Paul, you are 100% right. Drivers, filters and enclosures are important to achieve the best result. But, in the end, the inclosure is the most difficult thing to build and that's where most of the speakers fail. You can buy great expensive drivers from many company, and buy the best parts for your filter and build it very well, but you always have to produce your own enclosure, one way or another, and if you want to make a good one it will cost a lot. I have some great speakers... but the key point for me, the reason why they sound so well to my ears, it's the enclosure. To achieve the best sound, it must be HEAVY !!! Damping by weight... that's the key to high end.
This is an spectacular question. I personally think that the enclosure is in fact about a 50 to 50. Bose for instance use very small bass speaker drivers. But their output is very high for their size. Why?? Enclosure design. It's a hybrid type. Bandpass and t-line kinda thing. I have the acustamas 5 passive system I use in my bedroom TV set up and it sounds very good for just that. No need to be extreamly accurate, especially for TV listening. But one drawback is you better put some power through them with some backbone. I use a Yamaha amplifier. It's one of the best made today in terms of construction design and the parts it's actually made with. Class ab. Nice.
some of the most iconic speakers like Tannoy and JBL were big boxes, especially in the 70's. Weird that those companies are both going back to these legacy designs, and that Klipsch continues to fill a niche market.
I have made my speakers with 20cm thick marble and they sound amazing to me resonance and dumping of the cabinets is extraordinary the only drow back is they weight a tone to move around not to mention they look stunning
Hi Paul. I have no doubt that those AN3's will look and sound divine. I however believe the 70/30 costing is not so far of, for more conventional speakers that do not include a Bass power amp and DSP. I'm of the Thiele/Small parameter school and therefore have found that, for the enclosures that my friends and I have built, the volumetric capacity, for closed or ported boxes, have to be well matched to the bass driver for low frequency response and have paid the penalty for the times when we got it wrong or the supplied parameters where to far off the actual values we tested later. Not only is it critical for bass response but also speaker excursion under high power. These cannot be compensated for by electronics without greatly compromising the system. As for phase response and group delay caused by the interaction between the box and the driver, we found those can be compensated for with electronics and physical placement without to much penalty. That is, at the much more humble level we are tinkering at. I really appreciate your show and await eagerly your further revelations.
@@lloyd.8272 And, that said, don`t forget the bracing! The braces do not only reinforce the Cabinets Walls, but they are also good Traps and ... fuck, now the other thing doesn`t come into my brain... just, when you make up a room, you need Bass-Traps, and the other things.. like a bookshelf with books and so on... ALZHEIMER DISEASE! AAAAWG!) In short words, the braces are a physical barrier for the standing waves, and they distort them. So, with proper bracing, the rectangular designed cabinet is no longer such a big disadvantage! So... Alzheimer cured for today: Diffusor was the word I forgot... The bracing in the cabinet also functions as diffusor! A diffusor, covered with damping material. That`s enough to prevent standing waves!
Curved or angled speaker cabinets really don't eliminate standing waves (at least from a physics point of view anyway). What curved or angled cabinets do is move the standing waves. My main speakers are curved, but depending on placement and such I can get as many standing waves as any other speaker enclosure. I think the biggest help to deal with standing waves are placement (setup) and room treatment or tweaking. Curved and angled cabinets I suspect have more to do with aesthetics than function. Yes, such cabinets do look nice, I appreciate them. I also think bracing plays a roll in helping with the speaker sound. I agree that the real magic is in the build with the drivers, crossover, voice coil, etc. Get any of those wrong and you get junk. I'm not a fan of Wilson speakers, I have heard three from their line up, they sound like rattles to me. (Either that or the demonstrators were playing them too loud). Harbeths sound OK to me, but I think they sound like the cabinet more than anything else. I think the open baffle Spatial speakers sound very good. This is all subjective, but makes a point. So often we forget to quantify statements we make when talking about audio. A lot of us have that habit. I try to not do it as much as I can. For instance, you say the IRS speakers are the best in the world. The problem is that is subjective and there is no such thing as "the best speaker in the world". What determines that? There are many well designed speakers and many poorly designed speakers at all price points. Now the IRS speakers might be the best speakers in the world to you and I can agree with that, but I think it sounds better (pun not intended) and carries more weight if you quantify such statements. "The IRS Infinity's are the best speakers in the world to me". I happen to think my main speakers are the best to me and use them as a standard of measure, but I don't say my (insert speaker name) are the best in the world and leave the subjective hanging. If I did that, I would be wrong and would hear from many about how their speakers are the best in the world, whatever they may be. You can't make an absolute out of a subjective. We should all feel comfortable with the gear we have and like without need to claim it as the best in the world against all else. It is the best in the world....to each of us individually.
@@vacuumelite2065 Yes, inside as well. They can't be eliminated by cabinet design, again from a physics point of view. However, they can be moved or reduced to not have as much effect. The only way to eliminate standing waves inside a speaker enclosure is to have no enclosure and go open baffle. Of course, there are other factors with that as well. There is no free lunch in this as we all know. ha ha
Yes, I agree with everything Paul has stated here. And many thanks to him for the preview of the future PS Audio speakers. Those cabinets do look like a years work computer design. They beg the question. He's stated there are going to be three versions of PS Audio Speakers. Lemme guess these are the mid range versions. Also lets assume these are the alpha version therefore the final product will be close, but maybe not the same, as the final product.
I had a pair of Sansui speakers almost identical to these. My horn loaded compression tweeter had an L-Pad on them. To adjust the level and sharpness of the upper frequencies. I have to say that no other speakers I have owned sounded so good even at lower volumes. They were extreamly sensitive and did not require a boat load of power to get good sound. The only other speaker manufacturers that even come close are Klipsch, Corwin Vega, and JBL.
I can’t wait for the speakers to come out. I’m more interested in PS’s adventure into speakers than its own electronics. I really badly want PS Audio to succeed in speakers. Speakers seem to be stagnant and I think PS Audio is going to shake up the speaker world.
