Open Baffle vs Box

You can put together a fine open baffle set up for 25% of what you'll pay for the Spatial's. 

Lii Audio offers their flagship full-range driver for $1000.  It is 100 db efficient, and you can have a mid size baffle built, and power it with a low power tube amp and have absolutely wonderful sound. I have $1300 in my open baffles, and could not be happier. Here is a YouTube clip of what I have. Don't try to judge the sound from my iphone microphone. This is for the look only:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b_yrG3ZzE1g&t=80s

I started using open baffles about 2 years ago, and I could never go back to a box speaker now.

I can certainly appreciate the DIY open baffles. Not sure that's me. I would like to rely on the very knowledgable designers and engineers to do the integration, testing and presentation for me and that is really what you are paying for. That said, since my initial goal was to replace my older Vandersteen 2ces I see that there are quite a few companies with the OB design. Pure Audio also looks interesting in the modular open architecture approach. Anyone out there own anything from PAP or comparisons to Spatial? Liking the Trio15's vs the M3 Sapphires 

I am new to OBs, but am now a convert. I was a big Vandy fan, but having now experienced Spatial, I find them much more enjoyable. See https://www.audiocircle.com/index.php?topic=165532.0

Quad speakers are open baffle in design, you have a front wave and the back wave is just as strong to the point you could flip the speaker around and you would have the same output. No woofers, no midrange, no tweeters, yet the speakers reproduce a recording with speed, clarity, and a bottom end into the '30s in a real room and a fast pair of subs to roll at 40Hz down and you really have something special. No distortion for sure, in fact, lowest of any speakers, so Spatial and their design as a lot going for it, and the knock of possible issues is due to others not understanding the work and the drivers they use are for the open baffle design are for open baffle designed speakers. I take what the Quads do right against any speaker at any sane price, and live with the few things they may do as well as a box speaker, but from experience, the Quads work so well in a normal living room is because they are not a boxed speaker, where you hear the bass, the mids and highs with separate drivers and you hope the design can blend them as good as possible and then you hope you can get them to work in your room. The room is an issue is gone with the Quads and Spatial speakers and that is why they both sound as open and natural, the Quad speakers still do it better because there are no drivers so the coherency is unmatched. Spatial solved the bass problem that is for sure.  

genovanelli

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b_yrG3ZzE1g&t=80s

Impressive stuff, not to mention setup!

Good to see Open Baffles doing so well in 2020.

As gregm mentioned above, if they were good enough for Siegfried Linkwitz, then they're certainly worth investigating for most of us. 

All those hugely complicated Gordian Knot box issues - dismissed at a stroke.