@hiendmmoe I don't know about ALL their speakers, but Focal Stella Utopia EM Evos are made from MDF with laminated outer finishes per The Absolute Sound review. I think you'll find that's the most common with nearly all mass-produced speaker brands. MDF and HDF are just so much easier to work with and produces some of the best measuring enclosures there are. Before Klippel scanners and accelerometer software, designers just kinda "overbuilt" cabinets. (Think of bridges or older buildings. Yes, you can build a speaker out of Bubinga but you don't need to.) With the advent of better manufacturing tools and testing software (i.e. not needing to invest in an anechoic chamber), manufacturers can test for unwanted resonance in any material. Also worth mentioning is probably over 90% of speakers are built to a price point and include compromises. Cabinet material that never sees the light of day is one of those compromises.
Are exotic speaker cabinet materials overrated?
Seems a lot of speaker companies are coming out with new non resonant cabinet materials all the time. Wilson especially seems to be inventing a new M X V material every year. Other top speaker companies seem to be staying with MDF even when their speakers match the above mentioned speaker company prices. Do these exotic materials really contribute to a better sound or do they add an unnatural quality to the sound.
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@nondemo prety sure they're HDF but they're not 1/4" thick like cheap speakers. |
@gdaddy1 you described a concert piano on stage without a cage and lid or a cello without a bout and sound holes!
Enclosed speakers ARE instruments. They are enclosures used to channel sound like an oboe vs a saxophone.
I don’t believe ’unwanted’ resonance is the same as zero resonance. How popular are concrete or aluminum piano and cello? Wood has a warm sound people like.
Recordings are not perfect. You still need to restore some of what’s lost, like the sound and resonances of wood instruments. I’ll save my final judgement when I hear it, but I can’t imagine an echo box concrete speaker to reproduce the warmth and resonance of wood instruments.
Maybe an open baffle or magnapan is more your thing. I would still want the sound of wood, just not cheap thin wood. |
@foggyus91 Are you suggesting George Short is an armchair audio engineer and speaker designer? His cabinet handbook was written for home DIY speaker construction and assumed typical limitations and access to tools and supplies available to home shops. While not practical to try and obtain and machine materials such as honeycomb laminates or synthetic marble etc., he felt hobbyist could still build superior cabinets using bench top tools that exceed what commercial speaker manufacturers could offer. Exotic speaker material is hardly new either; I still own a pair of A/D/S CM7 speakers from the late 1980's that were made of some type of resin concrete composite material. Very nice speakers but not as good as the NCM kits I have built including Vision Signatures including the center channel, Okara II stand mounts and the 18-inch Leviathan Subwoofer. I have built many other subwoofer enclosures using the same principles and they are all built to standards equal to and likely beyond any commercially available construction. https://web.archive.org/web/20030412105145/http://www.northcreekmusic.com/Vision/VisionInfo.htm |
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