I have a pair of the Snell AIII's - bought from the original owner. Still one of the best all-time speakers! That curved wide baffle was designed to allow equal power response off-axis. Peter Snell felt that off-axis response was an important factor in a speaker's ability to sound life-like!
Was the Snell Secret a Wide Baffle?
I often regret not buying old Snell A/III when I had the money and the space.
One of my all time favorite speakers. By now I'd have certainly had to throw it away. I'd not have the space, and those woofers with extra mass would long ago have pulled out of their frames.
One thing you don't realize unless you go looking for the pics, or owned one, was that the tweeter and midrange of these speakers were, in my mind, very wide baffle designs. Yes, curved, but very wide.
Another Speaker I like, which I believe is based on a Snell design, is the Audio note AN/J, also has a relatively wide baffle, as do the Devore Orangutan. Of course, among my all time favorite speakers is the Sonus Faber Stradivari, a speaker I know can sound excellent even in acoustically challenged rooms.
What do you all think, have you heard the wide baffle magic?
One of my all time favorite speakers. By now I'd have certainly had to throw it away. I'd not have the space, and those woofers with extra mass would long ago have pulled out of their frames.
One thing you don't realize unless you go looking for the pics, or owned one, was that the tweeter and midrange of these speakers were, in my mind, very wide baffle designs. Yes, curved, but very wide.
Another Speaker I like, which I believe is based on a Snell design, is the Audio note AN/J, also has a relatively wide baffle, as do the Devore Orangutan. Of course, among my all time favorite speakers is the Sonus Faber Stradivari, a speaker I know can sound excellent even in acoustically challenged rooms.
What do you all think, have you heard the wide baffle magic?
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Yes! Consider the Harbeth 40.2, Spendor Classic 100, Graham 5/8. If you're interested in speaker design, Graham are now coming out with a new version of the 5/5 which is quite funky. https://www.stereophile.com/content/graham-audio-launches-ls-55-montreal |
Erik, I have been lately "seduced" by what seems to be a commonality among some wide-baffle speakers. I’m thinking mostly of Harbeth and Devore O series (may be missing some). Both those speaker lines seem to produce a richer/fuller-than-usual sonic presentation, where instruments have more size and sense of body. And that addresses one of the main deficits I find in most sound systems (at least those speakers many of us can afford or end up with):Reproduced sound generally is reductive, thinner. Whenever I hear even a live solo violin I’m amazed at how "big" and rich even a single high note sounds in real life, where on most sound systems it would sound like a toy version, thin, wiry, distant, squeezed. The sense of a full-sized acoustic guitar with an actual body projecting sound seems more fully realized, to my ears, on speakers like the Devore and Harbeth (though the Harbeth doesn’t go quite as far as the Devore). Obviously there are other things that narrower baffle speaker designs do great (and I’ve just chosen one over the wide-baffle design). And it doesn’t seem to me that in principle a narrower baffle-to-driver ratio entails thin sound. In fact, I had the Harbeth SuperHL5plus speakers for a while directly comparing them to my Thiel 3.7. The 3.7s put out at least as big and weighty sonic images as the Harbeth, despite being of the "reduce baffle size" school of design. I’m presuming among other things, the sheer cabinet size and larger drivers and lower frequency range figured in to that for the Thiels. BUT...for their size...the Harbeths did tend to put out a richer, weightier image than other similar size/spec’d speakers. Another factor to consider is that both the Harbeth and Devore O series ALSO come from the "let the cabinet vibrate" school of thought, which also could be adding richness. |
My JBL 4319 speakers are of the old school, wide baffle design and they image better than my old, narrow baffle monitors that were purported to be imaging champs. With the JBLs, the images can be as wide and deep as the recording dictates with very stable imaging, with a rich and full toned presentation. I have nothing to complain about and think that all the fuss about narrow baffles was just a way to see if things could be improved and it caught on and became de rigueur, only to come full circle, and, hopefully, back to the basics that work. All the best, Nonoise |
All of the Audio Note speakers E, J, and K are descended from Snell, Peter Q bought the designs. I have a pair of J's myself and have heard E's and J's multiple times and they are all great speakers. Not just the wide baffles but the high sensitivity, plywood cabinets, and closely matched drivers all contribute to the great sound. |
