Clarification (I was wrong):
"Facts about audiomanufacture speakers
- for example, the W20SE's enclosure consists of 110 liters of pure solid wood. 38 liters of that is air. that tells eveyone enough about how much the enclosure is "resonating".
this enclosure is not designed to resonante, and that is what it does: it adds pretty much nothing of what is commonly understood by "resonance", for two reasons:
since there is only very little sound pressure build-up inside (almost all energy dissipated by the back side of the cones is being transported out into the room) plus the cabinet's wall thickness is 1.5 inches at the thinnest point and almost 10 inches at MOST points.
it should be clear to anyone that the cabinet surface does really not add much to the overall output.
- to those who think that boenicke audio chooses real wood instead of MDF just to make more money or create a marketing hype:
you do not have a reality-based idea of material-sound. in fact, we know that this term actually does not exist - because it does not exist in most peoples' minds.
that does not mean that there is no such thing as a material-inherent sound in reality (that sound is only dependent on the material, its temperature and its stress). it is only indirectly discernible, but of great relevance to every piece of equipment, be it a CD, a tonearm, a flute or a speaker.
clarification:
if you knock on two wood boards, you will get tones. the one board that is one inch thick will create a different tone than the same one that is only half as thick. that difference in tone is NOT determined by the material-inherent sound - i am not talking about that.
if you mount a speaker unit on a solid block (let's assume a huge block, say a cubic meter) of aluminum, MDF or spruce fir wood, the speaker driver on that block will sound different. why? because the blocks resonate different and therefore act as different parasitic sound sources? not very likely. those blocks are no sound sourecs of their own.
its the driver that sounds different (that is why i above said "only indirectly discernible") because it gets different mechanical vibrations reflected back to itself by the block. it is impossible to absorb mechanical energy by 100% - in reality, it is always somehow reflected back to the driver unit and turned into heat by damping materials.
now, i can assure you that the reflection (that is inavoidably constantly mixed to the direct signal) of sprce fir wood is something most people with good ears would perceive as far more natural (meaning less coloured!) than the harmonic resonance patterns (reflections) of MDF or aluminum. that is a fact. aluminum sounds highly coloured, slow and tacky. so does MDF, but not as bad as aluminum. most of us do not hear those colorations anymore because it is almost all-around.
of course we are ready to prove that anytime to anyone willing to listen to our speakers or recordings - which is easier to accomplish.
make the following experiment: take two identical speaker drivers with an aluminum phase plug. replace that phase plug by one from solid wood, but exactly the same dimensions. it will make quite a difference. do the same thing with a voice-coil of a speaker driver - even more of a difference.
- our speakers are not tuned to any instruments or any frequency bands or whatever.
although they are built to one millimeter accuracy (as musical instruments are) it is clear that in the real world, the speakers are not perfectly dimensionally stable. real life is not perfect ;-)
they are not designed to emphasize one thing and leave another thing away.
you can listen to a drumset or a trumpet on them, too ;-), and most likely you will be a bit impressed.
although they are built with instrument builder's know-how, they do not try to mimic a particular instrument - that approach would be naive, in deed. they are a stand-alone product.
- what is of course very exactly tuned and calculated is the coupler transmission line that is patented and unique. that means that the length of the line, the tapering and the opening is exactly tuned to the corresponding driver that sits at the line's beginning.
if done correctly, you get a resonance-free line that uses almost no damping material to work perfectly and totally uncoloured. none of the traditional TML problems occur here.
that means you can use almost all the energy created by the back side of the cone (instead of trying to deaden it somehow), impedance-transform it to the surrounding air on the room and use it to increase the speaker's overall sensitivity (plus about 4dB) and low-cutoff frequency: this design allows us to go at least half an octave below the speaker driver's resonance frequency at full level.
the other thing, not expressable with figures, is the quality of the bass: no other cabinet type (except for big horns) offers a similar speed, punch and control. bass-reflex and closed systems sound slow and weak in comparison"
