true of full range dipoles like ESLs. They will do it, but it creates distortion with everything else the speaker is doing. Even if the speaker ends at barriers. typically the floor and the ceiling, it is best to cross over to subwoofers at 100 Hz, but it can not be any old subwoofer. In order to maintain balanced amplitude behavior with distance it has to be a line source subwoofer. Even two subwoofers will get lost under line source speakers. The major problem is most "line source" speakers really are not line sources. A speaker that is 6.5 feet tall in a room with 8 foot ceilings looses it's line source behavior under about 250 Hz. As you move away from these speakers they will become progressively brighter or tinny. 

Line source, dipole speakers have one huge advantage in residential size rooms. Because they do not radiate sound to the sides, up or down there is way less room interaction. Only the front wall is a problem and this can be easily dampened behind the speaker.  Only Horn loaded speakers have dispersion controlled at this level. 

The OP is right to question the bass performance of "open baffle" speakers. The baffle has to be so large you enter the realm of infinite baffle loudspeakers. People including Linkwitz have tried it, tongue in cheek and they will provide the illusion of bass, but it is far from accurate. What most people are listening to under 100 Hz is a mess anyway. Don't believe me? Measure it for yourself. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

DQ10s are not open baffle speakers. They are a bunch of separate, time aligned baffles mounted in a cage with mass insanity for a crossover. They could not image to save their lives. They hold a place in HiFi history next to Bose 901s.