Unbelievable

Their motorcycles are excellent! 🤗

This is a mystery. As we know, Hattori Hanzo lives on Okinawa, so it is unlikely that he planted trees on Hokkaido. Then again, the making of a katana involves the lamination of different forms of steel, soft, medium and hard steel. The types of lamination and the number of layers varies between sword makers. So it is possible that Yamaha could have convinced Hattori to come out of retirement to consult on wood lamination design for these speakers. Knowing Hattori, he probably made Yamaha sign a NDA. If Yamaha violates the NDA, their corporate leadership would be deemed “Rats”, and we know how that would end. Yes, it’s a mystery. 

badger_erich

"No wonder Klipsch stopped using Baltic Birch!"

The story of SONY speaker has the second part, too.

"However, building the entire enclosure from a single type of wood can result in an excessively rigid and hard sound. For this reason, we selected another, somewhat softer cold-climate wood, Scandinavian birch, for the speaker’s side and rear panels. The birch is laminated and compressed to a thickness of 32 mm for the AR1, 24 mm for the AR2. The panels are then curved to a sculptural shape.

This unique choice of woods insures exceptional freedom from unwanted vibrations, as well as a natural, balanced, musically expressive tone.

You’ll remember the density of these woods every time you move the loudspeakers. Although these are not giants, the SS-AR1 weighs 126 pounds while the SS-AR2 weighs an impressive 84 pounds."

http://sonypremiumhome.com/pdfs/AR-1_Brochure.pdf

"Their motorcycles are excellent! 🤗"

They are not Yamaha.

"Then again, the making of a katana involves the lamination of different forms of steel, soft, medium and hard steel."

http://www.suzukicycles.com/Product%20Lines/Cycles/Products/KATANA/2020/GSX1000S.aspx

glupson,

Those Sony's look like dream loudspeakers. One version of the SOTA.

Yes, I'd say cabinet wood matters.

It shouldn't do, but it always will, as long as cabinet resonances remain audible.
The sound of those resonances will be affected to some extent by the type of wood used in the construction. 

Despite the designers best efforts to silence it, every material has its own signature, especially those used in the cone and cabinet. 

Once you become familiar with it, you might like it or you might not. Thus many high end designs feature exotic materials to not only silence this resonance, but attempt to render pleasant what's left.

Sometimes, rather paradoxically, a quieter cabinet can make the sound worse by highlighting other resonances which may have previously remained buried in the noise floor. 

A bit like that Volkswagen TV ad where  the car noise was so quiet your attention is drawn to an annoying intermittent squeak inside the cabin which is finally revealed to be caused by the swing of a hanging toy ornament.

Unfortunately the day of a boxless point source full range loudspeaker still seems quite a long way off - unless AI/quantum computing could get involved.

Maybe we should all lobby Elon Musk to forget this space thing and turn his engineering attention to where it matters most?