Angled/sloped speaker baffle design

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Submitted By: RGibran

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Location: Dallas, TX

Joined: Oct 11 2005

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Angled/sloped speaker baffle design

Posted: November 2, 2005 - 3:41pm

I've always read that one of the best tweaks you can perform on your speakers is with a 9" level, positioning them front to back and side to side dead level. I have experimented with slight (1-3 degrees) backward tilt on many different types of speakers I've owned in the past and always found the dead level method proved to be correct, at least to my liking.

However, today we see numerous speaker designs where all or some of the drivers are mounted on angled or sloped baffles, some even reversing slopes, and some fairly radical. What's up with that? Should we all now experiment with more radical tilted back positioning of our typical box/column loudspeakers? Are speaker designers purposly trying to throw the sound in a less direct (toward the listener) array in an effort to achieve a bigger soundstage, more ambience? Additionally, I've never heard any mention of the sonics of this new approach when speakers of this type are reviewed.

Submitted By: Anthony Tam

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Location: Chicago, IL

Joined: Oct 6 2005

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Re: Angled/sloped speaker baffle design

Posted: November 3, 2005 - 9:46pm

What is the "closest approach to the original sound" seems to very greatly between audiophiles.

Thiel immediately comes to mind when discussing sloped baffles and time/phase coherency.

http://thielaudio.com/THIEL_Site05/Pages/FAQs/faqtimephase.html#anchor564257

The now defunct Meadowlark also used sloped baffles, transmission line designs and simple crossovers.

Having briefly sampled these speaker, their design philosophies and engineering approaches merit investigation by any "audiophile". That said, there ain't no perfect loudspeaker and the over used cliche, "more than one way to skin a cat" also applies here.

Submitted By: Monty

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Joined: Sep 16 2005

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Re: Angled/sloped speaker baffle design

Posted: November 3, 2005 - 11:12pm

Speaking of sloped designs, what ever happened to Spica? Did they go under or were they engulfed?

Submitted By: Anthony Tam

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Location: Chicago, IL

Joined: Oct 6 2005

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Re: Angled/sloped speaker baffle design

Posted: November 4, 2005 - 8:20am

I believe Parasound "engulfed" them and then killed or let the brand die-off, or some such.

Submitted By: stealthaxe

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Joined: Sep 13 2005

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Re: Angled/sloped speaker baffle design

Posted: November 4, 2005 - 10:38am

Quote:

Thiel immediately comes to mind when discussing sloped baffles and time/phase coherency.

http://thielaudio.com/THIEL_Site05/Pages/FAQs/faqtimephase.html#anchor564257

Wow. What a load of dingo's kidneys :-). I read a little on Thiel's website. At first I was believing it and then I realized that it's not possible for opposite phases to "cancel" each other just by adding. One signal that's ahead of the mean by 45 degrees is not going to "cancel out" one that is behind by the same amount. They can't, because they're not occurring at the same TIME. Thiel even makes this point in their explanation, but how can two things that happen at different times (for example a transient that has components in each driver) cancel each other out?

*sigh*