I have done a lot of speaker research as a hobby and I work on the enclosure by tweaking it, I work on the crossover and the drivers. I tweak the drivers, and sometimes that makes more difference than the crossover. And I experiment with the med deriver above the hole in the box, from right on the hole to way above it (and also angle it to experiment). With the right gap and right angle I can get the tone I want without changing the crossover (or I can change the crossover too, if I want). By tweaking all 3 things you can get a really good cheap speaker. With a xylophone test I can tell if it has peaks cos it's hard to stop the xylophone from peaking out, but when you do, all the sound "pops out" like a pop-up card. I use 3" FR drivers with and micro FR driver (stripped of it's cone) glued to the back of the 3" driver and a stick (glued to the small driver voice coil tube) pokes through a (drilled) hole in the 3" driver and a tiny foil whizzer is glued to the end of the stick. And it's time aligned in the phase position of the 3" driver (point source). And there is a woofer for added bass response. By lifting the 3" driver above the hole, it sounds way better than in the hole (in the right position). If I hear sour notes I just change the driver position a fraction and it goes away (or gets worse, depending where I move it). Sort of seems right , now, but I If get different brand FR drivers I would have to change the position again (or/and the crossover). But it's not just a hole, that the driver is above, you need a cardboard ring around inside the hole going into the box 2" (otherwise it will sound pox). Of course you need some sort of support for the floating driver (imagination). My 3" drivers are like 1/2" out of the box on the front lower screws of the driver and like a 1" gap at the rear higher screws. That is cos my 3" drivers are mounted 45 degrees (semi omni). So the hole in the box is like 30 degrees. It's way quicker to tweak than a crossover (I only do that when it gets drastic) and mostly I just move the driver around (above the hole) and listen for the best sound, and then use tape and small foam blocks etc. for a temporary mount for listening until I finalise the position and make a proper mount. The gap also acts as a bass vent (thanks to the internal ring). Although the signal in the 3" drivers is governed by the crossover, still (basically) the whole signal goes into it (including bass). And the extra thump is provided by the woofer and the extra tizz, by the micro FR driver mounted on the 3" driver.
Your IRS speakers mids and tweeters are flimsy. but the woofer cabinet are heavy and well built. I would disagree that it is a 50-50 split between speakers and cabinets depending upon how much woodworking and finish is done to the cabinet. If you took two woofer of different qualities and switch the cabinets I would argue that the lesser priced woofer would sound better in a good cabinet then the expense woofer would in a cheaper cabinet. I am looking forward to hearing your new speakers when you take good design good cabinets good speakers you get art with a purpose. Thanks Paul keep it up.
That was my experience exactly for Bass speakers But what is more important is that the box matches the natural characteristics of the bass drivers. For mids and tweeters the quality normally follows the driver and crossover.
They have to go hand in hand! The entire assembly everything worked together. The driver has certain properties that when placed in the correct size box, produces the very best sound that can be realized by the drivers. There are three major designs that come into p,at as well. A ported enclosure brings the woofers resonance down to as low a point as possible while retaining a flat response. A sealed enclosure can have further bass extension, it won't be as flat as a ported one. A folded horn or labyrinth partition can really bring out bass response that wouldn't ordinarily be heard. As Paul says, the combination has to be as balanced as possible, and sometimes the enclosure doesn't have as much of an impact on tune sound of a speaker than the driver or crossover. There are those audiophiles that swear by an infinate baffle design. Basically a board the speaker mounts to with no box. In my house I could achieve this by putting drivers on the west wall of my living room. On the other side of the wall is the garage. Now to cool things could happen from this arrangement. First I've got awesome sound in my living room, and with the right drivers the bass extension could be well below 20 Hz, or the limit of human hearing when it comes to,ow frequencies. The other cool thing is that I could use the same midranges and tweeters on both sides of the wall to have killer sound when I'm working in the garage. I would have to have the kids and tweeters wired -80 degrees out of phase in one of the rooms for it to work, and if I was rockin out in the garage I would be subjecting my family to the bass frequencies of what ever I was listening to and at the same volume as I was pushing in the garage, as an example. In my case it would just be too bad for them. Lol, but seriously, such an arrangement could work well, but infinate baffles are usually finite in their dimensions, to fill the room you listening to music in to the nest sound possible.
I'm definitely no expert but surely the most appropriate answer would be neither or both?! My understanding is that you design the enclosure for the specific driver. You cant have a [conventional] speaker without either an enclosure or a driver of some sort, so they are equally important. What makes more difference to the sound quality? How well matched your enclosure is to the driver[s]. When people swap drivers into a box which wasn't well designed for it, I think a lot of the time if they hear a big improvement in sound it might well be because the driver suits their amp better. Anyway what sounds better to one person often doesn't to another...So maybe the better question is, why do I prefer this combo over that one, what makes it sound better to me?
Sir I want to build a bluetooth speaker. So what kind of material I should use.And what could be the enclosure shape .Will you please discuss about a sealed speaker enclosure.
I thought that the entire purpose of the enclosure was to prevent sound from getting from behind the speaker to in front of the speaker, in order to prevent cancellation. I thought that the enclosure should be made in such a way to entirely prevent any resonance in the structure of the enclosure (prevent as much as possible at least), and to eliminate as much as possible any standing waves within the enclosure. The enclosure with the lowest Q is likely to be the best quality enclosure.
Spencer Hughes figured how to make the cabinet vibrate in phase instead of making the cabinet so stiff to eliminate the resonance. Harbeth used the same ideas.
It can never vibrate in phase at all frequencies. It also will vibrate for diverse lengths of time at different frequencies. These philosophies just try to cheaply deminish some of the audible effects of the problem, instead of taking the time, effort, cost and technology to almost eliminate it.