There is definitely debate between wide baffle vs narrow baffle. Objectively, wide baffle has diffraction issue at low frequency whereas the narrow baffle diffraction happens at higher frequency. Subjectively, wide baffle does not quite have the image detail of narrow baffle but on the other hands, people have comment that wide baffle such as the Sonus Faber has more of live sound. When you listen to live music, you don't really see "image" as from a stereo reproduction, but more like a bubble of sound coming from the musical instrument, and wide baffle tends to have these type of sound. But I think the weakness of wide baffle is that the image could get phasey especially at low frequencies. The speaker baffle does affect the phase of the driver and the wider the baffle, the more it will affect, and hence the image phase in general. Personally I prefer narrow baffle mostly for it has better image localization. As for having image size as in real life, I don't think it has to do with wide or narrow baffle. It's more about overall implementation. |
Imo there are MANY things right about the Snell Type A. The wide baffle is one of them. When placed as intended (back against the wall), I think the extremely large radius round-over made a relatively smooth transition from baffle to wall. So you came close to getting the benefits of flush-mounting the speakers (studio main monitor style). The Snell Type A implemented Roy Allison’s ideas about boundary interaction, placing the woofer close enough to the floor to be close-coupled across its frequency range, and then elevating the midrange driver high enough to (barely) avoid the floor bounce notch. The crossover frequency matters of course. There were some interesting things going on in the high frequencies. First, there was a little ball of acoustically absorptive fuzz suspended just in front of the tweeter, presumably to reduce the on-axis "hot spot" and thereby make the speaker’s radiation pattern more uniform as we went up in frequency. Second, there was a rear-firing supertweeter (at least on the A/III), which presumably was to fill in the reverberant field a bit in the top octave where the front tweeter was starting to beam. I think there MAY have been room for minor improvement in the woofer section. Perhaps the woofer could have been rear-firing instead of down-firing, so that it wouldn’t sag over time. This is assuming the greater path length would not have caused a problem in the crossover region; it might have, and that’s why Peter Snell went with down-firing. Not only was there an over-abundance of great ideas in the Type A, these ideas were extremely well executed. Duke |
Here’s a quote from Peter Comeau, the guy who designed the recent Lintons. "Th[e] larger ported box, with its subsequent increased baffle size, helps solve a major problem in modern speakers, namely, the baffle step. I grew up with large speakers with wide baffles, but, as speakers reduced in size over the years I noticed that something was missing from the sound and, when I stuck my head firmly into speaker design, I began to understand the acoustic problems caused by the baffle step. Put simply, as the baffle size decreases, the point at which the acoustic radiation changes from hemispherical to spherical goes up in frequency. It also becomes sharper and narrower in bandwidth as the sides of the cabinet, and the walls and floor of the room, are further removed from the equation. So, this 6dB step in the power response becomes acoustically more obvious. I believe that a thin speaker always sounds thinner throughout the midrange when directly compared to a speaker with more generous baffle width. Of course, as designers of modern, slim speakers, we compromise by adjusting for the baffle step in the crossover, but in doing so, we also compromise sensitivity. What starts out as a 90dB at 1W drive-unit often ends up as an 85dB system once we have adjusted for the power loss due to the baffle step." |
Many years ago, I was present when the late great Jim Thiel was demonstrating his then new CS 5's. At that time he pointed out that amongst many other things the curved baffle helped with early cabinet diffraction issues. Later, I asked him why he didn't use an even narrower, more tapered baffle. He responded by saying the baffle dimensions were in part due to market considerations, and that he would have actually would have preferred to use somewhat wider baffles. He explained that a wider baffle would permit a more consistent user experience as it would help mitigate the effects of placement for different users with different room dimensions. |
Really thorough take, Duke. I think if it was made today, he could have gotten away without adding mass to the woofer, or as Vandersteen and others do, using a separate plate amp to power the woofer alone, because all that mass poured into that woofer was going to deteriorate the suspension no matter which direction it points. |
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...all that mass poured into that woofer was going to deteriorate the suspension no matter which direction it points.
