Speaker Building Dementions?

Question

I have a pair of Athena AB B1 5.5" 2 way speakers, the boxes got wet and well that's that. I'm looking to use the drivers in a new enclosure, No I won't be using MDF considering these run in conjunction with a subwoofer, I'm going to use a solid Oak floor standing enclosure and add a passive radiator into the mix. The passive radiator will allow lower frequancy's and dump standing waves inside the enclosure. My question is to all you audio-files out there, with a 5.5" mid bass driver, will a 10 inch drone be to big, and what would the dimentions need to be. Can i put the mid bass in the front and have the drone fire out the side? I hope to get alot of responces regarding this.

P.S. I understand the sonic benifits of MDF, I want solid oak cabinets, so anything you say regarding the differance in sound do to knots/woodgrain and warpage, forget it, I have made my mind up. Solid FG Oak is the material, besides it was free:P

Answer 1

A couple of important notes regarding passive radiator loudspeakers: (1) conventional passive radiator designs exhibit poorer transient response than their vented-box counterpart, the latter of which is typically worse than standard closed-box designs. With careful design, parts selection and tuning you can mitigate the poorer transient response to some extent. And (2), passive radiator loudspeakers have a minutely HIGHER cut-off frequency than equivalent vented-box loudspeakers. Nevertheless, passive radiator loudspeakers are certainly worth considering.



For low volume displacement (Vd), low-frequency passive radiator loudspeaker applications, i.e. excluding subwoofer applications, the effective radiating area of the passive-radiator diaphragm (Sdp) should typically be equal to or slightly greater than the effective radiating area of the driver diaphragm (Sd). In other words a standard 5.25-inch mid-bass driver would typically be paired with a 5.25-inch or 6.5-inch passive radiator and a standard 6.5-inch mid-bass driver would typically be paired with a 6.5-inch or 8.0-inch passive radiator. A 10-inch passive radiator is far too large to work properly with a 5.5-inch mid-bass driver. The difficulty in using a passive radiator in a loudspeaker that uses a single mid-bass driver that is equal to or smaller than 6.5 inches lies in finding off-the-shelf passive radiators that are smaller than 8 inches; the selection is extremely limited. I recommend that you consider using the smaller H9944 SP18R passive radiator from SEAS or an equivalent unit.



You would be risking a much greater potential for problems if you attempt to redesign the loudspeaker enclosures without access to the Thiele-Small parameters for the specific mid-bass drivers used in the Athena AB (or AS?) B1 loudspeakers. (Call or write Athena and see if they will supply you with the Thiele-Small parameters for your mid-bass drivers; under the circumstances I don’t see why they wouldn’t.) Without the proper Thiele-Small parameters it would be best to construct the replacement loudspeaker enclosure to closely match the internal box volume (Vb) of the original Athena loudspeaker. Likewise, it would be a good idea to stick to the same internal enclosure dimensions, roughly. (Don’t forget to thoroughly line the inside of the loudspeaker enclosure with flexible open-cell acoustic foam and/or other sound damping/absorbing material. Even better yet you should consider applying a liberal layer of viscoelastic damping material* to the inner enclosure walls prior to applying the porous sound absorbing material.)



By the way, if your budget allows, I recommend using West System two-part epoxy from Gougeon Brothers to assemble your loudspeaker enclosures.



######################## RESOURCES ########################



Passive Radiators - Madisound Speaker Components

https://www.madisound.com/store/advanced_search_result.php?keywords=passive+radiator&categories_id=&search_in_description=1&inc_subcat=1



SEAS Prestige Passive Radiators

http://www.seas.no/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=40&Itemid=52



Scan-Speak A/S Passive Radiators

http://www.scan-speak.dk/passive.htm



audioXpress (Old Colony)

– Loudspeaker Design Cookbook by Vance Dickason

http://www.audioxpress.com/bksprods/products/bkaa68.htm

– Bullock on Boxes

http://www.audioxpress.com/bksprods/products/bkaa8.htm

– Loudspeaker Reference Books

http://www.audioxpress.com/bksprods/BKSLOUREF.htm



What is better for low and deep bass; a port or a passive radiator?

https://answersrip.com/question/index?qid=20100625192841AAnsIaH

 

Answer 2

You are probably going to have to do some modification to the cross-over in order to get your configuration to sound its best you may get lucky and get something good, but really hours are spent with those drivers to figure out the best crossover points for maximum sound in the factory, and that is why they came up with the design for those drivers... the problem with using all oak is resonance, it will resonate at certain frequencies, it is better to alternate the materials for instance making the bottom out of MDF or even the front baffle...this helps to reduce the possibility of resonance...the advantage of a port is that you can modify the length of the port and fine tune it that way, another way to tweak the speaker is to use various amounts of acoustic fill, without knowing the frequency response the impedance and the sensitivity of the driver you are pretty much shooting in the dark...but you may be able to come up with something through trial and error...usually passive radiators work best when they are the same size as the driver.

Answer 3

Yeh Make A Basic Wooden Box Big Enough Then Cover In Either Car Carpet Or Acoustic Carpet All Can Be Got (Except Wood) From Yhoor Local Car Audio Centre