Nice point, also Triangle, the French manufacturer, makes their own in house drivers and also didn't make the enclosures too thick and heavy, considering resonances by design. I loved my Zerius 202 s for many years. Cheers, Mario th-cam.com/video/cGjwkDB8Hr0/w-d-xo.html
The splendid Derek Hughes (Spencer and Dorothy's son) is designer for Graham Audio UK, where I work. He uses thin wall 10-15mm, usually birch multi-ply. Each surface has a panel of high density rubber compound bonded to it. The resultant 'Composite Wall' has a very high moment of inertia which greatly attenuates the amplitude of deformation. You cannot put enough energy into the system to excite the vibration modes. This works. It does not make the cabinet lighter than a thick walled approach. It is time consuming and the mass loaded rubber is expensive. As Derek might say : Always more than one way to skin a cat.
'I like to stay away from rectangular boxes cos those are some of the worst shapes you can have' Looks like ATC don't share that theory.. SCM 300's are huge rectangular boxes but they chuck out very good sound!
Is it more cost effective to learn and make this mysrlf, or just buy them good? I mean cabinet construction, as well as electronics. I can crimp/solder decently
The more important resource is time. If you like making DIY enclosures then do it. If not you'll be spending a *lot* of time doing something you don't like.
im looking at those cabinets, are those subwoofer cutouts on both sides and its dual 12" woofers gonna fit there? im pretty sure they are way to deep for that if you are using normal depth woofers. and i am presuming it is all sealed chambers here and everything is getting filled up with sound absorption material?
The usual case is that either the enclosure is of a lesser quality than the driver(s +- crossovers)) or the opposite. I thought I had a great driver but when I built an almost totally dead cabin then I had to face the fact that now I had an inferior driver. And I had to improve it to bring it to the level of the enclosure. Long story short, today we can make a nearly perfect cabinet (expensive, of course). But, still, we cannot make a perfect driver (or a perfect combo of drivers/Xover). (PS-not ps audio-: These cabins look very promising Paul, but the side panel rings unacceptably. Take care of that ok? Hopefully the decorative sidepanel will stiffen-and dampen- it more. And I also hope the smaller drivers are well protected in their own partial enclosures).
Gonna answer before I watch. Yes and no. It's more like a balance beam with a lot of factors in play that affect the outcome. Yes, the cabinet is important. Yes, the drivers are important. Yes, the crossover is important. Pitting the drivers against the cabinet isn't pragmatic in the sense of determining a good vs a bad system. But, if I'm going to pick one vs the other, I'd put more weight on the cabinet than the driver. A cabinet can compensate and adjust a driver's response. It doesn't work vise versa.
The answer is that the speaker cabinet sets the ultimate limit on possible performance. A "perfect" driver in an imperfect enclosure will create imperfect results. But a crap driver in the best engineered enclosure is still going to sound like crap. Everything adds up. It's all additive. Improve drivers, get better sound. Improve cabinets, get better sound. Improve crossovers, get better sound. Improve them all, get better sound yet.
I reckon I'll add this... for people who have, er, lesser than 10K$ speakers... the idea of a totally dead cabinet may be fine, but no, you cannot turn your 500$ speakers into top performers by adding stiffness to the cabinets. In lesser cabinets, ie, ones that do vibrate, a successful speaker will have the vibrations more or less tamed and tuned to be part of the overall sound. If you take my B&W 603 S3 speakers, who's cabinets vibrate a lot, and dampen those vibrations in any way the sound will go to shite, I found it best to let them sing as unimpeded as possible by isolating them from the ground with sorbothane feet.
With a xylophone test I can tell if it has peaks cos it's hard to stop the xylophone from peaking out, but when you do, all the sound "pops out" like a pop-up card.
Most people these days want an Alexa speaker 🔈 Bluetooth speaker you early see living rooms with speakers in them anymore. Now it’s a Walmart surround sound system and a tv
Regardless what the enclosure is. There should be 100% 0 resonates coming from the enclosure itself. Vibrations should only be coming from the drivers. On many dirt cheap speakers. They use the enclosure to help amplify certain frequencies. I can't remember what it's called. But that method sounds just awful. You want a rock solid dead enclosure.
Drivers and crossovers are the most important. The box if made well allows the drivers to be at their best. If you have garbage drivers, no matter how good your cabs, you'll end up with garbage speakers.
My opinion is that all speaker drivers MUST point to the head when sitting on a couch. Therefore I personally like 2 way speakers with subb. The loudspeaker should also not be too low. Another thing is that I think a good speaker should have crossover with coils to capacitors and resistors AND not DSP.
The stiffer you make it , you only are shifting the resonance frequency to higher freqs , the problem does not go away . Only solution : no enclosure or naked dipoles !
Interesting video. I think open backed speakers and a subwoofer is the future. I'm on my first experience with OB speakers and am blown away with how much better they are than boxed speakers in almost every way. They do need a sub to help fill in the bottom end, but with a good sub I've never heard anything that compared. Not just that they sound better, they sound DIFFERENT in a way that gets much closer to a live performance. Instruments are the correct size, soundstage is massive, dynamics are unrivaled, slam is spectacular, cymbal transients are super realistic and space correct. My guess is that within a decade OBs will overtake the marketplace.
@@billbones1000 Ah, lucky man, I would like a set myself, but coin is short, so I'm building my own knock-offs... taken from a few different builds and ideas on the net, spatial audio m4 being the inspiration for the mid and top... I'm a replacement xover from being done... so I can't begin to comment on them yet, as they are really something in a few areas, and not up to par in a few others, which should be remedied with a not broken xover... wish me luck... cheers!
@@bayard1332 nice man! Good luck! I was on the fence about building my own as well. In the end, I sold off a bunch of unused hifi and guitar gear to cover the cost of the M3s (I'm also an audiophile on a budget!). Good luck my friend, nice project!
Isn't the ideal enclosure "perfectly rigid" with no resonance of its own? Perhaps made of granite or marble? Never mind the facts that you would need cranes to move them around. :)
Tried that once got free marble from 1 1/2” marble that was taken out of the house got to use on my uncles stone cutting tools and equipment we’re doing all the labor to cut and router. Small two-way about the size of a ELAC UNIFI B5 wait 63 pounds each when finished and looks beautiful definitely no resonance.
All musical instruments vibrate. A concrete or rock enclosure would deaden harmonics to a point that would be detrimental to the sound. This has been looked at decades ago.
