Open Baffle. Why are they mostly limited to DIY?

I am struck how a lot of tracks now sound very different, with instruments seeming to disappear or are playing in a different room of the studio than the rest of the band. Example the harpiscord jangling in the left channel of Van Morrison's Cyprus Avenue is very faint, almost not there. Or the lead guitar on Neil Young's Unknown Legend from Harvest Moon, which is like a distance echo. Again Bob Dylan's voice on Queen Jane Approx is fantastic but the rest of the bad seem to be in room next door.

@sevenseasofrye Check your hookup. Based on what you're saying here it sounds like the speakers aren't hooked up correctly from the amp.

 

 

Open baffle speakers must be a nightmare to design (bandwidth and cancellation) otherwise they would render all box speakers obsolete.

They really are not that hard to design. But if you want to do it right, they are going to take up some space, and unless carefully built, the WAF is not as good as 'ye olde box'.

I just recently built a pair for the first time using the Tang Band W8-1808 full range drivers and they sound real nice but only with jazz, blues, folk vocal  type of music and at moderate volumes. Could be my amplifiers since all I have are high powered SS amps.

The problem with this pairing is that the open baffle with the Tangband drivers is likely needing a lower damping factor to sound right. This is why they are often used with tubes. To simulate that, you might consider putting an 8 ohm resistor (probably about a 10 watt device) in series with the speakers, and see if the bass improves. If you play it too loud you might burn up the resistor, but this will give you some idea of what some of the issues might be.

There is no reason an open baffle design can't work- I think the biggest impediment is their appearance, which includes the backside of speaker drivers.