Speaker cabinet materials.


Just wondering what are some of the materials used in building cabinets for speakers? We all know of mdf and solid wood, but how popular is aluminum? Magico and Piega use it. Are there others that use aluminum? And what other materials are used? What about acrylic?
Acoustical wool and mass loaded vinyl is used inside, what else is used?
pedrillo
My comment wasn't made to disparage GMA in any way. I just wanted to point out, that a material that one would not think of as being able to flex/vibrate, can do so much to one's surprise. To GMA's credit, they found a problem and fixed it. I have great respect for their designs.
Bamboo laminate is used by Escalante and Ascend Acoustics. Ascend has a CSD graph of the bamboo cabinet to show how little resonance there is in the v-lam bamboo. Go to the last graph on Ascend Acoustics Sierra graph page to check it out.
I love my granite cabinet made Ridge Street Audio "Sason" loudspeakers. Every time I compare them to other speakers that use other types of cabinet materials, I swear the bass from the granite speaker sounds much more delineated and has quite a bit more harmonic character all throughout the bass regions. The imaging solidity and clarity in the treble are also beyond reproach. Is this truly a function of the granite material? I don't know for sure, but I can say without question that these speakers do many things that no other speaker that I've owned can do!..... (13 different speakers at last count)
Vandersteen Audio model Five As and Quatros offer a unique constrained layer Damping system in a sophisticated multi enclosure.

When John Atkinson of Stereophile magazine measured their cabinets he said they measured insanely dead.
All of this is important yet the most dead cabinet in the world set up in a room with heavy bass nodes can defeat the purpose
The Room compensation feature of a properly tuned Five a and Quatro further allows the efforts of all this work to be appreaciated. ((take a listen...
John