@Wimbo 9 A speaker cabinet ideally is inert. You are right that musical instruments have resonances/vibrations, but that doesn’t mean a speaker should. Those resonances are captured in the recording, so you don’t want to add to it, you want to reproduce it. By principle, a dead cabinet will better reproduce the harmonics than a cabinet that also adds in its own sound.
From experience a well made enclosure can make a low quality driver sound better so my logic says a very well made tuned enclosure will make a good driver sound great so maybe the costs are 5050 but as far as how as over all sound the enclosure can be easily 70% of the final speakers performance like wise a badly made enclosure can make a great driver sound rubbish
So you are saying that if these are your smallest speakers. Enclosure and thay are 1/2 cost of speakers the empty boxes are approximately 2 to 2500 each if these are the 10k pair.
It's not shaped necessarily prevent standing waves it is the corners you want to eliminate like you did in your room. Yes the driver and materials in the driver are important the most important thing. what's the material of that speaker cabinet Valcromat. what is it like acoustically
Will you elaborate on the following please? "It's not shaped necessarily to prevent standing waves it is the corners you want to eliminate like you did in your room". Thanks
@@FOH3663 general you don't get standing waves on a flat surface and they end up in the corners and caused vibrations in the corners resonance. The wave is trapped in the corner that is a standing wave
Side woofers are better IMHO. They can be made to oppose each other and cancel vibrations, standing waves, etc. Woofer output is largely non-directional, so they can be placed in a position that is advantageous to keeping the front narrow for optimum dispersion and step response. There is also a phenomenon called baffle step, where the response changes from omnidirectional at the low frequencies to directional at higher frequencies. This is dependent on the width of the baffle, and can tailor how the sound fills the room, and the frequency response at the listening position.
@@juliaset751 Iv'e owned Gallo Refrence 3.1 which utilize side firing 10's as you describe. I've found both ELAC FS 407 and Canton Reference which use down-firing woofers and isolated plinth to give cleaner and more detailed bass response.
70/30? 50/50? Uhm... I think, the Drivers make 30%, then 50%the electronics in the box and the Rest 50% is consumed by the cabinets.. lol! Especially electronics are very very important. Everyone who has played with his dividing network in a DIY Speaker project knows how much time can run into this difficult task...
There are serveral schools on cabinet design...resonant, non resonant..even concrete csbinets..buzz feiten is building a resonant speaker enclosure for guitar amps..so..what is best?? Musical instruments have resonant enclosures or bodies.
don't get confused, different price point have different ways to get the most out of low budgets. also a little give in the cabinet absorbs some energy while also give radiate some of it outside of the case. total rigid case make the sound bounce more on the inside. best of both worlds would be solid on the outside and soft on the inside, adding sealed cabinets filled with absorption. and don't confuse musical instruments to instruments of reproduction, you cant have resonance on both, the source instruments already have it.
Brilliant marketing video Paul, subtly name dropping Wilson to draw parallel and psychologically anchor people to associating an unreleased PS speakers as a peer to a known high end brand. Well played.
I'm pretty sure Cubes are the absolute worst cabinet design. Rectangular boxes are only slightly less crappy. Most other shapes are a nightmare to mass product out of wood. Hence we have fancy cheap plastic chinese speakers with fake woofers :) :) Fake woofers? Hmmm
Which is more important? Enclosures with out speakers make NO sound. Speakers with no enclosure CAN make sound. Speakers properly arranged ON THE FLOOR can entertain you. Empty enclosures can NOT entertain you. NOW, which is more important?????????
Paul, you are 100% right. Drivers, filters and enclosures are important to achieve the best result. But, in the end, the inclosure is the most difficult thing to build and that's where most of the speakers fail. You can buy great expensive drivers from many company, and buy the best parts for your filter and build it very well, but you always have to produce your own enclosure, one way or another, and if you want to make a good one it will cost a lot.
I have some great speakers... but the key point for me, the reason why they sound so well to my ears, it's the enclosure.
To achieve the best sound, it must be HEAVY !!!
Damping by weight... that's the key to high end.
Goahead how much is that weight?
3:30
"They have to come in trucks, where the drivers are little small things."
This is an spectacular question. I personally think that the enclosure is in fact about a 50 to 50.
Bose for instance use very small bass speaker drivers. But their output is very high for their size. Why??
Enclosure design. It's a hybrid type.
Bandpass and t-line kinda thing.
I have the acustamas 5 passive system I use in my bedroom TV set up and it sounds very good for just that.
No need to be extreamly accurate, especially for TV listening.
But one drawback is you better put some power through them with some backbone. I use a Yamaha amplifier.
It's one of the best made today in terms of construction design and the parts it's actually made with. Class ab.
Nice.
some of the most iconic speakers like Tannoy and JBL were big boxes, especially in the 70's. Weird that those companies are both going back to these legacy designs, and that Klipsch continues to fill a niche market.
greatest audio channel..... brief..... understandable..... trustworthy..... makes you think.....
I have made my speakers with 20cm thick marble and they sound amazing to me resonance and dumping of the cabinets is extraordinary the only drow back is they weight a tone to move around not to mention they look stunning
Very informative, I never realized why the truncated shape is so often used on high end speakers, thankyou
Hi Paul.
I have no doubt that those AN3's will look and sound divine.
I however believe the 70/30 costing is not so far of, for more conventional speakers that do not include a Bass power amp and DSP.
I'm of the Thiele/Small parameter school and therefore have found that, for the enclosures that my friends and I have built, the volumetric capacity, for closed or ported boxes, have to be well matched to the bass driver for low frequency response and have paid the penalty for the times when we got it wrong or the supplied parameters where to far off the actual values we tested later.
Not only is it critical for bass response but also speaker excursion under high power.
These cannot be compensated for by electronics without greatly compromising the system.
As for phase response and group delay caused by the interaction between the box and the driver, we found those can be compensated for with electronics and physical placement without to much penalty. That is, at the much more humble level we are tinkering at.
I really appreciate your show and await eagerly your further revelations.
