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Why are there so many wooden box speakers out there?

I understand that wood is cheap and a box is easier to make than a sphere but when the speaker companies charge tens if not hundreds of thousands of dollars for their speakers, shouldnt consumers expect more than just a typical box? Are consumers being duped?

Back in the 70’s a speaker engineer found that a sphere was best for a speaker. A square box was the worst and a rectangular box was marginally better.

The speaker engineers have surely known about this research so why has it been ignored?

Cabasse is the only company doing spheres. Should wooden boxes be made illegal

kenjit

Showing 1 response by simonmoon

simonmoon's avatar
simonmoon
555 posts
 

I think it has to do with the natural tone from wood, why is it most musical instrument are made from wood and sound so great.

 

Wood used for musical instruments, and wood used for speaker enclosures serve a completely different purpose.

With musical instruments, the wood is supposed to resonate and become part of the sound.

Speaker enclosures, no matter what they are made of, are supposed to be as acoustically inert as possible. 

Scientists have spent centuries trying to reproduce the signature sound the wood of a Stradivarius violin makes.

Scientist and engineers have spent decades trying to get speaker enclosures to not have any sound.

Make a violin out of, say, constrained layer damped wood, and it would sound horrible. Make a speaker out of highly resonant wood that is poorly damped, and it would sound horrible.

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