Where is the Open Baffle crowd?

Shadowfax

Shadowfax

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Just curious how many OB enthusiasts are here. There are other forums where many folks are using, building, and talking about open baffle speakers.

Anyone have any thoughts or observations from using OBs?
 
I've owned them and have friends with them. I've found, they need subs, a lot of subs, to reinforce the lower bass.


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I tend to agree with Mike. I have the Spatials M3s for couple of weeks and feel that a pair of subs (though I don't have any at the moment) are needed.
 
I'm a huge fan of OB speakers. I've even built a few very successful ones over the years, all different types and sizes. And not all OB's need subs. If you do need subs for your OB's, that's where the DIY dipole subs come in handy. Tonality and performance-wise, they stay true to the OB's while still giving you the bass you need.

One pair I designed and built were big and ugly, but boy did they sound excellent! They used a pair of Usher Audio 15" drivers per side and an Altec Lansing 511B horn with Altec 902-8 drivers. They were an active, bi-amped system using a digital crossover. BTW, I was the first to try a horn on an OB. A lot of naysayers said it wouldn't sound good because the horn is highly directional and only fires forward. Well I kept telling them they were wrong and that this designed worked flawlessly. Then a couple years later, all of these people come out of the woodwork with these new speaker companies selling OB designs with horns. Imagine that. I should have patented the darn things!

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I still have a pair of hybrid OB's, known as the AV123 X-Statik, which I have highly modified the crossovers in. IIRC, I paid $895 for them when new, and just over a year ago, I spent over $800 just in capacitors and resistors for the crossovers. Also did some enclosure dampening treatments. It all made a big improvement!

It's funny, I had these speakers since 2008, finally decided to do upgrades to them, then a month later I get the Sonus Faber Venere 1.5's, and of course now the ML SL3's.

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I used to own Alon Signature speakers (for 9 years) and Nola Micro Grand Reference speakers and loved them both. I do miss Carl's speakers, they were so musical and just so satisfying. The tweeters and mids were open but the woofers were sealed. I've always loved that open sound.
 
Shadowfax said:
Just curious how many OB enthusiasts are here. There are other forums where many folks are using, building, and talking about open baffle speakers.

Anyone have any thoughts or observations from using OBs?
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Get restored apogees - no baffle, best bass, ribbon midrange
 
I had a set of Carver amazing in the past. They were darn good sounding when properly setup and powered. They would dip down to 1 ohm so the amp had to be very stable to run them on top of power since they were not efficient at all.
 
The Carver was pretty good , i did find them a bit laid back and never really projected a front to back sound stage thou , instead , everything sounded behind the speaker plane most of the time . Carvers Planer magnetic Mid/Twt driver were used by other speaker designers too, i think one was Genesis ...


Regards ..
 
a.wayne said:
According to those who have heard them, Similar sonics , AA easier to Drive , but all felt the apps had better Bass ....
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The AA are better than stock Apogees in the midrange, no match for the pure ribbon of a well restored full range. Also the AA are relaxing but not exciting like Apogees. Great tone and melody for classical and vocals, but not the tympani and bass drum dynamics or the additional ability to play rock and electronic. AA too need to be modded, as is done by the US distributor
 
Well ,

Nothing beats a straight foil , the purity of it is unmatched by anything with a VC , its the closet way to connecting the amp directly to a transducer, mostly because there is no VC for the sound, i did get tired of frying amps that weren't built like a 200 lb Krell and went to a multi-traced diaphragm setup , lost some of the naked detail , but picked up snap and percussive energy ( much better on piano's for eg) , doing another with even more traces and with xover mods may pickup another 2-4 db in sensitivity , if sonic' s stay up , it will be the way forward if not , i may just go back to a straight foil.....

Regards ..
 
joeinid said:
I used to own Alon Signature speakers (for 9 years) and Nola Micro Grand Reference speakers and loved them both. I do miss Carl's speakers, they were so musical and just so satisfying. The tweeters and mids were open but the woofers were sealed. I've always loved that open sound.
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As you know I have Carl's Concert Grand's, which for me, is an end game speaker. Personally, I have never been happier with a system or heard one I like better. Truly an amazing speaker.
 
And paired with CJ or ARC, a truly engaging system. I've been to his factory and listened to what he had on demo. Carl and Marilyn are the consummate hosts. I felt like one of the family.

I can only imagine how good the Concert Grands sound.

Priaptor said:
As you know I have Carl's Concert Grand's, which for me, is an end game speaker. Personally, I have never been happier with a system or heard one I like better. Truly an amazing speaker.
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I've been very happy with my Linkwitz Orions over the past 8 years. I'm fortunate to have a dedicated listening space without SAF.
 
Linkwitz has a network of users around the globe and many will gladly give you a listening. The is a website that you might find useful.
 
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