Paul---- rectangular cabinets are the worst design...
Me---- looks at every speaker in my room awe $h!+++
Not necessarily true. A well damped rectangular box enclosure can be better than a non-rectangular box that isn't well damped.
@@Turboy65 In all honesty my system sounds pretty great. And it is all budget stuff.
@@Turboy65 but a well damped non-rectangular box...
A lot of rectangular box speakers have angled wall inside to help reduce standing waves.
@@lloyd.8272 And, that said, don`t forget the bracing! The braces do not only reinforce the Cabinets Walls, but they are also good Traps and ... fuck, now the other thing doesn`t come into my brain... just, when you make up a room, you need Bass-Traps, and the other things.. like a bookshelf with books and so on... ALZHEIMER DISEASE! AAAAWG!)
In short words, the braces are a physical barrier for the standing waves, and they distort them. So, with proper bracing, the rectangular designed cabinet is no longer such a big disadvantage!
So... Alzheimer cured for today: Diffusor was the word I forgot... The bracing in the cabinet also functions as diffusor! A diffusor, covered with damping material. That`s enough to prevent standing waves!
Curved or angled speaker cabinets really don't eliminate standing waves (at least from a physics point of view anyway). What curved or angled cabinets do is move the standing waves. My main speakers are curved, but depending on placement and such I can get as many standing waves as any other speaker enclosure. I think the biggest help to deal with standing waves are placement (setup) and room treatment or tweaking. Curved and angled cabinets I suspect have more to do with aesthetics than function. Yes, such cabinets do look nice, I appreciate them. I also think bracing plays a roll in helping with the speaker sound.
I agree that the real magic is in the build with the drivers, crossover, voice coil, etc. Get any of those wrong and you get junk.
I'm not a fan of Wilson speakers, I have heard three from their line up, they sound like rattles to me. (Either that or the demonstrators were playing them too loud). Harbeths sound OK to me, but I think they sound like the cabinet more than anything else. I think the open baffle Spatial speakers sound very good. This is all subjective, but makes a point.
So often we forget to quantify statements we make when talking about audio. A lot of us have that habit. I try to not do it as much as I can. For instance, you say the IRS speakers are the best in the world. The problem is that is subjective and there is no such thing as "the best speaker in the world". What determines that? There are many well designed speakers and many poorly designed speakers at all price points. Now the IRS speakers might be the best speakers in the world to you and I can agree with that, but I think it sounds better (pun not intended) and carries more weight if you quantify such statements. "The IRS Infinity's are the best speakers in the world to me".
I happen to think my main speakers are the best to me and use them as a standard of measure, but I don't say my (insert speaker name) are the best in the world and leave the subjective hanging. If I did that, I would be wrong and would hear from many about how their speakers are the best in the world, whatever they may be. You can't make an absolute out of a subjective.
We should all feel comfortable with the gear we have and like without need to claim it as the best in the world against all else. It is the best in the world....to each of us individually.
@Eric Elliot . Paul is talking about standing waves 'inside' the cabinet.
@@vacuumelite2065 Yes, inside as well. They can't be eliminated by cabinet design, again from a physics point of view. However, they can be moved or reduced to not have as much effect. The only way to eliminate standing waves inside a speaker enclosure is to have no enclosure and go open baffle. Of course, there are other factors with that as well. There is no free lunch in this as we all know. ha ha
I love that the stand is a part of the speaker. Having to buy a seperate stand is common
Yes, I agree with everything Paul has stated here. And many thanks to him for the preview of the future PS Audio speakers. Those cabinets do look like a years work computer design. They beg the question. He's stated there are going to be three versions of PS Audio Speakers. Lemme guess these are the mid range versions. Also lets assume these are the alpha version therefore the final product will be close, but maybe not the same, as the final product.
This one is AN3. There will be AN1 and AN2. Also, there is the Sprout Bookshelf Speaker. 1 and 2 will be the 2 flagship models.
I had a pair of Sansui speakers almost identical to these. My horn loaded compression tweeter had an
L-Pad on them. To adjust the level and sharpness of the upper frequencies.
I have to say that no other speakers I have owned sounded so good even at lower volumes.
They were extreamly sensitive and did not require a boat load of power to get good sound. The only other speaker manufacturers that even come close are Klipsch, Corwin Vega, and JBL.
I can’t wait for the speakers to come out. I’m more interested in PS’s adventure into speakers than its own electronics. I really badly want PS Audio to succeed in speakers. Speakers seem to be stagnant and I think PS Audio is going to shake up the speaker world.
30% cabinet design, 30% driver choices and design, 30% crossover parts choices and circuit design and 10% luck.
I have done a lot of speaker research as a hobby and I work on the enclosure by tweaking it, I work on the crossover and the drivers. I tweak the drivers, and sometimes that makes more difference than the crossover. And I experiment with the med deriver above the hole in the box, from right on the hole to way above it (and also angle it to experiment). With the right gap and right angle I can get the tone I want without changing the crossover (or I can change the crossover too, if I want). By tweaking all 3 things you can get a really good cheap speaker.
With a xylophone test I can tell if it has peaks cos it's hard to stop the xylophone from peaking out, but when you do, all the sound "pops out" like a pop-up card. I use 3" FR drivers with and micro FR driver (stripped of it's cone) glued to the back of the 3" driver and a stick (glued to the small driver voice coil tube) pokes through a (drilled) hole in the 3" driver and a tiny foil whizzer is glued to the end of the stick. And it's time aligned in the phase position of the 3" driver (point source). And there is a woofer for added bass response.
By lifting the 3" driver above the hole, it sounds way better than in the hole (in the right position). If I hear sour notes I just change the driver position a fraction and it goes away (or gets worse, depending where I move it). Sort of seems right , now, but I If get different brand FR drivers I would have to change the position again (or/and the crossover).
But it's not just a hole, that the driver is above, you need a cardboard ring around inside the hole going into the box 2" (otherwise it will sound pox). Of course you need some sort of support for the floating driver (imagination).
