Open Baffle Designs ...

[BlazeES]

Who's owned or heard opened baffle design like this ?

I'm really interested in knowing how a design like this can produce well-controlled bass.

Is it even possible ?

 

[laatsch55]

Often wondered that meself...

 

[Gepetto]

It can but usually that is with an infinite baffle design. The separation plates generally need to be very large in size.

 

[62vauxhall]

There must be a parallel of some kind with guitar and bass amps - combo units anyway. Bass amps that I've used all had sealed backs but the guitar guys that I've played with had amps with open backs. That detail made me think an open baffle speaker was incapable of reproducing bass. At least bass that I'd feel was acceptable.

But on the other hand, many, many and many again years ago, home HiFi "devices" often incorporated a single 12" on a front baffle board with no back. I remember reading, in the 1960's, about infinite baffle speakers also and lumping them together with open baffle as something I'd not like.

 

[Gepetto]

The typical infinite baffle you see is the speaker mounted in the wall of a room and the back of the speaker facing into another room.

 

[62vauxhall]

Yes, but it seemed to me that it was six of one, half dozen of the other. With neither having an actual internal volume of cabinet to react with, it just did not seem likely that much in the way of low bass would be reproduced at all.

All I could imagine was that half the energy generated by the woofer was being wasted - dissipated into nothingness.

 

[Gepetto]

That could be said of acoustic suspension speakers as well. The venerable AR-3 did pretty well in the bass department.

 

[laatsch55]

Ported can be in the same category as open baffle??

 

[Gepetto]

I think so Lee. Open baffle is different than infinite baffle. Given the geometry of these plates, they are likely sized to reinforce some range of bass frequencies similar to the port function. Do they describe that at all or just pictures?

 

[laatsch55]

Sure....

 

[BlazeES]

Aren't ports tuned to a specific slice of frequencies? That makes sense to me and it also makes sense that a cross-over can be tuned to deal with it.

But these big woof drivers on a thick board make no sense to me. You get positive pressure out the front and negative generated off the back.
How the heck do you tune for that? And how does the room react?

 

[Gepetto]

http://www.musicanddesign.com/Dipoles_and_open_baffles.html