" You're probably right, but with the woofer cone in the vertical rather than horizontal plane, you'd at least have the option of rotating the woofer cone 180 degrees every six months or so, as the Lowther guys do. That being said, yes nowadays a powered woofer section would arguably make the most sense. Duke |
One of my good .friends bought the original Snell Type A Speakers back in 1976. I remember taking the speakers back to the factory in Newburyport, MA to have them upgraded. We also met Peter Snell. My friend had the speakers in his large living room right up against the wall and he was driving them with the mighty GAS Ampzilla amp and GAS top preamp. He was using a Technics DD table that came without an arm. He had the Infinity Black Beauty arm wit a GAS Sleeping Beauty MC Cartridge. What a magical sounding system back in the day. |
I agree that wider baffle speakers tend not to image as well as narrower ones.There are exceptions however.It would be more interesting to know why some image well and others don't.I have owned Yamaha NS1000 speakers that have quite poor imaging and yet also own Yamaha NS75T speakers that have an identical size and shape box and which use very similar driver types and yet they image very well.Which leads me to suspect it must mostly be about crossover design.The NS75Ts are a later design than the NS1000 and perhaps Yamaha learnt how to make a better imaging crossover by then. |
Let's not forget the Sonus Faber Stradivari and Cremona Elipsa. @prof Both those speaker lines seem to produce a richer/fuller-than-usual sonic presentation, where instruments have more size and sense of body. You put into better words exactly the impression that I was trying to name when I was listening to the Classic 100's. For my own personal shorthand I came up with "music launch", in that somehow just more of the music seemed to be arriving at the listener. But I prefer your formulation. |
I have found that it is difficult to attribute a certain type of sound with a single design element like baffle width, material used in the drivers, time algnment, etc. Its always about the overall execution that combines so many factors. But I am a huge fan of the Snell Type A. I have owned six pairs including the Type A Original, A-I, AII, and AIII. The AIII is remarkable in its superior dynamics and bass extension, but I found (IMO of course) that it lost some of the midrange magic and "realness" of previous models. I found the midrange to be thinner, the treble to be a little much (even with the rear tweeter switched off), and the bass to be too much in some rooms. But boy could it blow a room away! The AI and AII are very similar to one another in sound but after years of listening to them I decided the A Original is the most real sounding of them all. I totally agree with Prof about how most speakers sound too thin... chasing this notion of "neutrality" we have had pushed at us for years. Somehow Peter Snell delievered tonal balance that sounds meaty and real to me. Part of it I believe is reducing floor bounce with the midrange driver height and the thick padding bocking radiation downward from the midrange driver. Ironically he prioritized anechoic flat response in the design. But then hand tuned each reference pair with the crossover in his lap, winding by hand and listening. Or so goes the legend. Maybe someone here haw firsthand knowledge of this. After owning all the Type A variations I chose to keep only a pair of A-originals and had the woofers rebuilt with new spiders and surrounds. Midranges are resurrounded. Wire was upgraded by the factory way back when. They put most other speakers to shame. I had to buy Verity Parsifals to beat them while retaining the magic in the midrange. Peter Snell was a genius. Funny aside... at 2018 Axpona I talked to a reviewer who said PeterQ is planning an Audio Note Type A speaker, and in anticipation of its introduction (or maybe for R&D purposes?) has been buying up every used pair of Type A's on the market. Anyone else heard that? Stu |
I agree with Montaldo that it is hard to attribute particular sonic attributes to particular design choices; I've heard plenty of exceptions to any rule. I've heard quite a few wide baffle speakers and many of them I do like. But, is it the wide baffle or the particular voicing that I like? There are many wider baffle designs that I like, and while it has been a while since I heard the Snell Type A, it was one of my favorites. But, I also liked the big version of the Snell Type B, and it was not so much a wide baffle design (though far from skinny). I do like the meaty sound of Audio Note AN-Es and the Devore Orangutans, Sonus Faber Stradivarius, Voxativ, and a number of other wide designs. I own speakers are two feet wide, but, that is probably more of a function of the type of enclosure (Jensen-Onken) and the two foot wide mouth of the horn. I recently heard a giant system that is about five feet wide by nine feet tall. In this case, the baffle is wide because the horn is enormous, and because it is an open baffle design for the bass drivers, the wide baffle is needed to move the front-back cancellation frequency down to a reasonable point. This beast has twin 18" field coil woofers stacked vertically, and the drivers look tiny because of the size of the horn (Western Electric 15A). |
the AIIIs were hard to beat. I owned two pairs at one time. an original A3, and the later A3i. A3i was more refined sounding with the tweeter and crossover upgrades. There were four disadvantages to them. 1 you needed a big room to really let them come alive. 2. you needed a ton of power to drive them, the more the better. most tube amps need not apply. 3. to really hear them you needed to biamp them, vertically preferred over horizontal biamping. 4. the woofers are not replace-able, so you really need to take care of them. Peter Snell hand selected these, and there are no off the shelf replacements. I drove mine with a quad set of JC-1s. They sounded tremendous. Big and dynamic if the source was. One of the best sounds I had ever heard where the A3's playing 15 ips master tapes. That is the sound most 'philes would die for. But do think that curved front baffle had a lot to do with their sound quality. I also tied driving them with a quad set of dyna M3s. the dynas are ok amps, but the snells just yawned and said no thanks. |