My 3" drivers are like 1/2" out of the box on the front lower screws of the driver and like a 1" gap at the rear higher screws. That is cos my 3" drivers are mounted 45 degrees (semi omni). So the hole in the box is like 30 degrees. It's way quicker to tweak than a crossover (I only do that when it gets drastic) and mostly I just move the driver around (above the hole) and listen for the best sound, and then use tape and small foam blocks etc. for a temporary mount for listening until I finalise the position and make a proper mount. The gap also acts as a bass vent (thanks to the internal ring).
Although the signal in the 3" drivers is governed by the crossover, still (basically) the whole signal goes into it (including bass). And the extra thump is provided by the woofer and the extra tizz, by the micro FR driver mounted on the 3" driver.
Your IRS speakers mids and tweeters are flimsy. but the woofer cabinet are heavy and well built.
I would disagree that it is a 50-50 split between speakers and cabinets depending upon how much woodworking and finish is done to the cabinet.
If you took two woofer of different qualities and switch the cabinets I would argue that the lesser priced woofer would sound better in a good cabinet then the expense woofer would in a cheaper cabinet.
I am looking forward to hearing your new speakers when you take good design good cabinets good speakers you get art with a purpose.
Thanks Paul keep it up.
That was my experience exactly for Bass speakers
But what is more important is that the box matches the natural characteristics of the bass drivers.
For mids and tweeters the quality normally follows the driver and crossover.
Looking forward to hearing those speakers when y'all finish them. Looks interesting so far.
They have to go hand in hand! The entire assembly everything worked together. The driver has certain properties that when placed in the correct size box, produces the very best sound that can be realized by the drivers. There are three major designs that come into p,at as well. A ported enclosure brings the woofers resonance down to as low a point as possible while retaining a flat response. A sealed enclosure can have further bass extension, it won't be as flat as a ported one. A folded horn or labyrinth partition can really bring out bass response that wouldn't ordinarily be heard. As Paul says, the combination has to be as balanced as possible, and sometimes the enclosure doesn't have as much of an impact on tune sound of a speaker than the driver or crossover. There are those audiophiles that swear by an infinate baffle design. Basically a board the speaker mounts to with no box. In my house I could achieve this by putting drivers on the west wall of my living room. On the other side of the wall is the garage. Now to cool things could happen from this arrangement. First I've got awesome sound in my living room, and with the right drivers the bass extension could be well below 20 Hz, or the limit of human hearing when it comes to,ow frequencies. The other cool thing is that I could use the same midranges and tweeters on both sides of the wall to have killer sound when I'm working in the garage. I would have to have the kids and tweeters wired -80 degrees out of phase in one of the rooms for it to work, and if I was rockin out in the garage I would be subjecting my family to the bass frequencies of what ever I was listening to and at the same volume as I was pushing in the garage, as an example. In my case it would just be too bad for them. Lol, but seriously, such an arrangement could work well, but infinate baffles are usually finite in their dimensions, to fill the room you listening to music in to the nest sound possible.
I'm definitely no expert but surely the most appropriate answer would be neither or both?! My understanding is that you design the enclosure for the specific driver. You cant have a [conventional] speaker without either an enclosure or a driver of some sort, so they are equally important. What makes more difference to the sound quality? How well matched your enclosure is to the driver[s].
When people swap drivers into a box which wasn't well designed for it, I think a lot of the time if they hear a big improvement in sound it might well be because the driver suits their amp better.
Anyway what sounds better to one person often doesn't to another...So maybe the better question is, why do I prefer this combo over that one, what makes it sound better to me?
Sir I want to build a bluetooth speaker. So what kind of material I should use.And what could be the enclosure shape .Will you please discuss about a sealed speaker enclosure.
I thought that the entire purpose of the enclosure was to prevent sound from getting from behind the speaker to in front of the speaker, in order to prevent cancellation.
I thought that the enclosure should be made in such a way to entirely prevent any resonance in the structure of the enclosure (prevent as much as possible at least), and to eliminate as much as possible any standing waves within the enclosure.
The enclosure with the lowest Q is likely to be the best quality enclosure.
Spencer Hughes figured how to make the cabinet vibrate in phase instead of making the cabinet so stiff to eliminate the resonance. Harbeth used the same ideas.
It can never vibrate in phase at all frequencies. It also will vibrate for diverse lengths of time at different frequencies. These philosophies just try to cheaply deminish some of the audible effects of the problem, instead of taking the time, effort, cost and technology to almost eliminate it.
Nice point, also Triangle, the French manufacturer, makes their own in house drivers and also didn't make the enclosures too thick and heavy, considering resonances by design. I loved my Zerius 202 s for many years. Cheers, Mario th-cam.com/video/cGjwkDB8Hr0/w-d-xo.html
The splendid Derek Hughes (Spencer and Dorothy's son) is designer for Graham Audio UK, where I work. He uses thin wall 10-15mm, usually birch multi-ply. Each surface has a panel of high density rubber compound bonded to it. The resultant 'Composite Wall' has a very high moment of inertia which greatly attenuates the amplitude of deformation. You cannot put enough energy into the system to excite the vibration modes. This works. It does not make the cabinet lighter than a thick walled approach. It is time consuming and the mass loaded rubber is expensive. As Derek might say : Always more than one way to skin a cat.
Full Ranger spoken like an "armchair audiophile."
How about doing enclosure to that speakers that you said is open. Would it sound better?
'I like to stay away from rectangular boxes cos those are some of the worst shapes you can have' Looks like ATC don't share that theory.. SCM 300's are huge rectangular boxes but they chuck out very good sound!
you could have a rectangular shape on the outside and non rectangular on the inside, it's the inside that counts.
Just imagine how good it'd sound if they made boxes with irregular shapes - and in something more inert and heavy than mdf/hdf. Like concrete.
Is it more cost effective to learn and make this mysrlf, or just buy them good?
