... sound batting and/or weighting speakers ...


Hello to all... 

Need some thoughts and/or suggestions: I am using a pair of KEF Q1s - luv the sound, so much more full than I ever expected - and the driver has such cone extension that the speaker box really vibrates. Now - I am assuming that the vibration really = the possibility of distortion ( or a smearing at higher volumes, tonal deformity, if that is different) and I am wondering if this is more controllable by:
Adding more sound batting into the enclosure (thru the bass port)
Weighting the speakers with a bag of lead shot (?) over the top of the driver/cabinet box ( the cabinet is not flat on top, so I can't use a brick or solid weight; I'm guessing the weight should be something moldable, so the lead shot in a bag is possible if I can figure a way to affix it to the cabinet...)

Thoughts? Suggestions? Alternates?
insearchofprat

Showing 1 response by hombre

I have maggie LRS speakers. Very low mass and lightweight. No box. Ribbon drivers. They don’t vibrate at all so I’m thinking the vibration spoken of here is an inherent feature of dynamic drivers in wooden boxes. My previous speakers were Polk Rtia 5 floorstanders which were heavy ( 50 lbs ea) made of real cherry wood (not crummy MDF) had curved sides, and internal boxes and bracing isolating the drivers from each other and vibrated almost not at all.They had excellent sound quality, but they can’t compete with maggies. When I listen to them now all I hear is a box. Amazing how I never noticed this until I started listening to the maggies.
I had dynamic wooden box speakers for 40 years and never knew I was hearing a box until the box was gone!!! Not sure why maggies don’t vibrate. But the sound quality of them is like nothing I’ve ever heard before. Especially acoustic instruments. With loud distorted electric guitars, not so much. But that distortion is, IMO, an inherent feature of the instrument. The maggies make poor recordings sound awful. The Polks were much more forgiving. Everything sounded good on them.Also they really ROCKED, which the maggies don’t do. But I added a B&W 400 watt powered sub and that really helped out the maggies. They don’t have much response below about 60hz. But the mids and highs are probably the best you can get except for electrostatics which IMO have other drawbacks like they have to be plugged in and present a difficult load for most amps. My amp is a Schiit Vidar which works really good with the maggies. I agree with the others here who said instead of mickey mousing around trying to reduce the vibration you should either forget it and just enjoy the music or get better speakers.