I mean cabinet construction, as well as electronics. I can crimp/solder decently
Raj Gill DIY is ALOT better for value
The more important resource is time. If you like making DIY enclosures then do it. If not you'll be spending a *lot* of time doing something you don't like.
im looking at those cabinets, are those subwoofer cutouts on both sides and its dual 12" woofers gonna fit there? im pretty sure they are way to deep for that if you are using normal depth woofers.
and i am presuming it is all sealed chambers here and everything is getting filled up with sound absorption material?
which one design 1st enclosure or crossover ? because both are matter on sounding , i confused but i think enclosure , what do u thing ?
Can someone explain to me what is enclosure and what is cross over and channels?
The usual case is that either the enclosure is of a lesser quality than the driver(s +- crossovers)) or the opposite. I thought I had a great driver but when I built an almost totally dead cabin then I had to face the fact that now I had an inferior driver. And I had to improve it to bring it to the level of the enclosure. Long story short, today we can make a nearly perfect cabinet (expensive, of course). But, still, we cannot make a perfect driver (or a perfect combo of drivers/Xover). (PS-not ps audio-: These cabins look very promising Paul, but the side panel rings unacceptably. Take care of that ok? Hopefully the decorative sidepanel will stiffen-and dampen- it more. And I also hope the smaller drivers are well protected in their own partial enclosures).
Great explanation of things. Thank you, from Amsterdam - The Netherlands :-) ( you got a thumbs up from me! :-) )
So the AN3....12" sub, 8" midbass, EMIM(ish) mid, and AMT tweeter? I'm just guessing here....
Where can one hear the speakers?
It still bugs me that companies like Diesis charge so much for open baffle speakers. I'm baffled. Those drivers must be made of gold magic.
They are. Read the specs for the Triode. Silver cables, OEM drivers and the most expensive Mundorf parts.
Gonna answer before I watch. Yes and no. It's more like a balance beam with a lot of factors in play that affect the outcome. Yes, the cabinet is important. Yes, the drivers are important. Yes, the crossover is important. Pitting the drivers against the cabinet isn't pragmatic in the sense of determining a good vs a bad system. But, if I'm going to pick one vs the other, I'd put more weight on the cabinet than the driver. A cabinet can compensate and adjust a driver's response. It doesn't work vise versa.
from my understanding an enclosure shouldn't vibrate together with the speaker it should be non resonate or able to hold standing waves
Tell that to ATC Paul...
It looks difficult to have spatial power balance between the planar mid driver and tweeter.
The answer is that the speaker cabinet sets the ultimate limit on possible performance. A "perfect" driver in an imperfect enclosure will create imperfect results. But a crap driver in the best engineered enclosure is still going to sound like crap.
Everything adds up. It's all additive. Improve drivers, get better sound. Improve cabinets, get better sound. Improve crossovers, get better sound. Improve them all, get better sound yet.
I reckon I'll add this... for people who have, er, lesser than 10K$ speakers... the idea of a totally dead cabinet may be fine, but no, you cannot turn your 500$ speakers into top performers by adding stiffness to the cabinets. In lesser cabinets, ie, ones that do vibrate, a successful speaker will have the vibrations more or less tamed and tuned to be part of the overall sound. If you take my B&W 603 S3 speakers, who's cabinets vibrate a lot, and dampen those vibrations in any way the sound will go to shite, I found it best to let them sing as unimpeded as possible by isolating them from the ground with sorbothane feet.
With a xylophone test I can tell if it has peaks cos it's hard to stop the xylophone from peaking out, but when you do, all the sound "pops out" like a pop-up card.
Thanks Paul.. 👍
Most people these days want an Alexa speaker 🔈 Bluetooth speaker you early see living rooms with speakers in them anymore. Now it’s a Walmart surround sound system and a tv
Regardless what the enclosure is. There should be 100% 0 resonates coming from the enclosure itself. Vibrations should only be coming from the drivers. On many dirt cheap speakers. They use the enclosure to help amplify certain frequencies. I can't remember what it's called. But that method sounds just awful. You want a rock solid dead enclosure.
and then their are those open speaker designs that do not use a cabinet
They are achieving great sound just through flat panels, correct material and size of course
Diesis Roma Triode are the best.
Who machined those cabinets, Paul?
@Csab
😂
Drivers and crossovers are the most important. The box if made well allows the drivers to be at their best. If you have garbage drivers, no matter how good your cabs, you'll end up with garbage speakers.
My opinion is that all speaker drivers MUST point to the head when sitting on a couch. Therefore I personally like 2 way speakers with subb. The loudspeaker should also not be too low.
Another thing is that I think a good speaker should have crossover with coils to capacitors and resistors AND not DSP.
Dali speakers need to be parallel/not pointing towards the listener
nice cabinets...thanks Paul
Thanks for watching!
What are those speakers called?
The stiffer you make it , you only are shifting the resonance frequency to higher freqs , the problem does not go away . Only solution : no enclosure or naked dipoles !
The room is a bigger factor.
Not as big as the elephant in it!!
Interesting video. I think open backed speakers and a subwoofer is the future. I'm on my first experience with OB speakers and am blown away with how much better they are than boxed speakers in almost every way. They do need a sub to help fill in the bottom end, but with a good sub I've never heard anything that compared. Not just that they sound better, they sound DIFFERENT in a way that gets much closer to a live performance. Instruments are the correct size, soundstage is massive, dynamics are unrivaled, slam is spectacular, cymbal transients are super realistic and space correct. My guess is that within a decade OBs will overtake the marketplace.
Hey Matthew, what drivers are you using for mid and high?
@@bayard1332 I have a pair of spatial audio M3 speakers. Check their site and many reviews online for specifics. Amazing speakers!
@@billbones1000 Ah, lucky man, I would like a set myself, but coin is short, so I'm building my own knock-offs... taken from a few different builds and ideas on the net, spatial audio m4 being the inspiration for the mid and top... I'm a replacement xover from being done... so I can't begin to comment on them yet, as they are really something in a few areas, and not up to par in a few others, which should be remedied with a not broken xover... wish me luck... cheers!
@@bayard1332 nice man! Good luck! I was on the fence about building my own as well. In the end, I sold off a bunch of unused hifi and guitar gear to cover the cost of the M3s (I'm also an audiophile on a budget!). Good luck my friend, nice project!
But most people want Alexa speaker 🔈 😊
Isn't the ideal enclosure "perfectly rigid" with no resonance of its own? Perhaps made of granite or marble? Never mind the facts that you would need cranes to move them around. :)
They actually have speakers made out of granite I forgot the name offhand but of course They are rather expensive but they’re available.✌️
Tried that once got free marble from 1 1/2” marble that was taken out of the house got to use on my uncles stone cutting tools and equipment we’re doing all the labor to cut and router. Small two-way about the size of a ELAC UNIFI B5 wait 63 pounds each when finished and looks beautiful definitely no resonance.
@Big Jay
Status Acoustics (RBH) makes a pair I believe.
All musical instruments vibrate. A concrete or rock enclosure would deaden harmonics to a point that would be detrimental to the sound. This has been looked at decades ago.
@Wimbo 9
A speaker cabinet ideally is inert. You are right that musical instruments have resonances/vibrations, but that doesn’t mean a speaker should. Those resonances are captured in the recording, so you don’t want to add to it, you want to reproduce it. By principle, a dead cabinet will better reproduce the harmonics than a cabinet that also adds in its own sound.
what about cabinet filling?
From experience a well made enclosure can make a low quality driver sound better so my logic says a very well made tuned enclosure will make a good driver sound great so maybe the costs are 5050 but as far as how as over all sound the enclosure can be easily 70% of the final speakers performance like wise a badly made enclosure can make a great driver sound rubbish
So you are saying that if these are your smallest speakers. Enclosure and thay are 1/2 cost of speakers the empty boxes are approximately 2 to 2500 each if these are the 10k pair.
Probably 6 to 12k range.
It's not shaped necessarily prevent standing waves it is the corners you want to eliminate like you did in your room.
Yes the driver and materials in the driver are important the most important thing.
what's the material of that speaker cabinet Valcromat. what is it like acoustically
Will you elaborate on the following please?
"It's not shaped necessarily to prevent standing waves it is the corners you want to eliminate like you did in your room".
Thanks
@@FOH3663 general you don't get standing waves on a flat surface and they end up in the corners and caused vibrations in the corners resonance. The wave is trapped in the corner that is a standing wave
hey Paul what is your thoughts on atmos and dts x ?
Still people love Harbeth.
And Tannoy
And Kef😘
ooh ooh....that is gorgeous!...AN3. thats the Poppa Bear?
when & how much?
youre killing me.
That is Baby bear.
@@paulgolub6823 whoa!..... i thought Baby Bear was gonna be bookshelf speakers.
The Sprout Bookshelf aren't part of the big 3. The Sprout speaker is sort of the mini baby. Lol
No, but the two have to match. The volume of air in the speaker cabinet have to match the speaker.
Will 3D-printing change the game re costs of cabinets?
No
Too bad, side woofers are not for me... Look like an old Infinity design.
Side woofers are better IMHO. They can be made to oppose each other and cancel vibrations, standing waves, etc. Woofer output is largely non-directional, so they can be placed in a position that is advantageous to keeping the front narrow for optimum dispersion and step response. There is also a phenomenon called baffle step, where the response changes from omnidirectional at the low frequencies to directional at higher frequencies. This is dependent on the width of the baffle, and can tailor how the sound fills the room, and the frequency response at the listening position.
@@juliaset751 Iv'e owned Gallo Refrence 3.1 which utilize side firing 10's as you describe. I've found both ELAC FS 407 and Canton Reference which use down-firing woofers and isolated plinth to give cleaner and more detailed bass response.
Lol, he said 30% of the performance, not price, comes from the drivers, and 70% from the cabinet. Pretty sure anyway dont feel like scrolling back
70/30? 50/50? Uhm... I think, the Drivers make 30%, then 50%the electronics in the box and the Rest 50% is consumed by the cabinets.. lol!
Especially electronics are very very important.
Everyone who has played with his dividing network in a DIY Speaker project knows how much time can run into this difficult task...
Enclosure is important , not as important as the drivers or crossover.
Not enough wood in any speaker to cost 30k.
Those are the AN-3s?! Jesus what are the AN-1s gonna be like
Ipl Acoustics
There are serveral schools on cabinet design...resonant, non resonant..even concrete csbinets..buzz feiten is building a resonant speaker enclosure for guitar amps..so..what is best?? Musical instruments have resonant enclosures or bodies.
don't get confused, different price point have different ways to get the most out of low budgets. also a little give in the cabinet absorbs some energy while also give radiate some of it outside of the case. total rigid case make the sound bounce more on the inside. best of both worlds would be solid on the outside and soft on the inside, adding sealed cabinets filled with absorption.
and don't confuse musical instruments to instruments of reproduction, you cant have resonance on both, the source instruments already have it.
Brilliant marketing video Paul, subtly name dropping Wilson to draw parallel and psychologically anchor people to associating an unreleased PS speakers as a peer to a known high end brand. Well played.
They obviously need to be integrated. Otherwise, talk about snakeoil.
open baffle ...can sound very good...so that proves enclosure is not everything
Play in 1.25x speed
I wonder how a speaker would sound by building the enclosure out of carbon fiber material.
Generally not good unfortunately.
Those long fibers tend resonate at all kinds of frequencies.
Drivers dont need enclosures. Enclosures need drivers.
I'm pretty sure Cubes are the absolute worst cabinet design. Rectangular boxes are only slightly less crappy. Most other shapes are a nightmare to mass product out of wood.
Hence we have fancy cheap plastic chinese speakers with fake woofers :) :)
Fake woofers? Hmmm
So many speakers .... 🤣🤣🤣
For the little whippies out there the W.A.F. is an integral part of purchasing speakers.
Which is more important?
Enclosures with out speakers make NO sound.
Speakers with no enclosure CAN make sound.
Speakers properly arranged ON THE FLOOR can entertain you.
Empty enclosures can NOT entertain you.
NOW, which is more important?????????
Enclosures my derrière.
a bit of sellsellsell ,here